Chapter 17
EVGENY
“We can’t get a handle on them.”
The men across the table trade glances, and the speaker licks his lips, nervous.
Three hours ago, this C-suite hosted Kucher Enterprises’ executive board as we strategized to clinch the development contract with the city. We were so close I could taste it.
Then the news hit. Sokolinaya thugs ambushed two of my men outside a deli. One is dead, and the other is in the hospital. This time, a stray shot hit a civilian, stable but critical, and there’s no way to know whose gun fired it.
Now, Kucherov men have replaced the executive board, and anger and unease hang thick in the air.
“Why can’t we get a handle on them? How does he always know where we are and what we’re doing? Is he tracking us somehow?”
“All of us?” one echoes faintly.
The man falls quiet under my glare and drops his gaze.
“They are a second-rate group. Thugs, all of them, without any loyalty to the code, including Tsepov himself. Why can’t we put an end to this?”
The men around the table flinch when my fist slams into the tabletop. My voice rises with each word until it’s a roar.
“They’re using guerrilla tactics,” Vasya grumbles beside me. “How are we supposed to combat that?”
“So you’re telling me there’s no planning behind the attacks? Nothing we can track? These men have randomly found our men six times and managed to take advantage of six straight ‘coincidences’?”
Silence greets me, and no one will meet my eyes.
From the corner of my eye, I see the door open and my assistant lean in. Beside me, Dmitri rises to meet her, letting me focus on the problem at hand.
“I want an answer. Now!”
Voices spring up in the fading echo of my fist hitting the table again, a cacophony of ideas, frustrations, and finger-pointing. I’m about to yell for quiet when Dmitri’s shadow falls over me.
“Someone is on the phone for you,” he murmurs for my ears alone.
The look I give him could melt glass. “Are you really interrupting me right now with a call?”
“It’s Eva.”
“Eva?” I echo. “How did she get this number?”
“I gave it to her. In case she needs anything. But I told her not to call unless it’s an emergency.”
“Then why the hell is she calling? Why didn’t Ana tell her I was unavailable? This is not the time, Dmitri.”
People are starting to look our way. Others are whispering, trying to guess what my second is telling me.
“She won’t say, but Ana says she sounds upset.”
I glance at my assistant and see her mouth pinched into a thin, worried line.
“Damn it,” I hiss under my breath, hating that my first instinct is to run for the phone. My instinct should be to stay here and ensure we have a plan to deal with Tsepov and the Sokolinaya Bratva.
This is what I was afraid of. I cannot afford anything distracting me from my duties as pakhan. But I won’t be able to concentrate when I know Eva is upset and on the phone.
“Fuck!”
The room goes silent as I shove to my feet so fast the chair tips back, every eye on me.
“Find a fucking solution,” I snap and stalk from the room.
Ana hands me the phone and steps away quickly to avoid the blast of my temper.
“Why the fuck are you calling me at work?”
My question comes out harsh. I’m already angry, and now I’m furious with myself for putting Eva before Bratva business.
“I just don’t know who else to call. If I call the police, they’ll arrest Jordan, too. He already has a prior, and if they arrest him again, I don’t know what’s going to happen—”
Eva’s words pour through the line in a tumbling, breathless rush, each one running into the next.
“They’re—” Something crashes in the background, and Eva gasps at the same time a young voice cries out in fear.
“Eva, what’s going on?” Concern replaces anger in an instant and only grows when I don’t get an immediate answer. “Eva? Eva, answer me. What’s going on?”
“Jordan’s in trouble, and Katie’s with him. Those guys are back, and they’re here for Jordan. They’re trying to break in. We locked the door, but now we can’t get out, and they’re prowling around outside. They just threw a rock through the window.” She sucks in a deep breath. “Evgeny, I’m scared.”
My response is instant and ferocious, triggered by her words and the fear in her voice.
“I’m coming.” The words are out before I’ve thought them.
“Boss?”
Dmitri and Vasya are waiting for me as I slam the phone down, and their set expressions tell me they know something is wrong.
“I have to go. Dmitri, tie up the meeting. I want answers to the problem by the time I return. Vasya, meet me at the address I send you.”
I can feel the eyes of the vory behind me as I all but run to the elevator. But the only thing I can think of is getting to Eva, making sure she’s safe, and punishing whoever thinks they can mount an assault against her.
If they harm a hair on her head, they will pay. I’ll tear up the world to make sure of it.
No one is on the street outside the bookstore when I pull up. No one wants to get involved or call the cops.
My heart is pounding, and it only hammers harder when I see the door standing open and the wood around the lock splintered. It’s a reaction utterly foreign to me. I’m used to being calm, collected, my anger focused and powerful. Anxiety is not something I can afford in my world.
The worry doesn’t ease until my gaze lands on the figure I’m looking for.
