Chapter 5 Ivan
IVAN
The switchblade becomes an extension of my hand, my thumb pressing the button to make the blade pop out, back in, and out.
It’s unnerving. On purpose. The three men in front of me shuffle on their feet, but their legs are chained, so it’s more like they are shifting their weight from one foot to the other as their eyes track my every move. Still nervous as fuck. Rightly so.
Most probably begging for it to be over.
These boys have fucked with me long enough, and these are the last dregs of the mess from July that I still need to sweep off deck.
To think they plotted to get away like this.
A pity I can’t send them as a message to their operator.
Still, sometimes, no news is bad news, and them not arriving at their destination will be message enough.
I glance to my right and left where Kostya and Igor are on standby with automatic rifles. I like things more old school. A slit to the throat is much more likely to bleed out than a bullet wound. I’m not taking those chances. These guys must be double dead by the time I’m done with them.
Flick in, flick out. Flick in, flick out.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
“Want to tell me who your operator is?” These men are beyond talking, yet it’s worth one last try. They’ve been asked nicely, and clues are leading to suspicions, but I’d like to have a name.
“Chertnikov?” I push when nobody says a thing. Right. It’s hard to speak when you don’t have a tongue. We threw those overboard a few minutes ago, to attract the right crowd. Sharks are always on standby when blood hits the water, and tonight, they’re going to feast.
With a sigh, I step up to the first man.
This is the problem with such a layered operation.
These are just footmen who only know who is in charge in the tier right above them.
There are so many layers, I’d have to hack my way through all of them to learn who their ringleader and ultimately the Pakhan behind this shitshow is.
It tracks to Chertnikov, but time will tell.
I grunt another sigh. It’s almost midnight, and I’d like to get the fuck home before my girls wake up. They’re with Yuri, and I’d hate for them to wake up and I’m not there. Not when they so recently returned home.
“You know what the benefit of being a stowaway is?” I ask, tired of the whole business.
Grunts.
“No records. No paperwork. Nothing.” Flick in, flick out. “Nobody misses you when you don’t arrive on the other side. Nobody asks questions.”
The reek of more piss fills the air. I thought they’d be done pissing themselves. Okay, it’s time. No more ceremony. Slick. I slice one throat, then the next, and the next. Three men crumple where they’ve been swaying, blood spewing and heading for the deck drains.
“Toss them.”
Kostya and Igor hook their guns over their chests.
It’s heavy work, what with the chains around the dead men’s legs, but they heave one after the other over the deck railing.
Lifeless bodies slump over, hitting the trawler’s sides and ending with a final splash in the ink-black water.
For all that the sea is calm, it’s a frenzy.
Just under the surface, sharks smell blood and hunt, without mercy.
My work’s done here. We turn and cross the deck to where the captain is steering in the wheelhouse, turning a blind eye.
He is, after all, on my payroll. We, the Petrov Bratva, have a long legacy with the sea.
Our main business is in shipping, imports from and exports to Russia around sanctions, but none of us forget our humble roots in fishing in the Barents Sea.
I salute the captain, and he salutes back. As soon as we leave, this trawler goes back to being a working fishing vessel, washing the last remnants of tonight’s business away.
First, we’ll head back to the cruising yacht drifting just off Long Island, made to look like some rich fucker is spending a night out with his mistress on the water. We’ll dinghy between the two and motor back to shore just before daybreak.
It’s been finely planned and perfectly executed, but nowadays, I can’t be too careful.
It’s one of the many lessons I’ve learned these past months.
Someone’s trying to move in on us, trying to take over, treading over our territory and lines.
Not on my watch. You touch what’s mine, you die.
More fuckers will meet this fate in the coming days.
I won’t rest until I have the top culprit under my boot.
The next afternoon, as I walk into my home office, I immediately spot the brown envelope.
With a curse, I reach for my switchblade and wedge it under the glued flap to cut it open.
The last time I had a brown one exactly like this waiting for me, it wasn’t content I expected.
Or wanted to explore. Or cared to ever see again.
Lately, my life has been a series of fucking letter-sized envelopes—doctors’ reports, updates from the rehab center, and now this. The unmarked brown envelope. It’s never good news. I sigh as I slump in my chair, sounding like an old man. I’m only thirty-seven, for fuck’s sake.
I peek inside, hoping for white paper printouts of writing, but my jaw clenches.
Photos. Sigh. Not a-fucking-gain.
I dealt with this earlier in the year. Had it scrubbed off the internet by some hacker who advertised on the dark net.
I pull the two photos out of the envelope.
The glossy paper will hold no fingerprints.
There won’t be a trace of evidence to lead me to the fucker spreading this shit on the internet.
Of all the things I’ve been through this year, this is one of the lows haunting me the most. To see the person I promised to protect whatever it takes exploited like this.
Let’s just say, a surprise delivery of nude photos of your sister is never the way to end a day. I give the two images a cursory once-over only to make sure they’re not the same as the first batch—they’re not—drop them onto the desk, lean back, and drag my hands through my hair.
For a long moment, I just sit like this, hands fisting the short dark strands, breathing deep as I try to get a grip.
My mind wanders, and instead of calming down, my pulse spikes.
This office used to be my sanctuary, but it’s become haunted by every decision I made this past year. I’m suffocating in them.
Far off, high-pitched voices sound. Feet patter, and then without a knock or any more warning, my office door swings open. I have just enough time to flip Milana’s images over before my two princesses in light pink tutus bundle through the door.
