Chapter 16
ROMAN
The fighter on the left catches a hook to the jaw and his mouthguard flies out and hits the canvas in a spray of spit and blood.
The crowd around the ring surges forward in a roar of shouts and chants, and I sit back in my chair with my elbows on the armrests and watch the man stumble into the ropes, trying to get his hands up before the second hook comes.
Yegor drops into the empty chair on my right and stretches his legs out in front of him and crosses his ankles, settling in with his arms folded across his chest. He watches the fight for a full minute without speaking, chewing on a piece of gum, and when the fighter on the left finally gets his guard back up and throws a sloppy counter that misses by six inches, Yegor shakes his head and leans toward me.
"Christ, he's awful. Don’t tell me you're keeping him."
I chuckle and pull a cigar from my inner breast pocket and a lighter from my slacks. "You know me better than that," I tell him as he pulls a cutter from his wallet and holds out his hand. I slap my cigar in his palm, and he snips it and hands it back for me to light.
"That I do," he says. Then he jerks his chin up at the ring again.
"Timur pulled Barkov's background and there's nothing to him, Ro.
" I'd asked him to do some digging and find out what motivated his little attack on my draft meeting.
"I think he was sore about the first meeting being delayed—entitled prick. "
I nod and keep my eyes on the ring where the fighter on the left is backing into the ropes again, dropping his arms lower with each step.
"So he brought a gun because he was angry about being passed over?
" People these days are too sensitive, and I'd never have allowed a man like that on any of my teams, anyway. Too volatile and risky.
"That's all it was." Yegor cracks his knuckles then crosses his arms over his chest. "I dealt with him. He won't be trying it again."
"He's alive?" I lift an eyebrow at him, curious as to his method of punishment. If that were me, that man would be kissing dirt.
Yegor turns his head and looks at me with his eyebrows raised a fraction, which on his face is the equivalent of a grin. "Yeah… He's not comfortable, but he's alive."
The ref steps in and waves the fight off and the crowd surges again, half of them cheering and the other half throwing whatever they have in their hands toward the ring.
Trash litters the mat as the winner raises both gloves.
More cheers erupt as blood from his knuckles runs down his forearms and onto the canvas in fat, dark drops.
Radimir weaves through the crowd from the left side of the room, shouldering past two men who are screaming at each other over a bet, and pulls a chair up beside me and sits down.
He's got a folder tucked inside his jacket and he pulls it out and opens it on his lap, three sheets of paper with printed text that's too small to read in this light.
"Timur sent this over an hour ago," he says, and he angles the folder toward me so I can see the header on the first page. The name at the top is Vera Volkov, printed in bold type. "I read it in the car on the way here and I think you need to hear what's in it before you do anything else tonight."
I lean back in my chair and fold my hands across my chest. "Go ahead."
"About twenty-eight years ago, a woman named Vera Volkov changed her name legally.
Timur dredged it up—Vera Lebedev?" He narrows his eyes at me, and I gesture for him to go on.
"Anyway, within nine months she had married a man named Gennady Petrov.
He was connected, ran a small operation, nothing on the scale of what we're running but enough to live well on. "
He taps the page and lifts both eyebrows at me. So far, all of this resonates with what my brother's already told me.
"They were married six years and she had two daughters with him, Sofi and Sabine, who you've already met. And then Gennady Petrov died of a coronary when the younger of the two girls was just four."
The ring crew moves in with rags and a bucket and starts mopping blood off the canvas, picking up the trash. The crowd settles into a murmur while they wait for the next fight. I listen to Radimir go on, because my focus is now completely on him. Nothing else matters.
"Timur pulled his medical records," Radimir continues, turning the page toward me so I can see the printed rows.
"There's nothing in Petrov's history that points to a heart condition.
No hospitalizations, no medications, no flags.
