26. Demin
DEMIN
Once the last of my men files out I lock the door behind them.
In the time we've spent here in Berlin, I haven't locked this door once—not even when I took Isabela on my desk.
But the only man I trust fully now is Mishka, and only because no one would be foolish enough to blow himself up knowing he'll never get to receive any of the benefits.
But he has to keep an eye on the others for me.
This job must be done alone.
I slink to my desk and sit down, easing into the chair to help stave off the worst of the pain from the bruising.
Taking a beating like that means I can't sit right, can't lie down, and when I try to relax, the ache throbs all the way to the bone.
The man who did this to me deserves equally as brutal punishment, but he will receive worse, as soon as I have confirmation of who he is.
The vodka pours smoothly into the glass tumbler as I pull out my tablet and swipe to unlock the screen.
Sebastian is awaiting a report on how Cruz is doing in my basement, and he's not going to like what I have to add into that report.
Things have escalated beyond our average intel leak.
This situation has become deep betrayal, one that must be recompensed immediately.
The screen flashes to life and his face appears as the call dials through, surrounded by a blue flashing ring that glows and pulses. When the call connects, it goes black for a second before Sebastian appears in the flesh, smoking a cigar.
"Nephew… it's late…" He sounds a little too chipper for this hour, though with a new chemist cooking product for us and cutting out the middle man, it's going to make him a very wealthy leader of this family.
"Yeah, well, I can't sleep." I cut short the part about the bruises from head to toe that make it impossible to breathe without feeling the ache.
"How's our new friend?" He takes a long drag from his cigar and leans back in his chair.
I see the shadows under his eyes indicating he hasn't been sleeping well either, and I can commiserate.
Just venturing into Berlin has been stressful.
Now add to this the fact that I have a real issue with my men and Solano's revenge attacks—it's heightened everyone's senses to alert modes.
"He's finally doing something." When I think of how long it took me to get Octavio to work, I want to scream, but he's at that bench daily now, producing product that's far superior to what Solano gave us, which means Solano's men cut it with something and made it weaker.
"Good, good… and the girl?" Sebastian's hand moves off screen for a second and when it returns there is less ash on the cherry of his cigar. "What do you have her doing?"
I haven't shared much about my position with Isabela other than to make sure Sebastian knew how beneficial she is to motivating her father. At this point, I have to say something, but it'll be the least of his concerns.
"In my bed," I say, waiting for his response. His eyes narrow but he doesn't say anything. A simple grunt of acknowledgement greets me so I change the subject. "Look, Uncle, we have a real problem, and it's worse than I thought."
The past twenty-four hours flashes through my mind in a blur, making tension lace through my shoulders and into my chest. Near-death experiences never become a random event no matter how many times they happen, and today was no different.
If I let it, the shock will consume me. But I use it to motivate myself to find the man responsible.
I can't get stuck in a spiral of feeling my vulnerability.
"Yes, how is that going? Your outside man—"
"Sergei," I grunt, finally ready to admit my folly. "I hired him to come in and look through things and—"
"What the fuck?" Sebastian doesn’t sound angry as much as shocked, but he should be angry. He should be enraged that a man he didn't have full confidence in had any opening to examine his business practices here.
"Look, I know what you're thinking and you’re right.
" I run a hand over my face then down my drink so he sees how tormented I am by this.
I should've trusted my gut and known Mishka could be trusted.
Bringing Sergei in was unnecessary, but the recent problems aren't his fault.
This started happening before him. I'm just not entirely sure he hasn't turned a blind eye when he should be reporting to me.
"Then I don't have to tell you how foolish that was…" Sebastian takes another puff of his cigar and asks, "What have you uncovered? What is he even doing?"
The problem is, Sergei has given me the same chatter I've already known about.
He hasn't done anything useful for me, and right under his nose, he let someone plant a fucking bomb in my armored SUV.
Either he's complicit or he's slipping, no longer fit for this life. Either way, I can't lean on him.
"I know nothing more now than I knew three weeks ago, Seb.
The whole exercise of bringing in an outsider has been pointless.
" Anger claws at the back of my mind. Sergei fucked with Isabela, sure, but he hasn't done anything else inherently wrong.
And this isn't his fault. He came in to do a job for me, but he's not able to produce results.
I should be upset with whoever did actively sabotage my shipments and stage attacks, not a former friend.
Still, that's where my anger wants to migrate.
"So you hired the bastard to get you intel and he's failing… Not shocked by that at all." He taps more ash from his cigar and sets it down, then leans forward toward his tablet, clasping his hands in front of himself. "It sounds like you have a nice mess on your hands, Demin."
"That's not all…" The worst part is coming and I haven't got the courage to really tell him.
He won't be pleased with this, but he has to know the full picture.
Only then can I move forward with what I know I need to do, and I'll have his blessing to do it.
Mishka, Sergei, and I will have to re-vet every single man in my ranks and quickly, keeping them isolated as we go.
"Tell me," he growls, clearly not pleased.
His face contorts into a deep scowl and his lip flicks out over his bottom lip angrily.
I don't think anyone has even mentioned this to him, and probably for good reason.
If he thought for a second that things were jeopardized, I'd be closing ranks faster. Maybe I should have already.
"Someone planted a car bomb on my SUV and nearly killed both me and Mishka and—"
"You've got to be kidding me!" His hand slams down on his desk.
"Did you call in Efraim or Leonid? Why am I just hearing about this?
" This anger isn't at my failure to secure my vehicle or my folly in hiring a man he doesn't trust. This is his reaction to almost losing the head of his team in Berlin.
