23. Adrik
ADRIK
M aksim followed me into the office. Alexei was on his phone with the informants who’d reached out to us this morning. Downstairs, Elena stood with Viktor and Nikolai, who’d come to assist with this news.
No matter how far I went up the stairs, no matter how many feet stood between us, I felt Elena’s stare on my back. The pressure of her attention.
Last night, I couldn’t bring myself to stay with her.
I was already intimidated by being in too deep with her.
I couldn’t let her consume me with this need for her.
How could I set myself up for that when I was in the thick of looking into the possibility of my uncle not only being alive but also forming a network to attack us?
How could I allow her to mess with my head when I had to get to the bottom of why Morovov Financials seemed to think I trusted them with my accounts?
“Had I not learned that Elena was the one actually handling the accounts, I would have yanked it all from Morovov that fucking day,” I told my brother.
Alexei was off the phone now, joining in the conversation as we went to my office. Wait . My father’s office. It still didn’t feel like mine.
Fuck. I didn’t need this to trip me up now. It was my place and I was in charge. I had to accept it.
“And I still think that was the smart move,” Alexei said.
“You had every reason to kill that motherfucker for that shipment not sending as expected due to supposed insufficient funds, which weren’t insufficient,” Maksim said. “That was the least he could’ve deserved for such a fuckup.”
“But by letting him think that you only wanted to punish him somehow, and stay a client of his firm, it gave us the time to see what he was trying to do,” Alexei said.
It was all a trap. “Yes, but we have only been able to play this game of spying on them and what they do with our accounts because Elena has been here.”
I sat in the huge chair and sighed. I’d barely gotten any sleep.
After I walked back, leaving Elena asleep on the floor tucked in with the blankets, it wasn’t but a couple of hours later when I got the news that John Morovov was wiping smaller accounts clean and trying to make a run for it.
None of the main Volkov accounts were touched.
He’d emptied a smaller fund, but it was still fucking theft.
Sacha and Igor confirmed that without Elena’s help.
But her father had taken other money from clients—clearly spooked by something—and wanted to leave the country.
“I just want to know what the fuck he’s been up to,” I growled.
“He’s got to be included or at the very least aware of what this shadow network is doing,” Alexei said.
“Fuck.” Maksim ran his hand down his face. “If Gregori is alive, and he’s forming an alliance that could go against us?—”
I held up my hand. “Stop. We’re not going to assume he is alive. We will continue to investigate that, but right now, we need to handle John Morovov fucking us over. Again.”
Nikolai and Viktor were with Elena. Not to babysit her or cuff her to stay here, but because they were less likely to lash out in anger than I was.
As if she was summoned merely from us talking about her and her father, she was escorted into the room.
All of us, except Lev, were in here now. He was handling the supervision of a crew driving out to stop Morovov from fleeing.
Elena walked into the office with a somber, worried expression. I could tell that she sensed something was very wrong and that it meant something would have to happen in retaliation, but first, I needed more answers.
Despite how badly I wished we could just be us , drawn to each other and fitting so perfectly together, I couldn’t go soft on her. This was too serious, too important.
If John Morovov got away with stealing even a single penny of Volkov money, it would be a sign of weakness. It would be a signal that I wasn’t handling everything like I should as the interim Pakhan.
And if that fucker ran with our money and we didn’t rush after him to make him pay for that transgression, we’d never be seen as a top power in the city or anywhere else. Our empire, our reputation, was at stake.
“I only just started to track what he’s doing,” she said quietly, almost meekly as she approached the desk.
Alexei moved aside while Maksim brought a chair over for her to sit.
She lowered to the seat and opened the laptop.
“He’s drained accounts just hours ago.” She glanced at me, almost nervously, as if she was going to add that it had to have happened in the middle of the night when I had been with her.
I heaved out a steady breath, focusing.
“The only account of yours is a smaller one, just a surplus, like a change account to be able to move funds around smoothly. But while I was in the program, I saw that he’s cleared out multiple accounts for other clients.”
