4. Nikolai
Fyodor’s Rules #2 - Always listen to the women.
Between Pasha’s texts and my call with Lukas, I was ready for this evening to be over. I had considered leaving early a few times, but with the Masquerade so close, I wanted to get as much business settled beforehand as possible. And besides, nobody gossiped like the mob wives. It was part of the reason I always made sure I met with them, as well as with their husbands. Men may appear to be the decision makers, but it was their wives and their mothers who let them make those decisions. It was a lesson that Fyodor had drilled into us, which I had never quite forgotten.
Tonight, I was having dinner with the Italian wives and nonnas, and I would meet with the Bratva’s zheny and babushkas in a few days. Of course, all of this was conducted under the guise of a regular ladies’ night held downstairs at our hotel’s bar. It was nothing tawdry like the ladies’ nights at your local sketchy bar, this was a night where the women enjoyed going out safely to a place that was neutral ground. We weren’t enemies with any of the families, but neither were we considered allies. And sometimes the women wanted to go somewhere where they would be safe, but was a change of scenery from the restaurants in their territories.
My fangs itched in my mouth. It had been about a week since I had last fed, as I tried not to do it too often. Even spread between my three brothers, it still took a lot out of them. Not that I needed to drink blood to stay alive, thank god for small mercies. If I was restricted to only drinking blood, I don’t know what I would do, food and wine are such important pleasures in life. However, to use any of my vampiric abilities, I needed to consume blood to sustain them.
The rattle of teacups wasn’t quite enough to put my teeth on edge, but it certainly wasn’t helping settle my nerves. We were almost done for the night, thankfully, and there had been a lot of useful information discussed during the evening. Upcoming betrothals, gossip about a few illicit affairs, and even talk of a couple of pregnancies had all crossed the lips of the women. It was useful knowledge, especially as the Masquerade approached. We needed to make more alliances of our own, even though I knew my brothers would fight me every step of the way.
Some teachings were hard to let go of. When you had grown up believing you can only trust your family, it became hard to let anyone else inside your walls. That had been compounded by Fyodor’s insistence that the only people we could rely on were each other. Even when he occasionally let us socialize with the rest of the Bratva or the other families, it was always used as a lesson in how to utilize what we learned from them to strengthen ourselves. Or it was just an excuse for a fight. Fyodor knew better than most that Lukas and Alexei needed a regular chance to blow off steam, otherwise our home quickly turned into a war zone. And who better for us to practice our fighting skills on than his enemies?
“Nikolai, dear boy, you can not keep fending off these marriage advances forever. What are you waiting for? Isn’t it better to select a match that is to your advantage? If you keep waiting, all that is going to be left is the fruit that has fallen from the tree. You don’t want rotten fruit, do you?” Fiorenza’s voice cut easily through my distracted thoughts.
The image was a vivid one. I had met a few of the older Italian spinsters and had no desire to marry any of them. In reality, I had no desire to marry at all, but that option was steadily fading. We were experiencing pressure from all sides to ally ourselves finally with a faction. People insisted we couldn’t stay independent forever, although we had managed just fine for a decade.
“Fiorenza, if I marry your granddaughter, what will the Bratva say? And the Irish would be banging down my door in a heartbeat.”
Fiorenza was the most important of all the Italian wives, not only because she was the eldest but also because her husband was the head of the entire Italian Famiglia. All the other Italian wives took their cues from her.
“You marry my granddaughter. You match Pasha with one of the Bratva. Lukas can be married off to an Irish girl, they are used to violence and all their brothers are thugs, anyway. Finally, you marry Alexei off to an Armenian. No one cares about them, but then everyone is happy, and you have kept your neutral status. No sides have been picked because you picked all sides.”
Actually, that was not a terrible plan at all. If we had to marry, and I still didn’t completely believe that we did, choosing a bride from each family would mean no one was being prioritized. I was sure that each family would still come up with reasons it wasn’t fair, but if everyone was unhappy, then it was a proper compromise.
Now I had to sell my brothers on the idea, and that was going to be the hard part.