"I'm coming… I'll be on the first plane there in—"
"No," I say firmly. "I'll call Leonid and Efraim if you want, but you don't have to waste a trip." My brother and my cousin will help me handle this swiftly. I don’t need our Pakhan risking his life on this situation. I welcomed the attacks by kicking the hornets' nest. I have to do this myself.
"How bad was it? When did it happen?" He relaxes a little, but the deep crevices in his forehead persist, even as he takes another puff of his cigar.
"This afternoon… and it was bad. We could've died, and when it was over, there was a hit team Mishka chased off." If Bart hadn't come when he did, I may have suffered longer from shock, but I keep that part to myself.
Sebastian stews, shaking his head and rambling in Russian—swear words and threats aimed at Solano and whoever is clearly working with him from within our ranks, then turns back to the camera and glowers at it. The deep breath he sucks in is then released as a long sigh as he rubs his face.
"You're not the only one under attack, Nephew.
" There's a bit of hesitation in his voice now, something that warns me this is bigger than I feared.
"We've had a few attacks here in Moscow.
I brushed them off as random gang violence, but I can't pretend it's not happening now.
Whoever is leading this is there in Berlin, and they are pulling strings, trying to weaken us. "
If this has spread to our home turf in Moscow, it's bigger than we both thought, and that means Sebastian really shouldn’t be here. He needs to be fighting the front lines there at home.
"So, how do we handle this? Because I have some ideas…
" The thought of interrogating each and every one of my men is daunting, but I've narrowed it down to just a few I know had the right connections.
Still, it will take days, and what worse catastrophe will happen?
Will they try to kill my uncle? Will they plan another attack on me?
"I give you my full authority to purge this entire family tree if you must. Light it on fire, watch the snakes burn. But get them out of my house."
The screen goes black as he hangs up, and I pour another few fingers of vodka into a glass. My fearless leader might still be fearless, but he's not emotionless. Rage has become the undercurrent of this family lately and it's time we put a stop to it.
I down the vodka in one swallow and set the glass on the desk, then I push myself up out of the chair, carrying the ache instead of letting it own me.
There's no use sitting here drinking and stewing on it.
A man doesn't smoke out a traitor from behind a desk, and the longer I sit, the longer whoever did this gets to breathe easily thinking I'm still flat on my back licking my wounds.
I head to my armory that only four men have the code to, and after tonight, I'm thinking three is too many.
I can count on two fingers the men I trust—myself and my right hand.
I key the code in and the lock releases, but when I step inside, Mishka's already there, sitting on the bench with a rag and his sidearm field-stripped in front of him, cleaning it anxiously.
"Couldn't sleep either?" he asks, not looking up.
"No." I cross to the far rack and start pulling what I need, clips first, then the spare rounds, stacking them on the bench beside his pistol. "I just got off with Sebastian. He's given me his blessing to handle it however I see fit, which means I'm gonna need you in this with me."
Knowing he has my back makes this easier. If I were entirely alone, I might be tempted to purge every motherfucker who ever set foot on my property.
"However you see fit." Mishka finally looks up at me, and there's a grim understanding in his face. He's been with me long enough to know what those words mean coming from our Pakhan. "All of them?"
"Every man who had the access. There's no other way, Brother." I thumb rounds into a clip, one after another. Just having something distracting to do with my hands keeps my mind from going to places too dark to come back from. "It'll be the two of us running it together."
I sense him tensing. "And the new guy?" When he pauses his work and looks up at me, I realize he's questioning Sergei too. The problem is the hits and the betrayal started before Sergei came here.
"We vet him too…" Nothing in my life has prepared me for this. Doubting my own men has never been a thing that crossed my mind.
Mishka grunts and goes back to reassembling his weapon, sliding the parts together. "And if it turns out to be Sergei or he's involved?"
It needles at my conscience because that thought shouldn't be crossing my mind, but how can I not question it?
He let someone walk right into my property and plant a bomb in my SUV.
If he's not the leader, there's still a chance he's following someone within my ranks who pulled him aside before he remembered he's supposed to be loyal to me.
"Then I'll deal with Sergei." I have to stay objective and keep my emotions out of this. "But I'm not going to decide a man's guilty because I'm angry. We find the proof first, and then we act on it, and not the other way around."
He nods at that, and we work in silence for a while, loading weapons. After a while of the monotonous rhythm, I begin to relax. Time has a way of helping the steam dissipate and I find myself thinking about things besides this situation. My mind drifts and it lands on her.
Underneath all of it, beneath the bomb and the leak and the whole rotten mess of the family tree I'm about to set fire to, the thing that's actually driving me is a woman asleep in my bed.
Somewhere tonight, a man I trusted tried to kill me.
If they'd taken me, they'd have come for her next.
There's no doubt in my mind. And the thought of what Solano's men would do to Octavio Cruz's daughter to make a point puts a cold weight in my chest.
I have spent weeks pretending that I didn't need or want her, that she's nothing more than an asset or leverage, and worst of all, that she's a complication.
All of it has been a coward's way of not saying the simple truth, that somewhere between pulling her out of that crate and watching her wash my blood away, she became the one thing in this world I'm not willing to lose.
And when this is finished, when the snakes are burned out of my house and there's nothing left to threaten her, I'm going to make her my wife. Because I want her to wear my last name so proudly, no man on earth would dare think of touching her.
It's confirmation enough that I love her.
"Let's go find our traitor," I tell Mishka, and he stands. When his weapons are holstered, we head for the door. We have snakes to root out and predators to kill. And we have to do it before they threaten the woman I love any further.