Chapter Fourteen
That name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Where had I heard it? Before I had a chance to think too long on it, Leon answered instead.
“Like the Tkachenko Bratva?” His voice was laced with suspicion and disbelief. He knew about my father; I’d told him and the others everything there was to know about Kirill Kasyanov’s pathetic life. Never once had I associated him with the name Tkachenko. “The Bratva of all Bratva?”
“Geesh,” Kenzi snorted. “Drama queen much? Yes, that Bratva.”
That didn’t make any sense. My father was a low-level runner, not Bratva royalty. “You must be mistaken.”
Kenzi pursed her lips and shook her head. “Nope.” She popped the P. And here I thought that was just an annoying trait Ava had when she wanted to test my patience. “Kirill Kasyanov was an alias. He was born Kirill Malikovich Tkachenko, September of 1965, to a Yelena Morisov and—”
“Malik Tkachenko,” I snarled.
“Um, yeah…” Mark hesitated briefly, his forehead drawn up. “How did you know that?”
“Russian middle names are patronymic,” I explained. “Meaning that they are drawn from the father’s first name. My middle name was 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 crept on, her lips turning up in a sneer at the mention of the Russian patriarchal traditions of introduction. Couldn’t blame her for that. Her whole life had been controlled by men. “He was illegitimate. Yelena was a maid in Malik’s household. He took a shine to her. She got pregnant, had the baby, and then mysteriously disappeared.”
“The baby was kept in the household and raised to be an enforcer,” Mark cut in. “Never legitimized.”
“Malik was a purist,” I spat distastefully. The man had been a royalty supremacist and believed in not tainting the Tkachenko bloodline. “He saw illegitimate children as cockroaches.”
Mark huffed. “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 questioned. The Tkachenko Bratva was run out of Moscow, and even though there was a presence in St. Petersburg, I couldn’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 couldn’t change. “And why under a different name?”
“There aren’t a lot of records from that time,” Mark admitted sheepishly. “We had to go old school and find the few people who were alive during Malik’s reign. Let me tell you, there weren’t a lot.”
“From what we gathered, Kirill made a lot of mistakes that cost Malik a shit ton of money.” Kenzi clicked the button in her hand. A new image appeared on the tablet. It was 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 could verify it for sure, but it appeared Malik forced him to use an assumed surname. One that couldn’t be traced back to him.”
“Makes sense,” Leon piped up from the back seat. “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 had an illegitimate son was one thing, but that same son being responsible for some of his failures? That would have had him in a rage.”
“So why not just kill him?” Mark wondered. “If he was such a purist, why keep him around and involve him at all? He didn’t involve any of his other offspring.”
I had a few theories, but none that I was willing to share now. The churning in my gut told me that there was 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 wondered aloud. “It seems a bit coincidental that your mother overdoses and then soon after that, he kicks you out on the street, never to be seen again.”
“Wasn’t there a big civil war that ended around that time, too?” Leon asked. “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 filled 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 told 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 hummed in surprise as he filtered through the data our informants had provided. “Funnily enough,” Mark continued. “The year he kicked you out the on streets was the same year Andrei Tkachenko legitimized Kirill.”
“What’s the significance of that?” Kenzi questioned, 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 elucidated. “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 sighed, running a hand through my hair, which was 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 noted.
Kenzi bit her lower lip, her eyes sinking to the bottom left. She was trying to conjure up a reason as much as anyone else. I’d asked myself that same question so many times over the years, and I’d never found an answer.
“Well, if Andrei was willing to legitimize Kirill, maybe Kirill thought he’d legitimize Matthias without asking?” There was skepticism in her voice. The scenario didn’t fit. “I mean,” she shrugged, “if he was worried about his wife finding out. That could be a reason.”
I shot her a sideways glance, one eyebrow raised, conveying just how little confidence I put in that statement.
She held up her hands. “Okay, so probably not the reason. Geesh,” she muttered 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 winked as she pressed the control to move the tablet’s viewer forward a few slides. “He’s in London.”
That was a hell of a lot farther from Russia than I had thought he would ever get. The man had 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 wondered, my tone darkening. Kenzi’s brows buried in her hairline as she took in my sudden demeanor change.
“He’s Pakhan of the local Bratva there,” she informed me, her eyes narrowing, waiting for me to explode. I wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t pissed off. I was in an information overload. The man I thought was dead was still alive. Kirill Kasyanov was the only name I had ever known 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 was Bratva royalty. Even illegitimately…
Shit, I had family. An uncle and cousins. Not just the brother I had murdered in self-defense.
