Chapter 15
SAINT
“You better have some fucking news for me,” I growl at Scorpion when he breezes into my office at Andriani Brothers Contracting.
I’m in a vile mood and it’s not entirely his fault, but he’s going to bear the brunt of my wrath anyway. I spent last night tossing and turning, barely able to sleep knowing Isla was a few doors down.
Scorpion gives me a look. “You want the coffee I brought you on your head or in your lap?”
True to his word, he does have two tall black coffees in hand, one for him and one for me.
“Just give me the coffee,” I grumble, reaching for it.
He passes the to-go cup off and drops into the seat opposite my desk. “You’re welcome, frattore mio.”
I drink the coffee, unimpressed that it’s not taste-bud-searing hot.
I glare at him over the top of the cup. “It’s not as warm as it should be. You stop somewhere between the café and here?”
“It’s called city traffic, dickhead.”
“You better watch your mouth, stronzo,” I warn him.
But we both know I won’t do anything about it.
My brothers are all I have. We may harass the shit out of one another, but I would die for any one of them and I know they would do the same for me.
We’re in this fucked-up world together, and if we don’t have one another’s backs, we may as well already be six feet under.
“Do you want news or not?” he asks, the cocky fucker.
“I already told you that you better have some fucking news when you walked in here, didn’t I? So, spill.”
“Sidorov is back for good,” he tells me. “Looks like there’s going to be a shift in who runs the Bratva territory here in the city. He’s top of the food chain now, and he wants everyone to know it.”
Fuck.
Mikhail Sidorov is apparently a thorn in my ass that isn’t going to go away any time soon. This isn’t what I was hoping to hear, but it does explain his efforts to big-dick us with Isla. He’s a sinister bastard, and he knows that fear is as powerful a weapon as any gun.
“I take it you finally heard from your source,” I press, drinking my coffee, even though it’s already getting cold.
Scorpion shifts in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “You could say that.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I haven’t heard from my source directly.”
“Explain,” I demand.
It’s too early in the morning for riddles. I need to know what the fuck is going on with the Russians and why they’re after Isla, and I need to know yesterday. Because the sooner I can get her out of my apartment, out of my personal space, and out of my goddamn head, the better off I’ll be.
Last night made that more than abundantly clear.
I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking when I challenged her.
Okay, to be fair, I do know what I was thinking with—my dick.
But that’s not an excuse. If she’d taken my bait, we’d have ended up in bed, and I wouldn’t have stopped until I had my tongue buried in her pussy, followed by my cock.
At least one of us was smart enough to go to bed.
Scorpion sighs. “I heard from my source’s sister.”
This is the first time I’m hearing about a sister being involved in his shadowy dealings with the Russians. Somehow, I had no idea there was a female Sidorov in the mix.
“His sister?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time. I don’t have a meeting for another two hours. Tell me.”
Scorpion’s jaw tenses. “Maybe I don’t have the time.”
“Except right now, with our brother out of the country, you’re answering to me,” I point out conversationally. “If I say you have the time, you have the time.”
“Speaking of Priest, how is he?”
“Doing honeymoon shit and living it up. The bastard sent me a picture of the sunrise over the ocean this morning.”
I don’t begrudge him this time, though. I’m happy for him. Happy for Luna. She’s a good woman, and the two of them are perfect for each other. They earned this time outside the shitshow.
I can handle it while they’re gone.
I am handling it.
Admittedly, poorly so far. But that’s only because I didn’t know a psycho Russian was on the loose. Correct that—another psycho Russian. It’s not like the other ones are particularly sane. Still, now that I know what I’m dealing with, I can adapt.
“Must be nice,” Scorpion says.
“Yeah. Must be. But back to the Russian sister. I need details. What the hell is going on?”
“My source disappeared on me. When we got back from St. Thomas, everything was radio silent. Then I got the picture of Isla sent from an unknown number.”
“The sister was behind sending the snap?” I guess.
“Yeah, but Sidorov ordered it. I finally got to the origin of the number and tracked her down. She wasn’t happy about being found, and she didn’t really want to talk.”
I can tell by his wry tone that he’s putting that mildly. Somehow, the idea of Scorpion tangling with a Russian hellcat amuses me. Better him than me. I’ve already got enough on my hands with Isla staying at my place.
