15. Maksim
MAKSIM
I throw myself into the investigation the moment I wake up with Aria still sleeping in my arms.
She’s emotionally wrung out from the confrontation with Nikolai and from finally telling the truth after eight years. I slip out of bed carefully, pressing a kiss to her hair before I leave.
The investigation has to be completely secret. Nikolai can’t know what I’m doing or suspect that I’m still pursuing this despite agreeing to “test Aria’s credibility.”
I call in a favor from someone I trust completely: Stephen Berry, a forensic accountant who worked for the FBI before I saved his daughter from a trafficking ring three years ago.
He owes me his daughter’s life, and more importantly he’s completely outside the Bratva.
No connections, no loyalties, no reason to report back to Nikolai.
“This is off-the-books,” I tell him when we meet in a coffee shop in Brooklyn at six in the morning. “No paper trail. No digital records. You report only to me.”
Stephen is in his fifties and balding, with wire-rimmed glasses and the keen eyes of a man who’s spent decades finding money people tried to hide. He nods without hesitation.
“What am I looking for?”
“Shell companies. Money moving through Cyprus and possibly Marseille. Patterns that suggest embezzlement or fund diversion. Anything that connects to Corsican interests.” I slide him a USB drive with copies of all the financial records I’ve been able to pull.
“Start with accounts flagged in the last eight years.”
He pockets the drive. “How dirty is this going to get?”
“Very. The person you’re investigating is high up in my organization. If word gets out that I’m looking into him, people die. Starting with me.”
Stephen’s expression doesn’t change. “Understood. Give me two weeks.”
“You have six days,” I tell him flatly.
He leaves, and I spend the next seventy-two hours reviewing everything I can get my hands on. Old security footage. Phone records. Travel logs. Meeting schedules.
I find gaps when Alexander should have been at mandatory Bratva functions but wasn’t. Meetings that don’t appear in any official records but show up in his calendar as “personal appointments.” Phone calls to numbers that trace back to burner phones, untraceable.
Then Stephen comes through.
“You were right about the Cyprus accounts,” he tells me when we meet again, this time in a parking garage in Queens.
“Money’s been moving through shell companies for years.
All of them ultimately controlled by the same person—your target.
And there’s a pattern. Funds go out to Cyprus, sit there for a few days, then route through Luxembourg before landing in Marseille. ”
“Marseille.” My blood runs cold. “You’re certain?”
Stephen nods sharply. “Positive. The Marseille accounts are registered to a holding company, but when I dug deeper, the beneficial owner traces back to known Corsican families. Union Corse.”
The Corsican mob. Exactly what Aria heard eight years ago.
“How much money are we talking about?” I ask, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.
Stephen hesitates. “Total, over the past eight years? North of forty million.”
I nearly collapse. Forty million dollars siphoned from Bratva accounts and funneled to the Corsicans. It’s funding for whatever Alexander’s been planning all these years.
“Can you prove it? Documentation that would hold up under scrutiny?”
“I can give you a paper trail that any competent accountant could verify. But—” He looks uncomfortable and he takes his glasses off, wiping them carefully with a cloth.
“Getting this information wasn’t exactly legal.
If you try to use it in any official capacity, it won’t hold up.
And the person who provided it could face charges. ”
Of course. Nothing is ever easy.
“Give me everything you have,” I tell him. “And Stephen? Destroy any records linking you to this investigation. Wipe your drives. Burn the notes. This conversation never happened.”
He hands me another USB drive and disappears into the city.
I have evidence now. It’s circumstantial as fuck, but it’s real enough to at least raise questions.
I need to try one more time with Nikolai.
I call my brother and ask to meet privately. Just the two of us.
We meet at his penthouse in Manhattan that looks like it’s never been lived in. To be fair, my Hamptons estate looked like this until Aria and Daniel moved in.
Nikolai is in a suit despite it being Sunday morning, every hair perfectly in place.
“This better be important,” he says, pouring himself coffee and not offering me any. “I have a meeting with the Italians in two hours.”
“I found something.” I pull out my tablet and open the files Stephen gave me. “Financial irregularities in the Cyprus accounts. Money moving to Marseille from the Union Corse.”
Nikolai doesn’t even look at the screen. “We do business with everyone, Maksim. Including groups adjacent to Corsican interests. This isn’t news.”
