Chapter 27
Arkady
Alina heard something. She heard or inferred something from Dmitri that made her break protocol.
I know because her hands change.
Not much. Not enough for anyone in this room to notice it unless they’ve spent the last week memorising every variation of her stillness.
The shot glass, which has been balanced between her fingers with the precise carelessness of a woman pretending boredom, shifts.
A single degree of rotation. Her thumb moves against the rim. Once.
It’s nothing.
It’s everything.
I don’t look at her directly. I keep my eyes on Dmitri, who is still speaking, still using that low, unhurried voice that costs him nothing because he calculated the price of every syllable before he opened his mouth.
He’s talking about supply routes now. Northern logistics.
The particular administrative language of a man who wants the room focused on his competence rather than his timing.
I let him talk.
“The Volgograd connection remains stable,” he says. “Nik spent considerable time reinforcing that relationship. It would be a waste to let it cool during a transition.”
Nik’s name again. Third time in four minutes.
Seva shifts in his chair and turns to look at Dmitri with a frown. “What makes you think Arkady will let his father’s legacy go to waste?”
I appreciate the backup, but it’s not needed.
“I don’t. I’m just laying out the update,” Dmitri replies.
“Thank you,” I say, needing this to move on so Dmitri doesn’t think we are ganging up on him. “You can rest assured that I will honour my father’s relationships.”
Dmitri nods once and then goes back to his statue-like act.
Alina breathes out slowly, her gaze going to Lev before moving on again.
Lev doesn’t notice her attention. He’s too busy nodding along to whatever Grisha is saying about cash flow diversification, performing the engaged subordinate with the particular dedication of a man who knows his value lies in his loyalty to the current structure and not to any individual within it.
That’s Lev all over. Predictable. Manageable. Not the problem.
Neither is Miro, as I suspected earlier. Ilya is also ruled out. He genuinely cared about Nik, and at the very least couldn’t get sober enough to organise a hit, let alone carry it out himself.
I bring the meeting back to the point. “The transition will be handled in stages,” I say, and the room pulls its attention back to me. “Operations continue without interruption. Payments run on schedule. The only thing that changes is who signs off at the top.”
“And who signs off at the top,” Miroslav says, “has always been a question of trust.”
“It has,” I agree. “Which is why I’m not asking for it. You’ll extend it or you won’t, and the ones who won’t will make themselves known eventually. They always do.”
The room absorbs that. I watch it land differently in different men.
Seva’s mouth does something that might be approval.
Grisha’s breathing changes. Pavel has stopped rotating the shot glass entirely, which tells me more than anything he’s said tonight, which is nothing.
Roman is the one who speaks next, which surprises me.
He’s been sitting with the particular look of a man who has already decided everything he needs to decide and is simply waiting for everyone else to catch up.
“Continuity requires more than a signature,” he says. “It requires capability.”
Not a challenge, exactly. A test. The kind Roman would run, clean and direct, no performance attached to it.
“It does,” I say. “Which is why I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I’m asking you to watch.”
“And if what we watch disappoints us?”
“Then you’ll have options. Men like you always do.” I let that sit for exactly the right amount of time. “But I don’t intend to disappoint you.”
Roman holds my gaze for three seconds, which is two seconds longer than most men manage, and then he nods and sits back. Filed. Manageable. Possibly useful.
Alina hasn’t moved.
I’m aware of her the way I’m aware of my own heartbeat, constantly, without effort, the kind of awareness that doesn’t require attention because it’s already built into the baseline.
But the way she is sitting concerns me. She isn’t thinking about her safety in a pond full of sharks.
She is too absorbed in watching faces and assessing words.
Orhan is particularly interested in her.
To the point where I can’t resist pointing it out.
“Do you have something to say to my wife, Orhan?” I ask.
Orhan’s gaze shoots to mine, surprised I singled him out.
He recovers in under a second. “My apologies,” he says, and the words are smooth, the accent precise. “I meant no disrespect.”
“Then don’t look at her like she owes you an explanation,” I say.
The men shift in the way they do when a line gets drawn in front of everyone. Dmitri doesn’t move. Orhan drops his chin in a gesture of deference that I don’t believe for a second, and then finds somewhere else to direct his gaze.
Alina doesn’t react.
That’s the part that would unnerve any other man in this room, if they were paying the right kind of attention.
She just sits there with the empty shot glass in her hand, and that particular quality of boredom that I’ve learned means the opposite.
She’s working, and whatever she’s built in her head right now is already more than most of the men in this room have managed to build in the last hour.
I bring the meeting back on track before the silence around Orhan calcifies into something that requires addressing.
“Security contracts,” I say, looking at Roman. “I want a full review of current arrangements within the week. Nothing changes until I’ve signed off on it personally.”
Roman nods. “You’ll have it.”
“Grisha.” My cousin’s eyes find mine. “The financial structures stay exactly as they are until I’ve gone through them end to end. No movement, no restructuring, nothing that touches the shell network without my explicit approval.”
Grisha’s jaw tightens fractionally. He doesn’t like that.
He’s been running those structures with near-total autonomy for years, and the implication that he now answers to a signature rather than operating above one is landing the way I intended it to.
“Of course,” he says, and the two words cost him something.
Good. He’s cleared. If he had fought, even slightly, it would’ve put him on my radar.
“Lev. Tilbury runs as normal. You report directly to me, not through intermediaries.”
“As it should be,” Lev says, and I move on.
Kaspar is next. He’s been quiet in the specific way of a man who processes everything through a filter of risk assessment before he commits to any observable reaction.