I knew after my discussion with Lukas earlier that he was going to be a difficult sell. And I was pretty sure Pasha was allergic to any form of romantic commitment. I had met a few people he had slept with more than twice, as he didn’t limit himself to just once when the sex was good. But I had never met someone he dated.
I wasn’t even sure he knew what dating was.
“As always, you’re a fount of wisdom, Fiorenza, and I would be lost without you. One day, perhaps you will let me whisk you away from your husband. You are the truest love of my life.” I even threw in a wink to sell the flirtation.
She grinned and waved me off, although I could see the pink on her cheeks underneath all her makeup, even shifting her wings slightly forward, like she could hide her face behind the feathers. No one was completely immune to my charms.
The rest of the evening passed quickly, and soon enough, I was helping the women into their cars. Now under the watchful eyes of the bodyguards who had been waiting outside for them, allowing the women their privacy.
I shut the last door, but didn’t let myself relax until I was back inside my office. The ride up the elevator had been full of contemplation, and now I pulled out a notepad, jotting down some quick notes. Mostly it was lists of potential candidates under each of our names. The suggestions that Fiorenza had given me weren’t too bad.
The list with the least names was Alexei’s. But whoever it was he married, they were going to have to possess a strong stomach. I had enough trouble trying to convince him to keep the body parts in the basement. For more than one meeting, he had shown up chewing on a piece of someone. It didn’t bother me so much now, I’d grown immune to it, but I couldn’t imagine a wife being happy with the habit.
Alexei would not be my only issue. Pasha was going to be just as much trouble in his own way, but I could only focus on one problem at a time.
There was a lot of business I wanted to get done at the Masquerade. There were negotiations to engage in. I needed to talk to the Italians about the docks, as we had containers we planned to import, and I wanted to ensure they didn’t get stopped on their way through. The downside of not being allied with any faction was that to move anything in or out of the city, we had to negotiate with everyone. And those negotiations always fell onto my shoulders.
Pouring myself a drink, I leaned back in my chair and stared at the piece of paper. None of this would matter if we couldn’t work out who was attacking us. If it was one of the four families, they were hiding their involvement well. If it was someone new in the city, then why were they targeting us? From the outside, it may have looked like we were easy pickings, but anyone who had been in Chicago for any measure of time knew better than to mess with us. We proved our strength quickly and decisively.
If I was being honest with myself, it could have been anyone.
Maybe we had become complacent, too comfortable with the status quo. We had our hotel, our people, and our weapons. We hadn’t pushed for fresh territory in some time. Alexei and Lukas had both wanted to increase our share of the city, but I was the one who held them back. It felt like I was always holding my brothers back.
I shuddered to think of what would happen if I let Alexei off the tight leash that we kept him on. Or rather, that he let us use. I was under no illusion that if Alexei wanted to cause trouble, he would, and there was very little any of us could do to stop him. Growing up with a Scion of the Baba Yaga may have desensitized me to most of his ways, but Fyodor had instilled in us a healthy fear of each other’s abilities.
And that was before he started his experiments.
As though my thoughts had summoned him from the basement, the door opened, and Alexei slid around it and into the room. He had a mug in hand, and I was surprised that there wasn’t the scent of blood coming from it. Sometimes I wondered if Alexei drank more blood than me.
He didn’t sit in any of the chairs littered around the office. Choosing instead to sit on the edge of my desk while he stirred the liquid in his mug with a severed finger, as though we were just hanging out. As if I’d believe he hadn’t come in here without some sort of agenda. It was always like this with Alexei. He would only speak about what he wanted at a time he chose. Trying to get him to talk before then was like trying to open a puzzle box by swearing at it. The only thing that happened was that you got increasingly frustrated. He set his mug down, took his knitting out of his pocket, and started work on whatever project he had on his needles today.
“You need to talk to Lukas,” Alexei said.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at him. That wasn’t enough information to go on yet. I could have started with a barrage of questions, but I had been dealing with Alexei for two decades now and had developed an almost infinite amount of patience. He’d get to the point when he was ready.
He had knitted around three rows before he continued. “If Lukas and his men leave no one alive, it makes it difficult for me to question them. I’ve never been interested in necromancy, and I don’t want to resort to it now.”
