Chapter 2 - Anatoli
I loved Mexico. My villa was luxurious, with a view of the ocean and just a stone’s throw from a welcoming cantina with live music. Nobody asked questions, nobody interfered. Why should they? I was just another rich foreigner who was happy to spend his cash in the area.
It was a great spot for a vacation, and I actually made a lot of headway on my most recent computer program, which was on the verge of being ready to release and make millions if I could ever stop tweaking it.
That was what three months of unlimited free time did, though, and I was sick of biding my time in the blazing sun.
Even the sound of the waves crashing on the beach and the gentle breezes rustling through the palm trees was beginning to get on my nerves.
My men had been scattered long enough, left to their own devices for too long. I couldn’t even find some of them anymore and had to accept they might be gone for good.
It was going to be hell finding new people I could trust, and there was a lot of work ahead of me, not just regaining what I’d lost in California, but with everything that was going on back home in Volgograd.
Running my own business in the motherland was a matter of a few phone calls and video conferences, lucrative but low-maintenance.
Unlike the people I’d gathered around me in Silicon Valley when I was slowly starting a new empire up there, my crew in Russia was like machines.
Also, unlike the people who ran the family business, the one I kept out of since my brother took over and I went my own way.
The one that was currently in turmoil and on the brink of imploding since Konstantin finally met his demise at the hands of one of his many enemies.
I hadn’t spoken to my older brother in at least ten years when the news got to me a few weeks ago.
I couldn’t remember our final conversation, but I was sure we disagreed, as we’d been doing our entire lives.
Like almost everyone else who knew him, I didn’t mourn his passing.
Our uncles had been passive in the running of the territory that their eldest brother, our venerated father, had built.
Watching Konstantin do everything he could to run it into the ground, all while getting no backup from my uncles, who for some reason couldn’t see what was happening, was too much for me.
I set up shop on my own with some of our guys who also didn’t agree with Konstantin’s heavy hand.
After only a few years, that was running like clockwork, and since Volgorgrad wasn’t a huge metropolis, I decided to try my hand in America.
Things were going great, until they weren’t. A little war with the reigning family in California sent me on this unwanted vacation, and three months later, I was growing antsy in my little paradise.
A call from my Uncle Leonid didn’t help my already sour mood, and I scowled at the cloudless blue sky before stalking inside to take it.
This wasn’t the first call I’d received from him since Konstantin’s funeral, but between him and the other relatives, I was spending more time on the phone with them than I was doing anything else the last few days. Things were going to hell fast in Russia, and they were laying on the guilt.
The problem with that was, I didn’t have any reason to feel guilty.
I’d made my reasons for stepping outside the family fold clear in the beginning, warning them that Konstantin would bring down our respected family name.
It was only luck that there was anything left of our father’s legacy to try to salvage, but the person salvaging it wasn’t going to be me.
“We’ve been tricked and swindled for years by this shipping company, it seems,” Leonid said.
“That should have never been allowed to happen,” I said, the same as I’d told Uncle Miron the day before.
I listened to him complain about a sudden defection of employees going off to a rival faction. Then, about some missing guns. I put the phone on speaker, set it down on my desk, and let him prattle on while I loaded up the latest iteration of my program to run some tests.
“And what about Ava?” Leonid said in a particularly loud voice, dragging me back to the fact that he was still on the line.
“Who’s Ava?” She wasn’t a cousin or an aunt.
“Konstantin’s widow,” he said. “As you know, your brother left no will, and she wants to liquidate everything and use the money to move back to her home in St. Petersburg.”
“Everything?” I laughed. “How are you even entertaining such a notion? Send her off with what their house was worth and keep her under surveillance in case she’s conspiring with any of the men who’ve already jumped ship.”
“This is why we need you here, Anatoli,” he said, voice earnest and plaintive. Almost making me stop rolling my eyes. “It’s time to come home.”
“My home is America now,” I said.
His wavering old man voice hardened to steel. “Ovinkos don’t sit around on the beach when their family needs them. It’s time to admit your little American experiment was a bust. It’s time to come home and make your father proud.”
The words cut, as they were meant to. “This has nothing to do with my father. It was an accident of birth that Konstantin was put in charge. You’ve never been able to admit it—”
“Enough. I won’t hear any of this,” he roared, ending the call.
“You won’t hear the truth,” I said anyway. Or maybe he’d convinced himself differently after all these years.
Like my brother, our father had made the mistake of not having a will in place when he died.
A perfectly robust man in his early fifties dropping dead of a supposed heart attack, only a few days after he confided he was leaving me in charge instead of Konstantin, had never sat right with me, especially after he told me he’d also informed Leonid.
It should have been many more years before we had to face the change in power, and ever since then, I couldn’t bring myself to fully trust that particular uncle.
Now he was on my back to return home and bail him out of a disaster of his own making.
That and the jab about my little American experiment going bust was too much.
The vacation was over. I hated unfinished business and hated even more that my enemies believed I’d been hiding these past months.
I’d help my uncles out as best I could, but long-distance.
Things were not over in California, not by a long shot, and it was time to go back and let that be known.
I would prove it to myself, even more than to my ancient uncles, that I could get my territory back, and more.
It was time to get the jet out of storage and head north, but not too far beyond the border. I wanted to have a little fun with the family that had been making my life hell, so I decided to start my return in Los Angeles, the main hub of the Fokin empire.
It didn’t take much to get myself set up in a flashy hotel, using the same alias I went by when I was building my domain in Silicon Valley.
When tech genius Terrence Hendricks had disappeared three months ago, it was the talk of the town, so I knew as soon as someone recognized me, the news that I was back would spread like wildfire.
I made sure someone would recognize my alter ego by showing up at a small event that was rife with the kind of technical people who’d be shocked by my appearance and pass it on.
It was only going to be a matter of time before the Fokins were after me, but I was only interested in one of them.
The dark-haired beauty who tortured me for a solid week was rarely far from my thoughts.
Not even immersing myself in the code for my program could purge the memories of those intense brown eyes boring into me as she brought on the pain.
The sound of her laughter, not humorous, but taunting, and almost musical, had me ready to lash out every time I recalled it.
Had she actually enjoyed it? Masha Fokin was ice cold and exacting, never wavering, never taking a break.
I had been in some sticky situations before and had taken my licks, but had always managed to slip away fairly easily.
There was always a weak link, but it wasn’t Masha, and the woman was ever present, never letting her guard down.
It took a major setup from the few men I had left on the outside after everything came crashing down in order to break out, but I did, and no matter how many margaritas I enjoyed on the beach or how much work I got done, I couldn’t get past her taunts.
Or the look in her eyes when she inflicted almost unendurable pain.
Those few loyal men had been delighted to find out I was back, and were already on their way to LA, almost as ready as I was to exact revenge. I would be the one doing the taunting now, the one doling out the pain. As soon as she learned I was back and I allowed her to recapture me.