Chapter 3 - Daniil
Back in LA, I got back to work on trying to figure out what was going on with the Collective, the latest enemy threatening everything my American cousins had been working to build for years.
Mat, Rurik and I, along with Masha and her sister Lilia had come over for a visit from Moscow about a year ago.
We’d always loved American culture, and when we saw that we could be useful, we decided to stay.
My own organization in Moscow, as well as Mat’s territory, was being run by our father, who encouraged us to help out over here, along with possibly setting up our own businesses.
We were so well established in Russia that no one dared mess with us too much, until the Collective started rearing their many, ugly heads, both over there, and in LA.
I was sick of it, and thought my cousins were, too, but once I returned, everyone was obsessed with getting ready for the big family holiday in Aspen.
“What the hell?” I asked Aleks, not convinced this was his idea.
“We need a break,” he said. “It’s Christmas time, things are quiet. Why not?”
Aleks was the eldest of all the cousins in our big family, and he was the leader of the American faction, so he should have already known why not.
I was about to lay it all out when his daughter ran into the room, throwing her arms around his neck.
“Who are you talking to, Papa?” she asked, peering under his arm at the screen.
I waved at her and she squealed, scrambling up onto Aleks’s lap.
“Privet, Alina,” I said.
She answered my greeting in Russian then was too excited to continue in her second language, a stream of information and questions flowing out of her. “Did you know there’s going to be snow? And ice skating right in front of where we’re staying? I got a new hat and mittens and—”
“You need to take her to Moscow in the winter instead of the summer, Aleks,” I interrupted. “She wouldn’t be so excited about snow.”
Alina jumped right back in. “I’m going to take snowboarding lessons, did you know that, Dan?” she asked. She was so damn cute when she asked me the next question, I started to melt faster than snow in LA. “You’re going to watch me, aren’t you? Will you take a lesson with me?”
Aleks looked triumphant as I squirmed. Just tell my only daughter who adores you that you’re not going to be there for Christmas, his face seemed to say.
Damn it.
“Should I book you in?” he asked.
“Artie says he can beat me in a sled race, but he’s wrong,” Alina continued, referring to her little cousin, Lev’s son, not CJ’s dog. “You’re betting on me, right?”
“You’ll be there to bet on her, won’t you?” Aleks asked, grinning. He may as well have been holding a gun to my head. Alina’s hopeful smile was more difficult to refuse than any threat.
“Go ahead and add me,” I sighed, smiling at Alina and promising I’d watch her go snowboarding, but that I’d have to see her in action for the sled race since I took betting very seriously.
She cracked up and ran out of the room, her six-year-old energy not letting her waste anymore precious time on a call.
“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint her or the rest of the kids,” Aleks said.
He knew all my cousins’ children had me wrapped around their little fingers. If Alina didn’t convince me, Lev would have called next to get Artie on the phone, begging me to roast marshmallows or something with him, all the way down to our newest member, Nat’s newborn son Aleksander, cooing at me.
Once I ended the call with him, I looked up the resort online.
It was a huge old lodge that was well off the beaten path, and it would just be the family for the weeks we were there since there were so many of us.
As nice as it looked, I’d be climbing the walls once the sun went down.
However, the city wasn’t too far of a drive down the mountain and there were plenty of more grownup things to do at the resorts and clubs there.
I’d suck it up and spend the days with my family and then go prowling for real fun at night.
I had been compiling a list of companies that I suspected were tied to the Collective. I could research them just as easily in Aspen as in LA, in the hopes of finding out who was running the California chapter of the multinational organization that had been hounding us.
It had been little more than a month since we took out the Santinos who were responsible for almost killing Masha, but the Collective was like a freaking unbeatable video game, continuously spawning dangerous new bosses.
It pissed me off, but I was good at games.
I wouldn’t stop until they were eradicated, and not just from my newfound home here in California, but in Russia, where they’d been annoying my family.
They had to go, vacation or no vacation.
But damn it, I only had a few days to get ready for this trip.
I still considered it a waste of time, but now that I’d promised my littlest cousins I’d be there, I had to show up and show out.
I had eight of them to buy Christmas presents for, and there was no way I was letting Rurik, who was certainly going to be better prepared than me, or Mat, who had CJ to help him choose, have better gifts under the tree.
It didn’t take long to find an online toy shop and a shred of holiday spirit might have started sneaking in a little as I began filling the cart.