“He was made Pakhan around ten years ago,” Mark informed 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 teased, trying to lighten the mood as we neared the private airstrip on the outskirts of Tukwila. My private jet was waiting for me, fueled and ready to go. Apparently, our trip would be leading to London rather than Russia, as I initially thought.
“He isn’t losing product to turf wars or thieves,” Mark clarified. “The money is just…disappearing. It’s in small enough amounts at a time that unless you were 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 questioned.
“He couldn’t afford to pick up product from the cartel.”
Leon whistled. “Yep, that is bound to draw attention.”
He was right. Wars had been started for less. The cartel ordered their product off how much each client was willing to pay. Usually, a couple of million. If Kirill had been unable to pay for the product the cartel had already ordered, he would be in some serious shit. The cartel would refuse to shove off the debt. They’d come after Kirill and his men until he was able to pay. And knowing the cartel, they wouldn’t just kill Bratva soldiers, but their wives and children, too. Until either no one was left, or they paid.
Either way, it would be bloody unless Andrei stepped in for his brother.
Fuck. Andrei Tkachenko was my motherfucking uncle. That was going to take some time to wrap my head around. Leon pulled the SUV into one of the spots near the hangar. Dima stood at the bottom of the flight of stairs with the pilot. When he saw us park, he gave a slight nod to the pilot, dismissing him before heading in our direction.
Dima was the obvious choice to take with me. He was young and smart and could easily blend into any given environment. Leon had been my runner-up, but his presence would too easily be noticed if he was gone. That, and he was going to be needed if shit hit the fan with the Italian Mafia here. Dante Romano had been MIA since our run-in with him at the small shipping port where we found the cash and shipping container.
It was thanks to the miscreant reporter Bailey that we managed to put a few more links in the chain on figuring out how Ward had been getting money into the United States from the Middle East. American dollars, at that.
“There’s one more thing you should see before you go.” Mark nodded through the screen at Kenzi, who dutifully changed the slide on the tablet.
“Recognize him?” she asked curiously.
My jaw clenched at the sight of the man before me on the screen. He was tall, almost as tall as me. The silver hair he’d sported was gone, replaced with a rich dark brown that screamed fake but somehow suited his face. I wondered which color he’d faked. He appeared younger than the videos and photographs my men had 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 wore a gray tweed Sebastian Cruz original that fit him like a glove. The wolf had shucked away his sheep costume.
“Jonathan Archer,” I sneered at the screen. “Tried to frame me for Elias’s murder.”
Kenzi shook her head.
“His name is Ivan Tkachenko and—” she informed me as she flipped to another slide. My blood froze as I stared at the image before me. The man’s hand was outstretched, the skin of his wrist barely visible, but I could still make out the familiar deformation that every man in my family carried. “He’s your cousin, and he’s been on your tail for the last ten years.”
Ten years? He’d been after me for ten years, and the first time I’d had any confirmation of this was in the past few months. What had taken him so long to make a move?
“It explains why he wanted that video.” Mark cleared his throat uncomfortably at the reminder of his betrayal. One I didn’t have the heart to hold against him. Most betrayals were met with a swift hand. A bullet between the eyes, and it was done. There was something about Mark, however, and whatever it was, I couldn’t bring myself to view his betrayal as malicious. Not like I had Ava’s.
“He was searching for proof,” I growled.
“Maybe not,” he told me.
“He must have just arrested me for fun, then,” I deadpanned.
Mark huffed impatiently. “The video clearly shows you acting in self-defense,” he stressed. “And the video wasn’t the only thing he was 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 reminded him dryly. “Most of us speak Russian.” Mark shrugged a shoulder.
“You were all busy,” he sighed. “I started deciphering the documents he went through most. One was the death certificate and autopsy report of Inessa Kasyanov and the other was your birth certificate.” He paused for a second, bringing a copy of the paperwork onto the tablet’s screen. I snatched it from the cradle to get a better look.
“I scoured the web for an Inessa Kasyanov,” Mark continued. “But there is nothing on her. No birth certificate, no fingerprint files, no parking tickets—nothing. She was like a ghost. Inessa Kasyanov didn’t exist. Which means—”
“She was made up,” I breathed, my brow furrowing as anger and sadness rushed through me. A geyser ready to erupt.
“Do you know her?” Kenzi asked tentatively, taking in my expression.
I nodded.
“She was my mother.”