Chapter 30 - Rurik
Last week, I was told things were settling down here in LA. Aleks and Dan had assured me I should extend my vacation. They even made jokes, still not completely convinced that I was telling the truth about Clem’s and my relationship being something that was going to last.
With everything less hectic at home, I had planned to ease them into what Konstantin was up to in Tokyo.
Despite his chaotic ways of dealing with the business he had set up, it was thriving and making money hand over fist. It might be a good idea to get involved and even invite him to LA, both for his own good and to confuse the Yakuza, and for us.
But the wheels of the plane were barely back on US soil when my phone was flooded with messages of a new attack.
For once, I was glad that Clem was preoccupied with whatever had upset her before takeoff, because she didn’t seem to notice I barely had time to get her to the office before half my American relatives were blowing up my phone.
The attacks had petered out, barely a few scuffles since I left, but now they were back in full swing. Almost as if whoever was behind this new war had been waiting for my return. This new attack was huge and too close to home for me to ignore.
My biggest warehouse was raided shortly before dawn, with fire damage to the building and the assholes making off with a lot of goods that Gavrik Imports stored there, including some that weren’t completely legal.
Worst of all, a guard was killed. The man was just trying to make a living, not even in the Bratva, and had seen the fire from the gated entrance to the warehouse park.
Trying to help had gotten him killed, and now his kids didn’t have a father.
No amount of money could fix that, though, of course, I would try.
My main worry at the moment was the fact that our enemy now had a shitload of guns that could be traced back to my family.
That could be bad on a lot of levels, not the least of having crimes we didn’t commit traced back to us.
We had a copacetic relationship with the cops, keeping the dirty ones happy with regular bribes and staying out of the way of the honest ones.
A major crime spree using Russian guns would throw the detectives who’d been trying to nail Aleks and my cousins for years into a frenzy.
It was imperative that I go after the culprits and get my stuff back before that happened. Gavril was waiting for me at the warehouse with Dan and Lev. Some of my other cousins were already out pounding the pavement, but there was no good news yet.
Gavril was as furious as I was, ready to call in some of his Collective buddies to widen the net.
“Let’s keep this in-house for now,” Dan said, almost causing a new rift when Gavril accused him of not fully trusting his guys.
“Knock it off,” I said, stepping between them. “There’s no reason to pull anyone away yet, that’s all Dan’s saying.”
Dan didn’t jump to agree, but I kept the fight from breaking out by asking why the hell we were milling around the burned-out warehouse when we should have been out searching. We needed to focus any aggression on the thugs who thought they could stand up to the Fokins and continue breathing.
It was time to teach them who was in charge of this city.
Gavril jumped in my car with me, and with no real information yet, I headed toward the last known location of one of the street gang’s high-ranking members.
“How was the honeymoon?” he asked, putting a little bit too much sarcastic emphasis on the word.
“Is that important right now?” I was as pissed off as he was, and not just because of the guns or losing thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise. I would have much rather been having lunch with my wife, damn it.
He shrugged. “What else are we going to talk about?”
“How’s Lilia?” I asked, staring at the traffic we were about to get stuck in as soon as I turned onto the freeway. See how he liked me prying into his personal life.
“You know how sensitive she is. She’s worried about you and Clementine,” he said instantly. “And I don’t like her to be worried.”
“Are you trying to say you know her better than I do?” I snapped. “Why the hell would she be worried?”
“Calm the fuck down,” he said without any edge to his voice. “It’s bad enough your brother is still on my case and doesn’t trust me.”
“He does,” I sighed. “We’re all just under a lot of pressure.”
“I’m part of that ‘we’, pal,” he said. “That’s my stuff they stole, and when my wife is upset about her favorite cousin getting his heart broken, that’s my problem, too.”
I turned to him, not needing to watch the road since we weren’t moving. “Why does she think I’ll get my heart broken?”
“Well, you tricked your wife into marrying you for one thing,” he said.
