15. Fifteen
There were too many fucking cars outside.
I lit a second cigarette and stared out the window at all the cars lining the street outside Nikita's building at two in the morning. The street should've been empty at this hour. Instead, it was packed tight. Six cars were on one side, right up against the fucking building.
"Whatever happens in there, you keep your mouth shut," I told Fin. "You let me do the talking. All of it."
"Aye, ye said." He was looking up at the building through the windshield. "Why'd he want me there? Yer boss. What's he want with me?"
I didn't have an answer, and that was eating at me.
What the fuck did Nikita want with my Fin? Nothing good. I’d known that the moment he told me to bring him. But now that there were six cars in the equation, I couldn’t even begin to guess how this would play out.
And the not knowing was torture.
I popped open the door, dropped my cigarette and stomped on it. Gregori opened his door, but I shook my head. "Just us," I said.
Gregori frowned. "Aleksi—"
"You heard me."
Gregori’s face hardened, and he hesitated. “If you need a witness, boss, you send them for me. I got your back.”
I appreciated the sentiment, but there was no way in hell I was putting a good, loyal man like Gregori in the line of fire to save my own ass.
He got back into the car and stayed there.
Fin climbed out the other side and stood next to me on the sidewalk with his hands shoved into the pockets of his borrowed sweatpants.
They were too big on him, and the shirt was too small, creating this odd version of Fin that was almost comical looking.
He’d never have been caught dead in such ill-fitting clothes on a normal day.
I wanted to put him back in the car. I wanted to tell Gregori to drive him to the airport, put him on a plane to Scotland, to anywhere that wasn't here. But Nikita had said bring the boy, and I was a lot of fucking things, but insubordinate wasn’t usually one of them.
"C'mere," I said.
"What?"
"Just—" I fixed his collar where it had gone crooked. Stupid thing to do. I did it anyway. "Stay close. You stand where I put you. You don't talk to anyone but me."
He looked at me for a long second. Whatever he saw, it wiped the grin right off him. "Aleksi. Ye're scaring me."
"Good," I said. "Stay scared. It'll keep you quiet."
I started for the door so I wouldn't have to look at his face.
The lobby was all marble and brass, the kind of money that's supposed to make you feel small walking in. Two men I knew stood by the elevators. Two I didn't stood by the door we'd just come through, and they closed it behind us.
"Arms," one of them said.
I lifted my arms. He patted me down, found my piece where he knew it'd be, and took it.
I'd given up my gun in this lobby more times than I could count.
What wasn't standard was the way he wouldn't look at me while he did it.
Kostya. I'd bought the kid a drink at his own father's wake.
Now he was taking my weapon and staring at my shirt buttons like they were the most interesting thing in Ohio.
That told me more than the six cars had.
"Him too," Kostya said.
Fin tensed when the second man came at him. I put a hand flat on his chest before he could do anything stupid.
"It's fine," I said. "Let him."
It wasn't fine, and I knew it as soon as Kostya put his hands on Fin.
Something ugly twisted in my chest, and I had the irrational urge to grab Kostya and put him through a wall for being so brazen as to touch what was mine.
It was a sick thought, a wrong thought. Not a thought a vor should have about his own fucking men.
But I stood there and let him do it. Whatever beast had taken over my body that let me kill Pavel wasn’t quiet, but it was contained, at least for now.
"Clear," the guy said.
"Good." I steered Fin toward the elevator with my hand still on him. "Stay close."
Kostya rode up with us. He stood in the corner with my gun tucked into his waistband and watched the numbers climb in silence. No banter. No how’s your mom doing from me. No fine, thanks from him. Just the silence of a grave half filled.
The doors opened on the top floor.
Nikita had the place lit up bright, every light on. The hall ran straight back to the double doors of his office, which stood open.
I heard him the minute I stepped off the elevator, and I froze.
That voice. That fucking voice.
Nikolai had always sounded more like our father than me. He was speaking French with Pop’s voice, which made it sound all kinds of wrong. And he was laughing. With Nikita. What the fuck was he laughing about with my boss?
Kostya cleared his throat, and I forced myself to shake it off and keep going.
The hall was too long and too bright. Nikolai's voice came down the whole length of it, easy, warm, French rolling out of him like he was at a dinner party.
I still didn't have a word for what this was.
I kept walking toward it with Fin half a step behind me and my empty holster light against my ribs.
