Chapter 42
forty-two
That name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. Where have I heard it? Before I have a chance to think too long on it, Leon answers instead.
“Like the Tkachenko bratva?” his voice is laced with suspicion and disbelief. He knows about my father; I’ve told him and the others everything there is to know about Kirill Kasyanov’s pathetic life. Never once have I associated him with the name Tkachenko. “The Bratva of all Bratvas’?”
“Geesh,” Kenzi snorts. “Drama queen much? Yes, that Bratva.”
That doesn’t make any sense. My father was a low-level runner, not Bratva royalty. “You must be mistaken.”
Kenzi purses her lips and shakes her head. “Nope,” she pops the ‘p’ annoyingly. And here I think that was just an annoying trait of Ava’s when she wants to test my patience. “Kirill Kasyanov is an alias. He was born Kirill Malikovich Tkachenko, September of 1965 to a Yelena Morisov and—”
“Malik Tkachenko,” I snarl.
“Um, yeah…” Mark hesitates briefly, his forehead drawn up. “How do you know that?”
“Russian middle names are patronymic,” I explain. “Meaning that they are drawn from the father’s first name. My middle name is Kirillovich. Vas’s middle name is Avtonomovich. In Russia, it is common to introduce yourself or greet someone else with their first and middle name.”
“From what we could uncover,” Kenzi creeps on, her lips turning up in a sneer at the mention of the Russian patriarchal traditions of introduction.
I can’t blame her for that. Her whole life has been controlled by men.
“He is illegitimate. Yelena was a maid in Malik’s household he took a shine to.
She got pregnant, had the baby, and then mysteriously disappeared. ”
“The baby was kept in the household and raised to be an enforcer,” Mark cuts in. “Never legitimized.”
“Malik was a purest,” I spit distastefully. The man was a royalty supremist and believed in not tainting the Tkachenko bloodline. “He saw illegitimate children as cockroaches.”
Mark huffs. “Didn’t stop him from having a host of them. Most of whom died working for the mafia or were purposeful sacrifices.”
“How did Kirill end up in St. Petersburg?” I question.
The Tkachenko Bratva is run out of Moscow and even though there is a presence in St. Petersburg, I can’t remember if he worked for them or not.
I blocked out much of that time in my life, refusing to dwell on what I can’t change. “And why under a different name?”
“There isn’t a lot of records from that time,” Mark admits sheepishly. “We have to go old school and find the few people who are alive during Malik’s reign. Let me tell you, there aren’t a lot.”
“From what we gathered, Kirill made a lot of mistakes that cost Malik a shit ton of money,” Kenzi clicks the button in her hand.
A new image appears on the tablet of a younger version of the man I knew.
He was eighteen when he was banished to St. Petersburg to work under a man named Vlad Morozov.
Kirill went from an enforcer to a drug runner.
No one can verify it for sure, but it appears Malik forced him to use an assumed surname.
One that couldn’t be tracked back to him. ”
“Makes sense,” Leon pipes up from the backseat.
“He may have let him keep the last name Tkachenko as an enforcer, but the moment shit hit the fan, he made sure no one was going to know who Kirill was and how they were related. Finding out he has an illegitimate son is one thing, but that that same son is responsible for some of his failures? That would have him in a rage.”
“So why not just kill him?” Mark wonders. “If he was such a purest, why keep him around and involve him at all? He didn’t involve any of his other offspring.”
I have a few theories but none that I am willing to share now. The churning in my gut tells me that there is more to the story than just him bedding a random maid. Malik hadn’t produced any more male heirs after his son Andrei was born. Kirill, although illegitimate, was a spare heir.
“Why did Kirill leave St. Petersburg?” Kenzi wonders aloud. “It seems a bit coincidental that your mother overdosed and then soon after that he kicked you out on the street never to be seen again.”
“Wasn’t there a big civil war that ended around that time, too?” Leon asks. “I remember hearing Tomas speak of it a few times. Said it was the reason he got out. Malik’s people were dying left and right. It was carnage.”