“Papa!” they squeal in unison as the grandfather clock in the hall starts to chime five o’clock.
I push away from my desk to make space and to get distance between my young, innocent daughters and the filth currently spread face-down over my keyboard.
“Katya,” I murmur, opening my arms wide and catching my three-year-old as she throws herself at my leg to clamber on. “Irisha.”
I laugh as my four-year-old gets on my knee, ever conscious of her little sister and that she should make space for her first. That she should never hurt her. That she and Katya are the most precious beings in the world and I love them both equally, always and forever.
I’d never known this intense need to protect someone—or that I was able to love unconditionally—until I held Irisha in my arms. When Katya came along, I worried I wouldn’t have the same capacity to love her like I loved Irisha.
Then she was born, and the interior walls in my heart shifted and rearranged themselves to make space for her.
I am so thankful they’re back home with me. I heave Katya up to sit properly and spin my office chair at the same time, and they squeal with delight. We do a few turns, until Yuri, my right-hand man, stops in the doorway.
Fuck. He seems harassed and I get it. It’s not his place, or right at his age, to be looking after energetic little kids. I need a long-term solution, which is basically the definition of a wife.
If something has become crystal clear over the past months, it’s that I need a wife to be a mother to my girls.
A proper wife to give me sons, one I’ve vetted this time round.
I have to strengthen the Petrov line, and I need to do so quickly.
I need to secure my girls’ future by ensuring they have brothers who will look after them when I’m no longer here.
I’ll never be entitled to more than an arranged marriage, a simple business arrangement to strengthen the Petrov Bratva’s alliances, but a man should leave this world in peace, knowing things are taken care of.
With the thought brewing, I hug my girls close and press kisses to their golden-curled heads, one, two, and then ever faster with so many kisses as I start to tickle them and they squirm with giggles.
With a happy sigh, I pull them close as I stand, shrug them up, arms supporting them as they hug my hips with their legs. They cling to me, safe for another day.
With closed eyes, I inhale a deep breath of childhood, the sweetness of little girls who spent the whole day playing, napping, and then getting dirty, pieces of leaves and grass stuck in their tutus’ netting, their legs dangling tired with dirt on their knees and feet.
They’re home. They are actually home, and I’m holding them close.
Never again. I never again want to have a year like this past one.
“Let’s go see what’s for dinner,” I say, stepping around the desk, away from the photos, the work I haven’t finished, and the general shitshow that’s become my life.
So far, I’ve managed to hold it together, but only just. It would seem the story we’ve sold to the rest of the Bratva is holding the fort.
The Pakhan has retired and moved to Hawai'i with his wife. As his son, I’m the new Pakhan of the New York and New Jersey Bratva.
The image is established, but it’s like a flimsy piece of paper haphazardly stuck behind a windshield wiper.
Just one gust, just one swipe, and I’m a fucking goner.
And with it the rest of my world.
Katya’s grubby hand tugs at my collar as she holds on. Irisha is slip-sliding as she’s bigger, but I hold on for dear life.
“How was your day, malyshki?”
“The grass was wet,” Katya says.
Her ballet stockings are not only crusted with dirt, but also wet to her feet. Right. The dance studio is in the far corner of the property, and they must have rushed across to the house in the rain. Good thing it’s bath time.
“That happens when it rains, malyshka,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to her chubby cheek. “And how was your ballet lesson?”
“Fun.” Irisha yawns and nudges her head into my neck.
“Good.”
They are sleeping better, but it’s been a battle.
Too much upheaval, too much change in a short time, and too much uncertainty.
They need routine, and that’s the one thing I’m struggling with on top of everything I’m juggling.
I’m going to have to figure out a way to stabilize this rocking boat, and soon.
A wife would do the trick nicely. Sons are a slow solution, but one I have to start working on. I need to find something else to tide us over.
As I stride into the kitchen, my heart squeezes when Milana looks up from where she’s waiting for the kettle to boil.
Those fucking photos. I bet she still won’t tell me who took them.
I don’t blame her. It’s probably someone from the outside, a fellow student from Juilliard who hasn’t realized he’s messing with the wrong people yet.
For all I know, there was more than one person in the room.
Killing civilians isn’t in the cards, but sometimes, it’s called for.
Especially when there’s more pressing shit to deal with.
I don’t want to tell her about this new package and the attempt to blackmail her.
Not when she has this hollow look in her eyes.
Not with the gaunt shape of her that is slowly killing me, too.
It’s as if the months we’ve been separated have plowed too deep, ripped us apart in ways I didn’t foresee when I made the decisions I did.
“What’s for dinner?” I ask, forcing myself to act normal and hoping she’ll join us for a change.
She shrugs. “A chicken and broccoli bake.”
“Stay? Eat with us, please,” I ask her as the girls slide down my legs and I settle them on their feet.
They don’t let go, though, and cling to me.
Neither of them chirps a word. Even the easy camaraderie we had between the four of us before I forced Milana to go hide out in Russia is gone.
Before I shipped my girls off to a destination I still haven’t disclosed to anybody, in case I need to use it again.
The kettle hasn’t boiled, but Milana picks it up and pours water into the mug. “I’m battling a really hard piece right now. Maybe tomorrow night.”
With that, she walks out toward the corridor leading to the other side of the house, leaving a faint trail of peppermint from her tea in her wake. To her sanctuary. The music room with its antique Steinway and soundproof walls.
My beautiful, tortured, musical genius of a little sister. I bet she wouldn’t want to touch any of those ivory keys if she knew whose blood had spilled on them.