Eva is pressed into a corner behind the register, holding a girl tight to shield her. She glares in defiance at the two men wrecking the bookstore, my brave wildcat.
One of the big picture windows is shattered, and through it, I can see the two men throwing furniture and ripping books. Their shouts reach my ears before the door closes behind me. One hurls a chair through a display, sending books flying.
“I fucking told you, Volkova,” the other shouts. “I fucking told you to pay up. I warned you there would be consequences.”
He starts toward Eva, and the girl, who I assume is Katie, squeals and buries her face in Eva’s chest. Eva’s eyes narrow, but I can see her naked fear, too. She hauls Katie closer and backs away until her back hits the wall. They’re trapped, and I see the menace in the guy’s movements.
I also see a fresh bruise on Eva’s cheek, black and blue blooming beneath bright red, and a streak of blood dripping down her face.
My world explodes into a red fog, narrowing my vision until all I see are the two men. Tsepov’s men.
At the edge of my vision, I see Vasya’s car pulling up, but I don’t wait for his backup.
I roar a challenge as I tear into the bookstore, catching Tsepov’s goons off guard.
Their eyes widen, but they have no time to move before I throw one against the wall and grab the other by the throat, driving him back into a bookshelf as my fist slams into his face and then his stomach.
Air rushes from the guy’s lungs with a satisfying grunt, and he stumbles back as I let him go, blood pouring from his broken nose.
My smile feels feral, blood and anger pounding through me, flooding me with strength.
I start for the man again, but pain blossoms in my side. The one I threw aside managed to jab me in the kidney. I spin on my heel and barely manage to block a second blow. We’re squaring up when Vasya steps in and wrenches him into a headlock.
Trusting Vasya to handle his man, I turn to find the first of Tsepov’s goons has regained his feet, and he’s lurching toward Eva and Katie, whose sobs are muffled by Eva’s sweatshirt.
He’s going to try to grab them and force my hand.
The red haze swallows my vision once more, and I’m on him again in the next breath.
We struggle for a moment before I slam him back into the same bookcase with a hard hook to his jaw.
He shakes his head, finds his balance, and drops low to tackle me, but I step in, my fist connecting with a solid thunk to his gut, and the air flies out of him again with a whoosh.
I catch him by his collar as he falls and hurl him back into the bookcase, the back of his head hitting the solid wood with a hollow report.
“You think you can go after what’s mine?” I snarl, the quiet words even more menacing than if I had yelled them.
The man, still gasping, tries to scramble away, but I grab him again and force his head into the wood once more. When he pulls away, blood spills down his cheek from a gash on his forehead.
“The kid owes—” the man gasps.
“You think I give a fuck about that?” I lean close enough to feel the guy’s ragged breathing and see the fear in his eyes at my words and at my scars. “Leave what is mine alone, or you will beg for death by the time I’m done with you.”
Mine.
The word resonates through me, mixing with the anger and adrenaline, the throbbing pain in my side and my fists, the fury that someone threatened Eva and her family.
“Tell Tsepov to back the fuck off and stay away, or I’m coming after him myself.”
Gathering the fabric of the man’s shirt, I yank him around and throw him toward the door. He stumbles, falls, regains his footing, and sprints out the door.
The goon Vasya took down stumbles after. His eyes are glazed, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and flooding from a gash over his eye. I can see the bruises around his neck as he staggers out.
“Low-level thugs,” I mutter as Vasya stands beside me. Aside from his hair falling over his forehead, he looks like he just stepped out of the pages of a men’s magazine. “He should have sent something more challenging if he wanted to defy me.”
“They weren’t for you. They were for him.”
Vasya jerks his head at the kid cowering in the corner. He’s in his late teens or early twenties and looks too much like Eva to be anyone but her brother. He watches me with wild eyes.
“He didn’t know this bookstore had any connection to you. Now he does.”
The warning and Vasya’s blue eyes hit me at once. I’ve made an error, let my feelings for Eva overcome my judgment, and revealed a weakness my enemy can exploit.
I didn’t just send Kucherov men to protect the bookstore, either. I came myself.
Fuck.
“Thank you for coming, brother,” I say, instead of dwelling on what could be a deadly mistake. “You were there when I needed you today. As you always are.”
Vasya starts to say something, then stops, his eyes widening as though my thanks surprise him. His mouth opens, then closes, then opens again as he takes a breath to speak.
“Evgeny.”
My name pulls me from whatever Vasya is about to say, and I turn to find Eva standing with her arms folded tight across her middle. She watches me with eyes that gleam suspiciously, her lips are pressed so tightly together they’re white.
Words leap to my tongue to ask if she’s all right, if she’s hurt anywhere other than her head, if Tsepov’s men did anything to her or Katie or her brother.
Instead, I open my arms and enfold her as she runs into them. As she runs to me.
Mine.
The word resonates through my bones and takes up residence as a truth I can’t deny any longer.