Chapter 7 Ivan
IVAN
“We’ve found Sergei.”
It’s past midnight, but I’ve been bulldozing through some work I could no longer ignore.
“Alive?” I ask as Yuri steps into my office.
“Yep. Hunted him down and found him hiding like a fucking rat in the shipyards.” His mouth pulls into a thin line. “He’s…hanging on.”
But not for long.
I pluck out the switchblade from where I’ve stabbed it into the desk, leaving my mark as my father had done before me.
Flick in. Flick out. The sharp blade blinks in the light.
I meet Yuri’s one eye. The other is gone, the mutilation hidden behind a black eyepatch.
Yep, I’m not the only one who walks around with battle scars.
Yuri is one of the few men I still trust, his loyalty proven time and time again.
He is also one of a handful of people I allow around my girls, because he watched Milana and me grow up—his role as sovetnik in our father’s Bratva cemented him into our lives.
Yuri’s eye drops to the blade and we’re of the same mind. There will be no gracious death for Sergei in the cards tonight. No. Sergei will be alive for as long as it takes.
I’ve been too soft. Too gentle. It’s time to up my game. Until now, Sergei was the last man unaccounted for, and I’m no longer fucking around.
“He’s at the barracks?”
“Yep. We hauled him in.”
Flick in. I pocket the knife. All I need is a blade and time. Sergei will talk, just because he knows I’ll keep him alive and in excruciating pain for months. Denying someone the pleasure of death is as much torture as any other archaic method.
I toggle the tabs on my computer screen to the security footage from the treasure chest. Both girls are asleep. I click to the next screen. The security gate is locked. I stand slowly, steeling myself. “Get Kostya to guard the gate.”
Yuri nods. He reaches for his phone and makes a quick call, before saying, “I have more news.”
“What?”
He slides his phone back into his pocket. “You might want to sit down for this.”
Blyad’. What the fuck now?
“News on the street is Boryslav got taken by Il Consiglio and hasn’t been seen since.”
The fuck? Il Consiglio? I fall back into my chair. The fucking Mafia? “Is he dead?”
“It’s been long enough,” Yuri says as he sits. “Apparently, there was an altercation of sorts involving a woman from Italy. A stolen bride.”
I hitch my brows, ignoring the disgust crawling over my skin. Human fucking trafficking.
Yuri nods, reading my mind. “By the sound of it, just the usual. Rival mafiosi going at each other, except this is our local Boston friends getting tangled with a contingent from Italy.”
Fuck. If they are fighting across continents, it’s going to get messy. It echoes my own damn situation. “This has to do with Don Scalera’s death?”
Yuri hitches his shoulders. “Probably. The old Don might have died naturally, had a massive funeral with omerta swearing to the new Don and all that fanfare, but you know how it is. Power shifts are destabilizing.”
Indeed. There’s one universal truth for you: time stands still for nobody, and succession is a bitch. Women come into the mix and business gets real dirty real quick.
I pluck my blade out again. Flick out. Flick in. Flick out. Yuri looks on, unfazed.
“Still don’t see how this led to Boryslav going MIA.”
“Along with five of our other men, as if we could spare them.” Yuri sighs.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t have enough intel yet to sketch out the whole picture, but clearly things went sour.
Local mobster steals bride from mobster in Italy, Italian mobster comes to America to fuck him over and take his lady back, except she’s already married the local mobster, and the private jet the Italian mobster came into the country with returned without any human cargo. ”
No human cargo? That’s a lot of bodies piling up. Thank God that’s not my fucking problem. I’ve had my fill.
But trust fucking Boryslav to engage in human trafficking and get in the crossfire.
It’s peak stupidity on his part. Somehow, Il Consiglio dragged the Petrov Bratva into a human trafficking cockup, and I don’t touch that shit with a ten-foot pole.
We have our vices, but our businesses are spread across a variety of imports, legal and illegal, from luxury goods to cars, to art and weapons.
A lot of weapons. Aircrafts. Yachts. Anything that needs to get around sanctions. But we don’t deal in humans.
We definitely don’t mop up mobster messes. Where did all those bodies go? Six of our men plus, by the sounds of it, an Italian delegation who never went home.
“Who’s the fucker from Italy?” I ask, not really wanting to know, but I sense trouble on the horizon that’s going to spread like spilled milk.
“A certain Franco Fiore. Not the type you want to meet in a dark alley alone at night, but I could say the same of you, so.”
We both smirk, but mine fades pretty quickly. This is about to get messy. “Sounds like Il Consiglio broke the rules first.”
“Yep.”
For a long moment, it’s quiet as we both digest this information.
Our territories share a border with Il Consiglio and thou shall not trespass.
We have agreements in place, peace treaties of sorts, negotiated by Don Scalera and the Pakhan decades ago to avoid unnecessary bloodshed and the smooth running of our respective operations, and to ensure we don’t have overlapping interests that could cause conflict.
But this? They’ve crossed the line. Killed my men. My cousin and Milana’s fiancé—and my last option for a Russian alliance—is missing, presumed dead.
Flick in. Flick out. “Retaliation is in order. No mobster gets to abuse Petrov Bratva resources without consequences.” I stab the knife back into its slot on my desk, meeting Yuri’s gaze. “And you know I don’t tolerate trafficking.”
“Agreed. But brute force isn’t an option right now. I’d be careful how you retaliate.”
He’s right. The last thing the Petrov Bratva can afford is a war with our neighbors, but I also can’t afford not showing strength in this situation.
Il Consiglio needs to know they can’t fuck with me, but they can’t learn how weakened we are.
That we’ve barely survived an internal coup that stripped me of every man my age I trusted in my inner circle.