I'd spent four years not thinking about my brother. I was good at it. Now here he was, thousands of miles out of place, laughing in my boss's office at two in the morning.
I stopped just short of the door. Nikita stood behind his desk, looking more grim than usual. A handful of folding chairs had been brought in from somewhere, but most of them were empty.
All except for one, and I recognized the woman sitting in it. Lyudmila. Pavel's wife. I'd sat at her table. I'd eaten her cooking, I'd called her husband brother, and then I'd shot him in the back in a tailor shop in front of God and the Greeks.
She looked up at me, eyes red rimmed and wet. A better man would’ve felt some guilt looking at the widow he’d made, but I couldn’t find it.
“Bratishka!” Nikolai was sitting in the open window, a glass of vodka in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.
He pushed up the moment he saw me, finished off the vodka, discarded the glass, and crossed the room.
I tried not to recoil when he put his hands on my shoulders and kissed one cheek and then the other.
I fucking hated when he did that shit and he knew it.
“Privyet! How are you? It’s been too long.
” He said it all in Russian, which, I was annoyed to learn, he spoke better than me.
"Hello, Nikolai."
“You look terrible. You know what you need? You need a woman to feed you. Or two. Like Papa, eh?”
I glared at him because the fucker knew exactly which knife he was twisting. But that was Nikolai for you. He’d never given a shit about anyone but himself.
I was about to tell him to go fuck himself, papa and all, when I caught the movement behind him.
My cousin, Warrick Laskin, sat in the corner, all long, slim limbs and sharp features.
I’d once joked that for a pale blonde guy, he could sure as fuck look grim on a Tuesday.
But if Nikita was grim, tonight Warrick wore the expression of a fucking reaper.
He sat with one ankle crossed over his knee, a black bag on the floor in front of him.
I knew, better than most, what that fucking bag meant because I’d seen Warrick work a man over before.
And he might not have been as brutal as someone like Pavel about it, but Warrick was precise and he was calm, where Pavel enjoyed the work.
Warrick would put on fucking Madonna and tell you to stop screaming so he could concentrate.
I’d read somewhere once that there were a disproportionate number of psychopaths who worked as surgeons.
Guess that made Warrick a fucking poster boy for psychos.
He nodded to me, but stayed where he was, seated beside Nikita’s desk.
“Aleksi, come in and shut the door,” Nikita instructed, pouring another glass of vodka. It was the expensive stuff. That was never a good sign.
I did as he asked.
Nikita poured a second glass and held it out. I crossed the room, took it, and drank it holding Nikita’s eyes. He grunted, pleased, and stood up straight.
“Ah, you must be thirsty, malysh, standing there so quiet. Here." Nikolai picked a clean glass off Nikita's tray and started to pour. "Drink with us."
I opened my mouth to tell Fin to take it and shut up.
I was too slow.
"That?" Fin looked at the bottle like Nikolai was offering him dishwater. "Nah. Ye got a proper ale back there? A real drink? No' that Russian backwash."
The room went quiet.
Jesus Christ, Fin. Read the fucking room.
Was he stupid? What kind of madman walks into a room full of armed vory and insults the fucking national drink of their people? Might as well have pulled his pants down and taken a shit in the middle of the fucking room.
Nikolai didn't move for a second. The bottle stayed tipped over the empty glass, not pouring.
Then he laughed. “Ah bon, this one has fangs, eh?” he said in English and then turned to me, continuing in Russian. “Where did you find this one, big brother? I like him.”
That was worse than if he'd hit him. I'd spent the whole night trying to make Fin small enough that nobody in this room would bother to remember his face. Took the kid one sentence to undo it.
"Enough." Nikita set the bottle straight on the desk. "Aleksi, you know why I called you here, yes?”
I set the empty vodka glass on the desk, stood up straight and rolled my shoulders one at a time before answering. “I shot a traitor and two Italians tonight in the back of an Italian leather shop over the line in Greek territory,” I said plainly.
“Lies,” spat Lyudmila, knuckles going white around the handle of her purse. “My husband was nothing but loyal. He gave everything to this organization and now they are saying you shot him in the back like a coward.”
My left eye twitched. It was one thing to have a man level that accusation against me, but to bear it from a woman was another level of insult entirely. If she’d been anyone other than Pavel’s widow, I wouldn’t have let it stand.