“Give me a sec.” The sound of Mark’s fingers popping over the hefty keyboard fills the car. “Bingo. There was a civil war from early 1986 to late 1996 after Andrei Tkachenko’s wife mysteriously went missing. One of the men Sasha interviewed told him that all fingers pointed at the boy’s father.”
“Why would Malik even care?”
“Because it wasn’t a marriage alliance,” Mark tells us.
“He fell in love with her. She was a waitress. No money. No connections. And no one ever found a body. Andrei raged war for years until he finally killed his father with a knife to the throat in 1996, ending the bloody war. More than six hundred soldiers died in that war.”
Mark hums in surprise as he filters through the data our informants provided. “Funnily enough,” Mark continues. “The same year he kicked you out on the streets is the same year Andrei Tkachenko legitimized Kirill.”
“What is the significance of that?” Kenzi questions, confused. “If he was willing to legitimize Kirill, he would have no problem with a child born out of wedlock.”
“One, Kirill already had a family and a wife that probably didn’t know about his extracurricular activities,” Mark elucidates.
“And two, I don’t think he wanted the burden of another child.
He was already in hot water, and his pockets were practically empty.
But none of you are asking the right question. ”
I sigh, running a hand through my hair which is still damp from the rain. “And what is the right question?”
“Why assassinate a thirteen-year-old you could have just killed when he was eleven?” Mark notes.
Kenzi bites her lower lip, her eyes sinking to the bottom left. She is trying to conjure up a reason as much as anyone else. I have asked myself that same question so many times over the years and I never found an answer.
“Well, if Andrei was willing to legitimize Kirill, maybe Kirill thought he would legitimize Matthias without asking?” There is skepticism in her voice. The scenario doesn’t fit. “I mean,” she shrugs. “If he was worried about his wife finding out. That could be a reason.”
I shoot her a sideways glance, one eyebrow raised, conveying just how little confidence I put in that statement.
She holds up her hands. “Okay, so probably not the reason, geesh,” she mutters petulantly. “Just trying to brainstorm here.”
“Until we can come up with some solid evidence, why don’t we move on to where the hell he is.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Kenzi winks as she presses the control to move the tablet’s viewer forward a few slides. “He is in London.”
That’s a hell of a lot further from Russia than I thought he would ever get. The man firmly believed in what it meant to be Russian. I never thought he would leave the country.
“What the hell is he doing there?” I wonder, my tone darkening. Kenzi’s brows bury in her hairline as she takes in my sudden demeanor change.
“He’s Pakhan of the local Bratva there,” she informs me, her eyes narrowing, waiting for me to explode.
I won’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off.
I am in an information overload. The man I thought was dead is still alive.
Kirill Kasyanov is the only name I ever knew him by. I never thought it to be an alias.
Fuck. All this time he was alive for me to interrogate. To kill—and I missed it. And to learn that he is Bratva royalty. Even illegitimately.
Shit, I have family. An uncle and cousins. Not just the brother I murdered in self-defense.
“He was made Pakhan around ten years ago,” Mark informs me. “But from the looks of his books, it’s not going well. He’s hemorrhaging money and not in a good way.”
“There’s a good way?” Leon teases, trying to lighten the mood as we near the private airstrip on the outskirts of Tukwila. My private jet waits for me, fueled and ready to go. Apparently, our trip is leading to London rather than Russia as I initially thought.
“He isn’t losing product to turf wars or thieves,” Mark clarifies. “The money is just…disappearing. It’s in small enough amounts at a time that unless you are a forensic accountant, you wouldn’t even notice it. I doubt the home office has even blinked an eye until recently.”
“What happened recently?” I question curiously.
“He couldn’t afford to pick up product from the Cartel.”
Leon whistles. “Yep, that is bound to draw attention.”
He is right. Wars have been started for less.
The Cartel orders their product off how much each client is willing to pay.
Usually, a couple of million. If Kirill was unable to pay for the product the Cartel already ordered, he would be in some serious shit.