That Sergei is our last link to figuring out who is behind this threat, because every other man has been eliminated.
“What do we know about the Scaleras?” I ask.
“Five brothers. Two are married, one with the stolen bride, no kids. The anointed Don, Matteo Scalera, married a senator’s daughter over the summer. Tasha Armstrong.”
I smirk. “Trust a fucking mobster to marry into politics.”
But it’s an admirable move. They are expanding their foothold, strengthening their alliances, and securing their position. It’s more than I’ve managed to do.
Yet, all things considered, and despite everything the Petrov Bratva has been through, I’m still alive. My girls are safe. Milana is back home. It’s more than I’d hoped for months ago when things were dire.
“The one brother, Dominic Scalera, owns a high-end security company. Very successful. Rumor has it he is no longer part of Il Consiglio—”
“I don’t buy that. Mafia business is family business.”
“Me neither. The rest of them, though: a mystery. My guess is they are deep into cybercrime as whatever they’re doing, they leave no trace. They have a very closely guarded inner circle.”
Everything I had and lost in a matter of days.
But five brothers—
What I wouldn’t do for just one brother to help ease the load. It’s just Milana and me, and she was never supposed to get involved in the dirty side of the business. I intend to keep it that way.
Five brothers. Only two are married. Three of them are unattached and are options… If Boryslav is dead, then Milana is a free agent again, to be used—
I cull the thought, disgusted with myself for even thinking of using my sister this way. Boryslav was my last resort, and I already feel she’s dodged a bullet here. Now if only I were able to force their hand in some other way…
“There’s more,” Yuri says, leaning in, a small but victorious smile playing on his lips. “They’ve recently discovered a missing younger sister who’s been hiding out in Italy.”
Several seconds pass as his words sink in.
“Blyad’. What the fuck? A sister? Out of nowhere? Where did you get all this intel?”
“My man in Providence. He’s a friend of an old capo who left the Don’s services decades ago.
They’ve been playing chess for years. It’s all been under wraps, but the girl was declared stillborn, and the mother died in childbirth.
Turns out the girl has been in Italy all this time, and Dominic Scalera has gone to fetch her. ”
And this is why Yuri was my dad’s righthand man.
The old Pakhan always had his select men infiltrating the enemy’s territory.
Spies. A Russian specialty. A Petrov strength, and Yuri the spymaster, holding the web together, always weaving, always spinning out new silken threads deeper into the world. This information is priceless.
“Nice. A sister. Unmarried?”
“Coming straight from the convent where she’d been kept safe.”
“Convent? She must be young.” And innocent. Pure.
Everything my first wife wasn’t.
“Very. Only twenty-two.”
My heart beats faster as the opportunity delivers itself on a platter.
It’s the perfect solution. I stare into Yuri’s only eye, grey-blue and clear like a shard of glass, and he stares back at me.
We’re both thinking the same thing. So young, she could be molded.
Unlike Darya, who came from Russia, bitter and with every vice and bad habit already ingrained in her being.
Fuck, if my stepmother learns of this scheme, she’ll escape rehab only to come claw my heart out. The Petrov line is never to be tarnished with outsider blood, least of all with what she’d call Mafia scum.
Papa liked his house clean, too. Russians only. Problem is, this is America: multicultural, diverse, vibrant. A place where a man can make his own destiny. It’s no longer my father’s house to rule or ruin. It’s no longer his world to survive in. It’s mine—with my daughters and Milana in tow.
“If the old man learns of this, it will help him to the grave,” I say.
“Maybe that’ll be a good thing,” Yuri says. “It’s been too long now.”
“I know.”
I can’t stomach it anymore, either. Some days, I wish I had it in me to help him along, but I don’t.
I can’t risk it. With Darya’s suicide, we had too much unwanted attention on my house already.
Feds are constantly scurrying around us like rats, ferreting for the tidbit that will finally be the one to convict us.
Papa will have to go the natural way, just like Don Scalera did.
“Get me a Scalera family tree and find out everything about this girl. I want to do a deep dive into everything Scalera. Let it leak that we know Il Consiglio has killed my beloved cousin. That he is sorely missed. That Il Consiglio has broken the treaty, and retribution is in order.”
I take a deep breath. It’s a huge fucking age gap, but it’s an open back door I didn’t see. A way to connect the Petrov Bratva through marriage with the biggest Mafia ring on the East Coast. I’d be an idiot not to push for it.
And I’d happily enter this business arrangement to keep Milana out of the equation and safe from an arranged marriage that could only send her into deeper depression.
“Tell them I want to meet the girl, but don’t call it negotiations.”
I need eyes on her first and a test run with the girls. I’m not risking them just to forge a new alliance.
“Let’s see if they can read between the lines.” Yuri nods, and as he stands, he stretches tall, his sinewy lank frame belying the strength he wields with his fists or his agility with a switchblade. “Poor Borys. Thought he escaped the Ukraine for a better life only to die at Il Consiglio’s hand.”
“I can’t help if he came over only to get himself the Darwin Award.”
Yuri chuckles as he pulls his own weapon from his jacket pocket, flicks out the blade, and tests the edge. “Sharp enough to get Sergei talking.”
I take my phone and switchblade and pocket both.
It’s time.
As we make our way out of the house and into the dark, crossing the stretch of lawn to the forest and beyond, we’re quiet.
Sergei will talk within the next couple of weeks, days even, if we work him right.
Maybe even tonight. In the meantime, we’ve gone from Boryslav creating a massive problem… to Boryslav creating an opportunity.
It could be that the tide is finally turning for me and the Petrov Bratva.
Attaboy, cuz. Thanks for coming over and being a fucking idiot. You served me well.