Chapter 2
Kane
It wasn’t meant to be like this.
My whole life I was raised to think that I was something else. Somebody different. Two older brothers led the way for me. Five and seven years older than me, I was the baby of the bunch from the day our mother gave birth to me.
Kane Kamedov. The Young Menace they called me.
I was feared on the streets and amongst other Russian families too. With my older brothers running the family business as best they could, I was the man who stepped forward when a risk needed to be taken, or justice needed to be dealt out quickly and brutally.
Maybe it was because we never had a father to keep us under control, but the three of us moved differently to other families. We took lives first and asked questions later. There was never a case of giving a rival the benefit of the doubt. Any problem would be dealt with quickly and without mercy.
And on the street level, I was the man to make it happen.
Perhaps my comparative youth meant I was wilder than my brothers. It could be that I witnessed them taking their lead in the family before me, and I always felt like I had catching up to do.
Or maybe rage is just in my genes.
Whatever it was, it worked.
But two months ago, everything changed…
My brothers went for a routine sit down meeting with an arms supplier over on the other side of town.
The deal was already agreed, a shipment of high grade weapons would be delivered in the next six weeks.
All that was left to be confirmed was the exact payment arrangements and a fresh deal for the next shipment, should we be satisfied with the first.
So far, so fucking good.
But even as my brothers left for the meeting, something inside me told me that it was wrong.
I couldn’t put my finger on it. They had dealt with the arms supplier before, he was solid.
There were no issues with trusting him, or so we thought.
My brothers didn’t go in blind either, and took their usual right hand men as backup just in case.
Normal practice, nothing out of the ordinary.
But that nagging doubt in my mind kept building with every minute that my brothers were away from me.
It was like I was a youngster again, watching on with envy as they hit the streets and sought about bringing our family back into play in the city’s underworld after a generation where we were nothing more than paupers and has-beens.
So finally I did what I always do.
I moved. And moved fast.
But not fast enough…
When I arrived at the scheduled meeting point, I was met with a bloodbath. All around the abandoned warehouse were SUVs that had been shot up, some of them with the kind of heavy artillery that you would expect to see in a civil war or far flung continent.
I went through the cars, one by one. Body after body lay there, limbs blown off and guts spilled across the seats. It was fucking grim, the kind of bloodshed you’d see in an R Rated action film from back in the day.
Trust me, I’ve seen enough blood spilled to last me a lifetime. Nothing should shock me. But this was a whole other level.
And as I approached my brothers’ SUV, all I could do was hope and pray.
Even though my gut instincts told me that they too had fallen foul to whatever the hell had gone down, I held a slither of hope that they might have escaped unscathed, or at the very least with their lives till intact.
After all, they were the elder Kamedov brothers.
They were ruthless, but smart with it. Over fifteen years in the business and approaching two whole decades, they were known for having the street smarts and tactical approach that would rarely, if ever, see them outdone.
In fact, it was pretty much accepted across the city’s crime families that no one fucked with the Kamedov clan unless they wanted to be on the end of some seriously fiendish revenge.
But when I put my hand on the SUV’s partially blown apart rear door, I knew.
I had to clench my jaw as hard as was humanly possible to stop myself from screaming out in agony as I peered inside and saw the sight of my two older brothers, their suits drenched in blood, their eyes blank with death.
Milo and Loren Kamedov… shot to pieces one afternoon like they were nothing but a pair of low down hustlers.
I knew from that moment that my life would never, ever be the same again.
And now here I am, getting ready to drink myself to oblivion yet again. Another night drowning my sorrows as I do everything I can to fuck up my family’s name, and all because I can’t handle the thought that now Milo and Loren are gone it all falls onto me.
Because like it or not, I am the pakhan now.
“Another vodka,” I growl, leaning up against the bar.
I don’t have many friends in the city right now, so coming to a place like this is actually the one wise choice I’ve made in these last couple of months. A Daddy club, it’s about as far as you could get from the bars and illicit clubs that the likes of me would usually hang out in.
And if that means I’m less likely to get shot to pieces here, then I’ll take that.
It’s not even that I’m looking for a boy right now either. I mean, come on, the last fucking thing I need is some high maintenance brat who’s going to being all up in my business and demanding my attention.
Not even the most spankable ass in the world is going to interest me right now.
No, give me vodka, peace, and enough space to drink the pain away once more and I’ll be good.
“Your vodka, sir,” the bartender says to me, a nervous look in his eyes.
“Relax,” I say. “You’re not my type.”
The bartender nervously flashes me a smile and quickly moves across to the far side of the bar where a Daddy and his boy stand together, the pair of them looking way too fucking happy for my liking.