“You’re one to talk,” I snapped.
“She thinks you’re in deeper than Clem,” he said as if I hadn’t reminded him about his own strange beginning with Lilia. “She’s afraid she’s only going along because she needs her job.”
I might have thought that too, before Tokyo, and I shrugged that off, refusing to cheapen the soul-deep connection we made in that amazing city by trying to explain it to him.
“And she thinks she’ll bolt when she finds out the truth of who you are,” he continued.
Fucking hell. So Lilia had this laundry list of reasons that Clem and I were destined to fail. And I didn’t have an answer for that one. Clem was going to go ballistic at the very least, and at the most, she’d take off into the night and try to run.
If that happened, I’d find her and bring her back. She was mine.
But I needed her to want to be mine. And for that, I had to keep my Bratva roots a secret a little while longer, until she was all in and nothing could tear us apart. The secrecy sucked, but losing her wasn’t an option.
Before I could promise Gavril I’d find a way to put Lilia’s mind at ease, he got a call from Aleks.
We had a location, the complete opposite direction of the one we were heading.
That and the fact that we were stuck in traffic with the nearest exit in sight but completely out of reach in the gridlock had us cracking up out of pure frustration.
“You know what to do,” he said, nodding at the slight gap between cars.
Maneuvering through it, I bounced onto the shoulder, kicking up dust as I sped toward the exit amidst honking horns. We forgot about relationship drama, shifting into ass-kicking gear as easily as I had freed us from traffic.
We ended up finding the thieves, wasting their time drinking and partying over the stacks of stolen guns.
From there, we followed the trail to our other missing goods and took out a few especially annoying members of this so-called gang that still pretended there was no one above them pulling the strings.
The ones we handed over to Lev for interrogation might have a different story after a few hours or days in one of the Fokins’ famous torture sheds.
The whole thing was resolved as best it could be for the time, but it all took a whole lot longer than I would have liked.
Not only my lunch plans with Clem were ruined, but dinner was out of the question as well.
I’d be lucky to get home in time to kiss her goodnight if she were even still speaking to me after the way I raced out of there without a single explanation.
I left Gavril to find his own way home and took off, thoroughly pissed to find all the lights off when I pulled up the long driveway and parked in front of the house. Hurrying inside, I took the steps three at a time. She might only be pretending to be asleep, and I could still salvage the evening.
The house was as quiet as a tomb, and she wasn’t in our bed.
Not in the guest room she used to call her own, either.
I called down to the gate guard asking when she left, and he informed me she hadn’t been home.
We went to the office straight from the airport that morning, and I’d left her without a car, but that never stopped her from making her way home whenever I had a late meeting.
“Gavrik Imports,” she answered briskly, though sounding absolutely beat, when I called her desk phone.
“What the hell are you still doing at the office?” I asked. It was well past office hours.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be coming back to brief me on your… meetings,” she answered, the slight pause the only indication she was the least bit upset.
A consummate professional, waiting for her boss before taking off. I didn’t know whether to smile and laugh or bellow at her. Just hearing her voice put me in a better mood, washing away the stress of the day. Now it was time for me to do the same for her,
“I’ll brief you as soon as you get your ass home,” I said. “Your favorite takeout will be waiting.”
“General Yangs?” she asked, the stiff professionalism fading from her voice.
“Extra dumplings,” I answered, ending the call when I heard her giggle.
She was my wife again, not just my assistant. And it was well past time I treated her like the wife I wanted her to be. A real one. That meant telling her the truth about my family. About myself. If I wanted us to last, I had to be totally transparent. She deserved nothing less.
But she also deserved some pampering after toiling away at the office all day, after a long flight, and staying late on top of it all. Tonight, she deserved to relax and get some good sleep, and finding out she was a Bratva bride wouldn’t be conducive to any kind of slumber.
I’d tell her tomorrow. Maybe the day after. Soon.