He was a healthy man who dropped dead in his home, and within months of the funeral, every account he had, every piece of property, the whole operation, all of it funneled into accounts that Timur traced back to names connected to Vera. "
He lets that sit for a moment and flips to the second page, but my wheels are turning now. Either Gennady was a very unlucky man or there's more to the story.
"A few years after Petrov, she married again. A man named Koval this time. He was also in the life, bigger operation than Petrov, more territory, more money. She settled in with him and he adopted both girls legally, which is how Sofi and Sabine became Kovals."
"How long did Koval last?" I ask because we obviously know the man is dead. None of the women have ever brought up the notion that Vera was divorced. And given how her first husband died, I have my suspicions now.
"About eight years." Radimir shakes his head slowly, his thumb tracing a line on the page.
"Eight years of marriage and then he dies of a heart attack.
Same story as Petrov, but it seems she put up with him longer.
Timur found the death records and the medical history doesn't support it either.
No prior conditions, no warning signs. A healthy man who goes to sleep one night and doesn't wake up, and after the burial, the same pattern kicks in.
Money moves, property transfers, accounts get rerouted through shells. "
He flips to the third page and holds it flat on his knee, but now I've got the point.
"A few years after Koval, she brought the girls to Perm. Sofi was about twelve, Sabine was fourteen. That's when she met Anton Radin, and that's when she started using the Koval name as her own, the dead man's name, because by then, there was nobody left to challenge it."
"She has accounts in that name?" I ask, and he nods and continues.
"So she married Radin eleven years ago, and she took her time with him, I guess. Though, not typical of this sort of thing. You'd have thought she'd have moved faster with all of them."
"And then Anton died," I say.
"And then Anton died," Radimir repeats, then says, "But here's where it gets different. Petrov and Koval both went down as natural causes, clean enough on paper. Nobody asked too many questions. But Radin was a gunshot wound, Roman. And it's still under investigation."
The bell rings for the next fight, and two new fighters climb through the ropes. The crowd builds again from the back rows and the noise pushes in from every direction, but it's all behind just white noise now as I zone out and stare at the Kuzin logo on the canvas in the middle of the ring.
"She got sloppy with Anton," Radimir says, leaning closer, "or she got impatient, or someone else pulled the trigger for her. Either way, three husbands in three decades and all three of them are in the ground and she's sitting on top of everything they left behind."
"And what does that make her then, gentlemen?" I grit my teeth and blink some moisture back into my tired eyes.
"Black widow," Yegor says from my right.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and try not to let this push me over the edge.
I've had a pretty decent day, but this takes the cake.
Vera really thought I wouldn't look into her, or maybe she was stupid enough to believe I'd feel sorry for her and take her at face value.
Now I've discovered something that looks very suspect, even if she is entirely innocent—which I don't believe for a second.
And all the pieces are stacking up now.
Radimir closes the folder and slides it back inside his jacket. "That's everything Timur has right now. He's still pulling the financial records apart, tracing the shells, but the trail gets thin the farther back it goes. He says he'll have more soon."
"Tell him I need it fast," I grumble. "I have thinking to do, and with this gala coming up, I need a plan."
Radimir nods and stands and pushes his chair back and disappears into the crowd. The fighters in the ring throw their first punches, and the noise swells and the overhead lights press down on me as I stand and straighten my tie.
"I need some air and to think… Get the car," I tell Yegor, and he nods and moves straight toward the exit.
Vera Koval thinks she can get away with murder and she's wrong.
And my guess is that the reason she's pushing her prissy offspring toward me is that things didn’t work out so well for her with Anton.
He put his fortune in a trust for his biological daughter, and when Mila didn't get killed for what she did to me, Vera had to scramble.
Knowing she could never win over a new younger man at her age, she's pushing her daughters to do the same thing in hopes to kill me too and take my empire.
Well, Mrs. Koval-Radin, I have some news for you.
I'm not falling for it.
I turn and follow the path Yegor took toward the door, wheels already spinning. I'm going to catch this spider under a glass and when I do, I'll put her on display for the entire world.
Vera won't know what hit her.