The Cartel would refuse to shove off the debt and come after Kirill and his men until he was able to pay.
And knowing the Cartel they won’t just kill Bratva soldiers but their wives and children too.
Until either no one is left, or they pay.
Either way, it will be bloody unless Andrei steps in for his brother.
Fuck.
Andrei Tkachenko is my motherfucking uncle.
That is going to take some time to wrap my head around.
Leon pulls the SUV into one of the spots near the hangar.
Dima stands at the bottom of the flight of stairs with the pilot.
When he sees us park, he gives a slight nod to the pilot, dismissing him before heading in our direction.
Dima is the obvious choice to take with me. He is young and smart and can easily blend into any given environment. Leon is normally the one I would bring, but his presence would too easily be noticed if he is gone. That, and he is going to be needed if shit hits the fan with the Italian Mafia here.
Dante Romano has been MIA since our run-in with him at the small shipping port where we found the cash and shipping container.
It is thanks to the miscreant reporter Bailey that we managed to put a few more links in the chain on figuring out how Ward has been getting money into the United States from the Middle East. American money at that.
“There’s one more thing you should see before you go,” Mark nods his head through the screen at Kenzi, who dutifully changes the slides on the tablet.
“Recognize him?” she asks curiously.
My jaw clenches at the sight of the man before me on the screen.
He is tall, almost as tall as me. The silver hair he sports is gone, replaced with a rich, dark brown that screams fake, but somehow suits his face.
I wonder which color he fakes. He appears younger than the videos and photographs my men have gained since I learned of his involvement with Ava.
When I first saw him on the video feed outside McDonough’s, his suit was two sizes too big, a cheap department store fabric that wrinkled with the slightest movement. Now, he wears a gray tweed Sebastian Cruz original that fits him like a glove. The wolf has shucked away his sheep costume.
“Jonathon Archer,” I sneer at the screen. “Tried to frame me for Elias’s murder.”
Kenzi shakes her head.
“His name is Ivan Tkachenko and,” she informs me as she flips to another slide.
My blood freezes as I stare at the image before me.
The man’s hand is outstretched, the skin of his wrist barely visible, but I can still make out the familiar deformation that every man in my family carries.
“He’s your cousin, and he’s been on your tail for the last ten years. ”
Ten years? He has been after me for ten years and the first time I have any confirmation of this is in the past few months. What took him so long to make a move?
“It explains why he wanted that video.” Mark clears his throat uncomfortably at the reminder of his betrayal.
A betrayal I don’t have the heart to hold against him.
Most betrayals are met with a swift hand.
A bullet between the eyes and it is done.
There is something about Mark, however, and whatever it is, I can’t bring myself to view his betrayal as malicious. Not like I did Ava’s.
“He is searching for proof,” I growl.
“Maybe not,” he tells me.
“He must have just arrested me for fun then,” I deadpan.
Mark huffs impatiently. “The video clearly shows you acting in self-defense,” he stresses. “And the video isn’t the only thing he is after. He wanted a whole bunch of documents too, remember? I kept a copy of everything I found and have slowly had a program deciphering them.”
“You could have just asked,” I remind him dryly. “Most of us speak Russian.” Mark shrugs a shoulder.
“You were all busy,” he sighs. “I start deciphering the documents he went through most. One is the death certificate and autopsy report of Inessa Kasyanov, and the other is your birth certificate.” He pauses for a second, bringing a copy of the paperwork on the tablet’s screen.
I snatch it from the cradle to get a better look.
“I scoured the web for an Inessa Kasyanov,” Mark continues. “But there is nothing on her. No birth certificate, no fingerprint files, no parking tickets—nothing. She is like a ghost. Inessa Kasyanov doesn’t exist. Which means—”
“She is made up,” I breathe, my brow furrowing as anger and sadness rush through me. A geyser ready to erupt.
“Do you know her?” Kenzi asks tentatively, taking in my expression.
I nod.
“She was my mother.”