“Whose?” Viktor asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. The identification that I have access to is coded.
It’s just like how I never knew who you were, or whose the Volkov accounts were until I came here and learned what was what.
Numbers and serial IDs were always used for that ambiguity.
I don’t know who he’s taken money from. But…
” She licked her lips and cringed. “I can speculate—I can’t tell for sure yet without cross-referencing my notes—but I can speculate that he has not taken any money out of those unclaimed shell company accounts. ”
Fuck.
I felt my heart speed up as dread kicked in.
“You mean any of the shell companies that are connected to the network that Gregori could be behind?” I asked, my voice lethally low.
She nodded, still cringing. “Yes. I believe so. Again, I can’t tell without checking my notes, but… it looks like that.”
All while she sat here with us, upfront and professional, she showed no sign of affection toward her father.
For the man who was supposed to call himself her father.
Not once since she’d come to be with me, under my charge, had she expressed any emotion of missing him. Or of wondering about how he was doing.
Suspicion, yes. She suspected her father of terrible things.
And she wasn’t a fan of him after he’d given her to me.
I understood that. What also got my attention was that she didn’t have any personal stories about him.
We hadn’t had much time to talk, and I had been careful not to give her the idea we could be friends, but the one time she’d opened up to me with something personal about her life or past, she’d shared about her mother who’d passed away.
Regardless of her feelings about her father, I had to make her realize what would happen now.
“No one can steal from our Bratva and get away with it,” I stated, watching her coldly.
She nodded. “That’s… that makes sense.”
Does it?
Maksim and I shared a look, always quick to check if we were on the same page with a decision.
“You need to confront the reality that your father’s actions have consequences,” I told her.
She didn’t nod as quickly as this time, but she lowered her gaze with something like defeat. Like agreement. “I… I know. Just like he had to face the consequences of letting a mistake happen before. You came there to, to, to punish him, and he avoided that by offering me to you.”
“He is out of options, Elena. There is no loophole or bargaining counteroffer this time.”
She bit her lip and faced me.
“He must pay for what he’s done,” I stated coldly as I stood. “I will personally show him what happens when someone tries to steal from my family, when someone plans to two-time me and fuck with our accounts.”
She exhaled a shaky breath and nodded. “I… I understand.”
Is she scared because she thinks she’s included in this decision?
That I’m going to kill her?
Or is she upset and wanting to spare his life because she’s too good to wish anyone harm?
I gave Nikolai and Viktor a long look until I was confident that they understood what I expected.
Viktor nodded. Nikolai did too before glancing at her sitting there, her head hanging low with her chin almost touching her chest.
They’d stay with her until I was back.
Until I was back from executing her father.
Everyone in this room knew that was what I’d meant.
I would kill him myself, both out of anger that he’d fucked with my family and because I had to make an example out of him again.
“How about we go down to your office, Elena?” Viktor said.
“And we’ll keep looking into the, uh, damage in the accounts,” Nikolai said
I left with Maksim and Alexei, fully aware that my two youngest brothers were trying to preoccupy her.
An hour later, though, as I stood in the desert where my men had brought John Morovov after capturing him at the airport, I dared him to hold back on an answer.
He begged.
Bartered.
Pleaded.
He tried to play with my loyalties, reminding me that he’d given me his only daughter and that connected us now.
Then he argued.
Negotiated—horribly.
And begged for mercy some more.
No matter how hot the sun was as it baked on him, making every gaping wound and cut on him from my men and me burn, he refused to admit that he knew anything.
Dodging, lying, fudging, and hedging. He refused to admit that he knew what we were talking about.
Only once I realized that he wasn’t going to give me a single answer did I raise my gun and pull the trigger.
If he knew anything about that shadow network, if he knew anything about my uncle being alive, he was unfortunately taking it to the grave.
On the way back, as I used a handkerchief from a guard to wipe the blood off my hands, I accepted that I would now have to shoulder the emotional cost of removing Elena’s father, the last of her family.