Leaning forward, I raised my hand to cut him off. Alexei has done enough terrible things to people’s corpses, I didn’t need him adding magic to the mix. “I will talk with him. But you know what it’s like in a fight, sometimes it’s kill or be killed. None of us respond well to being attacked. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t tear apart someone who tried to sneak up and attack you.”
His grin had far too many teeth, so I carried on. “I will talk to him, as I was a little annoyed with him myself. We need to work out who is attacking us before they do any more damage, and we can’t question dead people. I know he has a kill first attitude, but that needs to change.”
It wasn’t often Alexei, and I agreed on how to do things. You would think, being a vampire, that I would be the one calling for blood, but Alexei was far more bloodthirsty than me. Maybe it was because I had spent so long being the face of our little family, I was always having to negotiate, using words, even when I wanted to just break someone’s neck.
Fuck, now he had me wondering if I had gone soft.
Luckily, I didn’t spend too long spiraling down that path, the door to my office being swung open put an end to that. My gun was already cocked and pointed at the person’s face before I registered Pasha’s grin.
“One of these days, you are going to get yourself shot, you know that? Learn how to knock, Pasha. How would you like it if we just burst into your room all the time?”
The grin on his face had me instantly regretting my question. “Maybe you should spend more time in my room, dragostea meu. You might learn some things, hm? Or maybe you could even join in. When was the last time you got laid?”
I sighed and pinched my nose. He wasn’t wrong in his teasing; not about learning things, but how long it had been since I had gotten laid. With the Masquerade coming up, there hadn’t been time in my schedule for much, other than meetings. And when I wasn’t at an appointment, I was planning based on what I had just learned or preparing for the next to occur.
“I have been neglectful of that part of my life, but that is why I am not married. At least you will always forgive me, no matter how long it has been since I was last in your bed. Perhaps it is true when they say absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
The distasteful curl on Pasha’s lips had me smirking now. “Absence makes the heart wander, Niko. And even you are only worth waiting so long for.”
I knew he wasn’t serious. If there was anything I could count on in this world, it’s that my brothers would never abandon me. That would be true, even if our bond with each other hadn’t been reinforced with magic. Losing our only other family members had forged a bond between us that couldn’t be broken.
“Is there a reason you are bursting into my office, Pasha? Or was it just to derail the serious conversation with talk of your sex life?” Given the chance, I was sure Pasha would slip his sex life into every conversation, he certainly tried hard enough. It wasn’t bragging exactly, sex was just his special interest. Like a child who knew everything about dinosaurs, or trains, and while I had hoped that he would outgrow it, he had grown into it instead.
“Lukas sent me the photos. Way to kill the mood, I’ve rarely seen a girl leave in such a huff. I’ve run them through the databases and they’re all mercenaries. Some are more skilled than others, which both does and doesn’t give us anything to go on. I am trying to follow the money, but it is all moving through a broker, and you know how they can be about their security. Short of breaking into their office, following the money will not help us.”
Sighing, I pinched my nose again. This was all just another headache in the making. “Didn’t you just say that it did and didn’t give you something to go on? That means there is some good news in amongst all the shit you’re dropping at my feet.”
Alexei was still sitting on my desk, knitting as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He was now chewing on the finger that had been in his mug, and I was doing my best to ignore the disgusting sounds. If I didn’t know that I would have nightmares for the rest of my life, I would want to be in his mind for a single day.
“Well, it means someone is spending money, and not a small amount. Sure, these guys weren’t cream of the crop, but Lukas just murdered what—twenty of them? They will not be easy to replace without creating a ripple somewhere. So, this person needs to be someone with not only that sort of money to spend in the first place, but who has more money to burn when their mercs didn’t work out.”
That was a good point. Hiring outside muscle made me wonder if maybe it was one of the other families. It was a good way to keep their hands as clean as possible and avoid war or retribution.
“Monitor the money moving in and out of the city. I want to know as soon as you know something. The Masquerade is in a week. I want to go in armed with as much information as we can gather. And I don’t want to get fucked in public, hm?”
The look on Pasha’s face already had me regretting my word choice, so I waved at him to leave my office before he said something else to annoy me.
It looked like I wasn’t getting any sleep tonight.