“Imports. I want a full manifest review within forty-eight hours. Everything that’s moved in the last six months, documented and on my desk. ”
Kaspar nods once, unhurried. “I’ll have Erekle coordinate.”
“Erekle coordinates with Vik,” I say. “Not independently.”
A beat. Kaspar absorbs this without visible objection, which tells me he expected it and came prepared to accept it. Smart man. Flexible. Useful in the short term, worth watching in the long.
Anatoly is on his phone, even though the jammers are up, he’s documenting something, and Felix, behind him, is also on his phone, which means whatever Anatoly is doing, Felix is also documenting it in real time for someone who isn’t in this room.
I let it go for now. Pulling that thread tonight, in front of everyone, would cost more than it would gain.
“Anatoly.”
He looks up.
“The phone goes away.”
He doesn’t argue. He pockets it with the smooth compliance of a man who knows which side his bread is buttered on.
“Anything else?” I ask. “Apart from updates on Nik’s murderer,” I add before someone gets any wise ideas. The silence that follows that last comment is a specific kind of loaded. The kind where men are calculating whether it’s a genuine invitation or a trap.
Miroslav is the one who speaks.
“Carter’s people have been sniffing around the Belgravia property,” he says, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “Two plainclothes yesterday morning. They didn’t stay long, but they were there.”
“Carter is manageable.”
“He was manageable when Nik was alive,” Miroslav says. “The relationship requires maintenance.”
“Then it will be maintained.”
Miro holds my gaze a beat longer than necessary and then sits back.
Not a challenge. A reminder. He’s telling me he knows where the bodies are buried, figuratively and otherwise, and that his institutional knowledge is a currency he expects to be paid for.
I already knew that. It doesn’t change anything.
Pavel speaks for the first time since the toast. “There’s a matter of the Southwark arrangement,” he says, and the particular flatness of his delivery tells me the matter is not small and the framing is deliberate.
He didn’t say the Southwark problem. He said arrangement.
Which means he’s already decided how he wants me to receive it.
“Go on,” I say.
“The lease on the warehouse runs through a holding company that Nik registered in his name personally. Not the family name. His name.” Pavel sets this down between us like a man placing a card he’s been holding since he sat down. “With Nik gone, there’s a question of how that transfers.”
“It transfers to me.”
“Legally, that requires—”
“It transfers to me,” I say again, and the second time carries a different weight. Not louder. Just final. “Whatever paperwork that requires, Grisha will handle it. If there’s a legal question, we have counsel on retainer. The arrangement continues under the Saranov name. My name.”
Pavel holds my gaze for a second and then nods, smooth and unhurried, as though this was always the answer he expected and the question was simply a formality he was obligated to raise.
“Dismissed,” I say eventually and sit back as the men take that and run with it. Everyone is eager to get out of here and scatter. The entirety of the Bratva family in one place is enough to put everyone on edge.
Alina doesn’t move until the last man has left. She slouches, her expression a grimace of pain, but I shake my head and count off fifteen seconds, the time it takes to leave the living room and exit the side door without stops, before I nod at her.
She groans and rubs her back “Fucking hell,” she rasps, and rolls her shoulders. “That was torture.”
“You wanted to be here,” I point out with a smile.
“Oh, but I’m glad I was,” she says, jumping up and kicking off her shoes before she paces back and forth. “Dmitri. He knows something.”
“Kind of figured.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s not what you think.”
“What do I think?” I ask, tilting my head.
“You think he killed Nik, or had something to do with it. He didn’t kill anyone.”
“How do you know that?” I ask slowly.
She stops pacing right in front of me. I lean back in my chair so I can look at her face and not her pussy. “How do I know that?” she repeats. “Because no one is dead! Nik isn’t dead, he just isn’t here!”
Inhaling deeply through my nose, I release it and say calmly, “We both saw his body.”
“Did we?” she almost screeches, running her hand into her hair and pulling at the knot like it’s giving her a headache.
“We did.”
“I’m not so fucking sure. The way Dmitri was talking… Tell me exactly what it is you thought before this meeting. You said you found something. I need to know so we can piece this together and not have half a story each.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, and stare at the floor for a second. Ordering the pieces. Because she’s right that we have half a story each, and half a story is more dangerous than no story at all if you start acting on it.
“Eighteen months ago,” I say, “Nik moved eight hundred thousand pounds through a Cypriot shell company I’d never seen before.
Meridian Holdings. Single transaction. Reference line said Completion.
No other activity before it or after. The company was incorporated fourteen months before the payment and dissolved after it.
Someone built it specifically to receive that money and nothing else. ”
Alina is very still.
“The same quarter, Dmitri went dark for three weeks. His revenue dipped by twelve per cent, then corrected itself overnight when he resurfaced. At the time, everyone chalked it up to logistics. I didn’t look twice at it because I had no reason to.” I pause. “Now I do.”
“Completion,” she says quietly.
“Completion.”
She starts pacing again, slower this time, her bare feet silent on the floor.
The knot in her hair has come half loose, and she doesn’t fix it.
“Okay. So Nik paid eight hundred thousand pounds to a shell company that existed for one purpose, around the same time Dmitri went quiet, and his numbers did something specific and deliberate, and now Nik is assumed dead, and Dmitri went dark again the moment it happened.” She stops. “Arkady.”
“I know.”
“That’s not a hit. That’s a logistics payment.”
I look at her, my breath deepening.
“Eight hundred grand buys a nice hideaway in Cyprus. Where someone could go off the grid. Because they faked their own death. With the help of a Bratva family member who is clearly as loyal as they come, with no ulterior motive.”
My eyes close, and I count.
Slowly.