“Forty million dollars over eight years isn’t ‘business as usual’, brother.” I turn the tablet toward him, forcing him to look. “This is systematic embezzlement. Money being siphoned from our accounts and funneled to the Corsicans through shell companies that all trace back to—”
“To accounts Alexander set up for legitimate business purposes.” Nikolai sets down his coffee cup with a sharp click. “We’ve been over this. You agreed to investigate your woman, prove she was manipulating you, and move on. Instead, you’re still chasing fucking conspiracies.”
My teeth grind together in frustration. Why won’t my brother believe me? “This isn’t a conspiracy, Kolya. Look at the pattern—”
“I don’t need to look at anything.” Nikolai’s voice is hard now, his eyes cold. “You’re embarrassing yourself, Maksim. And you’re damaging your relationship with me by continuing to pursue this baseless accusation.”
“Baseless?” I can feel my temper fraying. “I just showed you forty million dollars—”
He waves that off. “You showed me business transactions that you’re interpreting in the worst possible light because your girlfriend convinced you Alexander is a traitor.” He stands, moving to the window, his back to me. “Do you hear yourself? Do you understand how this sounds?”
“It sounds like I’m trying to protect you from someone who’s been planning to kill you for eight years!” I shout.
Nikolai spins around, and the fury in his eyes makes me take a step back. “Enough. I’m done entertaining this delusion,” he hisses. “Alexander has been loyal to me. He’s been by my side through every major decision and threat we’ve faced.”
“And you think that loyalty is real?” I shout, past the point of controlling my temper. “You think a man who’s been embezzling forty million dollars gives a shit about your life?”
“I think your judgment is compromised.” Nikolai moves closer, and a muscle ticks in his jaw.
“I think you’re so desperate to believe your little whore isn’t a manipulative liar that you’re willing to destroy a good man’s reputation based on nothing but her word and your paranoid interpretation of routine business transactions. ”
Little whore. I see red. “Don’t call her that.” My hands clench into fists. “Don’t you fucking dare—”
“What? Call her what she is?” Nikolai’s lip curls.
“Sorry, I meant your little runaway. A woman who ran from you for eight years, purposefully kept your son in poverty, and is now spinning elaborate conspiracy theories to justify her cowardice? That’s what she is, Maksim.
A liar and a coward. And you’re letting her turn you against your own family. ”
I’m in his face before I realize I’ve moved, my hand fisted in his expensive suit jacket, shoving him back against the window.
“Say one more word about her.” My voice is deadly quiet. “One more fucking word, and brother or not, I will put you through this window.”
Nikolai doesn’t flinch or show fear. Instead, he looks at me with cold disdain.
“Get your hands off me.”
We stare at each other for a long moment, both of us breathing hard. Then I release him and step back, my hands still clenched into fists.
Nikolai straightens his jacket, as if nothing happened. “You’re choosing her over me. Over the organization.”
“I’m choosing the truth,” I insist.
“You’re choosing what you want to believe is the truth.
” He moves to his desk and picks up a folder, but he doesn’t look at me.
“Drop this, Maksim. I’m not asking anymore.
I’m telling you. Drop this investigation.
Stop harassing Alexander. And get control of your woman before she does any more damage. ”
“And if I don’t?”
Now Nikolai looks at me, and his eyes are colder than I’ve ever seen them. “Then you’ll find out what happens when you put pussy before brotherhood.”
I stare at my brother—the man I’ve followed my entire life, the man I’ve killed for, the man I would have died for—and realize he’s never going to hear me. He’s never going to believe Aria or consider that Alexander might be anything other than loyal.
“Fine.” I turn toward the door. “I’ll drop it.”
“See that you do. And Maksim?” I pause, hand on the doorknob. “Keep her away from organization functions. I don’t want her poisoning other members with her accusations.”
I leave before I do something I can’t take back.
Like put my brother’s head through that window.
I drive back to the estate in a fog of rage and frustration. My hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel, and I have to force myself to slow down and not drive like the fury pounding through my veins.
Nikolai won’t hear or consider it. He won’t even look at the evidence because he’s already decided Aria is lying.
I’ll have to handle this myself and build an airtight case without Nikolai’s help. I’ll need to prove Alexander’s treason so definitively that even my fucking stubborn brother can’t deny it.