Fuck. What is it with happy couples? They just can’t help but look like the smuggest people in a ten block radius any time they open their mouths.
Still though, that boy I just met a few minutes ago… he seemed different to the other hyperactive brats and self-satisfied couples in here.
He was cute too.
“Pffft, forget him,” I mumble to myself.
I’ve had my fair share of one night stands and wild flings over the years. The last thing I needed tonight was going through that whole dance and ending up with some needy boy at six o’clock in the morning.
Screw that.
And yet… I haven’t actually been able to get him out of my mind since he left. We only spoke for a couple of minutes, and most of that was him refusing to look at me, let alone give me a single indication that he might actually be interested.
I shake my head and take my phone out of my pocket. As usual, the screen is full of messages from my street soldiers. Men who up until a few weeks ago I would run alongside day and night, enforcing our law and making sure that the Kamedov name was being upheld at all costs.
Now, they look at me different.
I’m no longer their friend. I’m their pakhan.
And the truth is that I see them all differently too.
Could it have been one of them who either deliberately or inadvertently gave away my brothers’ location to a rival? The thought would have seemed absurd to me before. But not now. Right now it feels like every single one of them has got an agenda.
Are they trying to cozy up to me to gain a promotion?
Do they want to know my location to pass this on to whoever killed my brothers?
Might they be plotting to kill me and finish the family off for good?
“Another,” I bark, slamming my empty vodka glass down on the bar and scowling over toward the bartender. “And make it quick.”
The messages on my phone can wait.
And so too can anything and everything else in my life.
I’ve got vodka, and nothing but a long night to drown in…
* * *
“Wait… who wants to meet me?” I ask, my head thick with the fog of a truly nightmarish hangover.
“Volkov,” Padraig says. “Viktor Volkov.”
I look across the diner table and rub my eyes. Is Padraig talking about the Viktor Volkov? My brothers had plenty of run-ins with Viktor over the years, some of them good and some of them not so good.
“What the fuck does he want with me?” I ask.
“Says he wants a sit down,” Padraig answers. “Nothing major. No proposals on the table. A meeting.”
I grit my teeth before taking a gulp of the black coffee in front of me.
I try to run the play in my head. Viktor knows that my brothers are gone.
He knows that I’ve been thrust into the situation of being pakhan.
An operator like Viktor will probably sense that the family is weak, unstable, almost certainly not running like it did when my brothers were in total control of things.
I’ve heard all about the moves that Volkov has made over the years. The Downtown Devil is a nickname you get for a reason, after all. The idea of walking into a meeting with him sounds like just about the most insane thing I could possibly contemplate right now.
And then there’s Padraig…
He’s been my running mate for years. Irish blood, but a Russian heart.
That’s how we’ve always seen Padraig. By the time he was fifteen, he practically lived at our mother’s house.
And the two of us being the same age meant that I never went without company while my brothers were out there making moves without me.
But when it comes down to it, Padraig has always known that there would be a limit to how far he could climb in the business as long as he stayed with us.
The bloodline isn’t there for him to reach the top.
He’s always known that. And, so far, it hasn’t been a problem.
But people change over time. And I’d be a fool to imagine that Padraig would be immune from the kind of jealousy, spite, and low down underhand bullshit that almost every other damn person on this planet is capable of.
“Problem, Kane?” Padraig asks. “Sorry, pakhan, I should say.”
“Kane is just fine,” I reply, my bleary eyes staring deep into Padraig’s bright blue eyes. “You say that Viktor contacted you personally?”
“I didn’t say that,” Padraig answers. “What I said was that one of his men reached out to one of my guys, told him to pass it to me, knowing that I would be the one to give the request to you.”
“Right,” I answer. “So… what do you think?”
“What do I think?” Padraig asks. “I think that Volkov is strong. He’s building something between families. A power base. He’s got Ivan Zorin and Kirill Antonov onside. That’s three powerful organizations working together. My feeling is that maybe he wants to bring you into that.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I ask, finishing off the coffee and motioning over toward the server for another. “What if he wants to lure me to a meeting, slit my throat, and claim my family’s territory as his own.”
“Well then you kill him,” Padraig answers. “Along with Zorin and Antonov too if that’s what it takes.”
“That’s the spirit,” I reply.
I take a moment to consider things. The fact that Viktor Volkov is calling for a meet means one of two things… he either genuinely wants to talk about putting an agreement in place, or he’s going to try and take my head.
Either way, I can’t ignore his request.
And whatever comes of this meeting, I need to do it my way.
The time for grieving is over.
My brothers ruled the family with strategy. I’m going to do things differently.
It’s time to show this motherfucking city what the new Kamedov pakhan is all about…