“Does the sister know where her brother is?” I ask, curious.
Scorpion’s source was a huge help to us, letting us know what was happening regularly, not just in the Bratva rank and file, but also in the highest levels of the organization—from the Pakhan on down.
Heading into situations without having the intel we were given is going to be difficult.
We relied on it more than I realized now that it’s potentially gone forever.
“If she does know where he is, she’s not letting on. Looks like Sidorov has her scared silent,” Scorpion tells me grimly. “I didn’t want to take things too far, given that he was sniffing around Isla yesterday. Figured I’d come back to you with what I’ve learned and go from there.”
I turn everything I’ve just learned over in my mind.
“You think Sidorov clipped your source?”
“It’s possible. He’s a ruthless prick and capable of anything.” He pauses, looking torn, like he’s measuring his words. “But my source is also his brother.”
Shock hits me.
“Wait a fucking minute. You’re telling me that Mikhail Sidorov’s brother—Dimitri the Executioner—was your source and that there’s a sister we didn’t know about?”
Priest long suspected that Scorpion’s Bratva mole was Dimitri.
But to hear it confirmed this way, and to know there’s a mysterious sister involved now too, thickens the plot considerably.
Not for the first time, I wish Priest were here so that I could bounce all this off him.
But he’s not, and I’m holding true to my determination not to interrupt his honeymoon in paradise.
So it’s all me, Scorpion, and Lucky.
Scorpion nods. “Dimitri and I go way back. He didn’t know anything about Mikhail returning. If he had, I would have had some warning on this.”
The two brothers had worked themselves up in the organization until they became the right and left hands of the Pakhan, Ivan Aleksandrov, here in the city.
But there was a massive fallout between them a few years back, and Aleksandrov had sent Mikhail back to Russia to oversee that part of their operations.
No one knew why, though speculation had been rife at the time that it involved a woman.
“So, in other words, something big has gone down,” I say, absently stroking the five-o’clock shadow on my jaw.
I didn’t want to take the time to shave this morning. I just got the hell out of my apartment, needing to put some distance between Isla and me as fast as I could, even though yesterday’s danger was still leaving me off-kilter.
I shouldn’t worry, I know. The guards are in place. She’s safe where she’s at, and everyone is under strict orders to keep her the fuck inside where she belongs until I return. Even if that means handcuffing her to a goddamn bed.
Why do I like the image that brings to my mind far more than I should? And why the hell do I want her so much? She was worried about saving the life of a fucking spider. Jesus, women like her should be outlawed. She’s like a lamb for the slaughter. A hot-as-fuck nerd lamb.
“For Mikhail to have returned to the States?” Scorpion brings me back to the conversation. “Yes, something big has likely gone down in their ranks.”
I shake my head. “I don’t like this.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“So, Aleksandrov?”
“Gone.”
“Gone as in back to Russia, or gone as in dead?”
“If I had to bet, I’d put my money on dead, although no one’s talking, and certainly not Ekaterina.”
I examine my brother. “The sister has a name.”
There’s something about the way he said it too. The look on his face. Hmm. I don’t know what to make of it, but I have a feeling a whole lot more happened between Scorpion and Ekaterina than he’s letting on.
“She’s feral,” he says.
And that’s when I take note of the scratches on his neck. Looks like I wasn’t wrong about her being a hellcat. Interesting.
“Is she going to be an asset to us? We could sure as hell use someone in the Bratva ranks, now more than ever, given the return of Mikhail Sidorov and his potential rise to Pakhan. This is all happening at the speed of light, and the fact that Sidorov was on our territory, openly challenging us, is alarming.”
We’ve always gotten along with the Russians, for the most part. There have been moments of strain and tension, like when Amedeo the Animal tried to start a war between the Andriani family and the Bratva. But we shut that down, and Amedeo too.
“I have to work on that,” Scorpion hedges, sounding uncertain.
“Do you have anything on Dimitri you can use as leverage?”
Scorpion being tight with the younger Sidorov brother was news to me, but I’m not afraid to use it to our advantage in every way possible.
“I have a few things up my sleeve.”
“Good. We need to find out exactly what it is that Mikhail wants. If he’s going to challenge us and start a territory war, we need to be prepared. We can’t afford to get caught with our pants down and our dick out.”
Scorpion nods. “I know.”