Chapter 3
LEKS
That little scene by my bride-to-be was the perfect cover for us. Couldn’t have planned it better myself.
I mentally thank Arkady for the file on his brother’s relationship with the mafia.
Lucky break, choosing to bring him back from Siberia with me.
Even if he did come close to dying from that cough while we were in the freezing depths of the Arctic.
The Romanovs owe me one for bringing back their long-lost son.
Though they might not be my biggest fans after today.
All worth it to watch as Natalia Bryusova stormed down the aisle with triumph all over her face. More fire than I expected, for a girl so sheltered that she’s more of a myth than a person.
The uproar that went through the crowd after she made her dramatic announcement gave us the opportunity to go after Maksim. Even little old ladies were exchanging curse words over the church pews to the opposite side of the aisle.
It was only too easy to pull one man away from the chaos with a gun to his back and a relaxed smile threatened onto his face.
My men release him and Maksim Bryusov dusts himself off, looking disgusted. They keep their guns trained on him.
I’ve briefed them on exactly what a slippery bastard Maksim can be.
The old man pushes his glasses up his nose and narrows his eyes at me.
“Aleksandr Zhukov. You are supposed to be in a padded room in Siberia.”
I hold my arms out to show him the suit I’m wearing. Armani. A tuxedo. Bought it especially. You’ve got to splash out, for your wedding day.
“I thought New York’s climate suited me better.”
It is a beautiful day for a Bratva wedding.
Maksim is staring at me like he’s seeing a ghost. I won’t let him bring down the mood.
“I don’t get a welcome back?”
His lips press together as though he’s tasted something sour. I watch his throat bob.
“Wasn’t I your protégé, all those years ago, Maksim? What happened to that?”
The man gives a slight shake of his head, looking at me like I’m not worth oxygen. As if I’m not offering him this meeting, an opportunity to save his family, instead of destroying everything he is. I don’t let it get to me.
“Know what I really like about New York? The women. Your daughter’s beautiful, Maksim. Smart, too. I couldn’t stop laughing when she told that bastard where he could stick it.”
I tut my tongue. “Passing secrets to the mafia? That’s bad stuff. Do you want to send him to Siberia, too? Without a trial?”
Maksim’s face darkens with rage. “Release me and allow me to go back to my daughter’s wedding.”
“I don’t think there is a wedding anymore,” I point out. In fact, I’d be surprised if the Romanovs weren’t pulling guns on each other by now.
Maksim falls silent, so I take it upon myself to continue the conversation. “It didn’t seem like she was too keen on that guy. Felt more like a slave auction.”
He shakes his head, looking irritated at the reminder. “She doesn’t understand how important this is. You know what women are like. Or actually, I suppose you don’t.”
“Don’t worry, old man. There were women in Siberia. Just not the kind who look like your daughter with her golden hair and green eyes.”
Maksim is shaking now.
“You’ll never touch her.”
I shake my head, laughing. “You really don’t understand the stakes that we’ve got going here, Maksim. I know something.”
“What could you know?” he spits at me. “Make your point, Zhukov, or I’d very much like to get back to my daughter’s nuptials.”
“The thing about Siberia? No one was supposed to make it out alive.”
“Precisely. You’re an aberration.”
“An aberration who’s spent years living with the Bratva’s biggest secrets. With inside knowledge of what’s going on in this house and at the docks, old man.”
“Don’t you dare try to tell me my business.”
I don’t have to tell him a thing.
I lay out the files on the desk, one by one.
Then I take Maksim by the shoulders — he tries to fight me off, to no effect — and sit him in the chair so he can look at it.
All the information I have that could bring him down.
Information that shows the core of his business is crumbling right before his eyes.
“Right now, Yuri is in a cab driving across town to give this information to Viktor Zakharov. He’ll stop if I tell him to, and only then. And there’s only one way that I’ll make that call.”
Maksim shakes his head in disbelief as he shuffles through the papers.
Maybe it’s unthinkable that someone like me could have noticed what was going wrong.
“I estimate that half of the paintings you’re holding as collateral right now are forged, old man. Someone’s been screwing you this whole time, profiting off your weakness.” I grab his hair, yank his head back, and hold a knife to his throat to make my point.
“Zhukov. What do you want?” He lets out a choked gasp. It wasn’t even hard to storm his daughter’s wedding and take him. Maybe the old man has lost that rabid-dog cruelty and paranoia he used to have. It’s a shame for him, because those are the survival instincts you need to survive in the Bratva.
Even if I hadn’t escaped the Ivanov Center, Maksim would have been a sitting duck. Yuri had his own plans going. Now that we’ve joined forces, Maksim would have better odds of winning the lottery than holding onto his Bratva Council seat until the end of the year.
I release his head. Better to let him read and see there’s no way out of this.
“This empire is built on nothing. There’s no value to it. If anyone found out about this, the whole house of cards would come crumbling down.”
Fragile alliances. Uneasy peaces. Lines of territory.
All across the Bratva, the organized crime world, those deals are insured by Maksim Bryusov’s artworks.
An art dealer at the Ivanov Center had been to one of his fundraising dinners — the art foundation that is the “legitimate” side of the Bryusov business — and he’d seen a painting that he was sure was forged. He got shipped to Siberia when he started talking about it.
Yuri’s men, the Bratva enforcers at the docks, got us a sample of the merchandise that Maksim was importing and exporting. Then all we needed was an expert. Someone who could appreciate the finer details of art that all looks the same to an amateur like me.
All bullshit, if you ask me. But bullshit was suddenly critical to my business.
So I kidnapped a curator from the Met.
Funny that they say this kind of work can’t be rushed — when you put a gun to someone’s head, they work pretty fast.
“Forged,” the curator, a tall thin man with a ponytail, nodded after looking at the painting for twenty minutes.
“And you’re sure?” I gestured the gun at him loosely and he flinched. “You’re not just saying that because you think it’s what I want to hear?”
He shook his head, pointing out a detail near the ship’s bow which was apparently a sure sign. My eyes glazed over pretty quickly once he got on a roll.
“What about these ones?” I shoved him into the shipping container. There were about fifty paintings in there. Might take him a while, and I couldn’t really be bothered waiting around for it.
Art might get Maksim Bryusov hard, but it makes my eyes bleed. “Actually, we’ll leave you here overnight and you can tell us in the morning,” I drawled, flashing the gun so he got the message.
If all fifty haven’t been analyzed by the time I returned, the guy would be a dead man. Ponytail stood there stunned as he looked at the rows of artwork.
“These are… missing. No one has seen that painting in over 100 years.”
Yeah, buddy, this isn’t the Met.
“It’s your lucky day. I guess you found ‘em. Get to work.”
I don’t fucking understand art.
When we let Ponytail out in the morning — after a night of being locked in a temperature-controlled shipping container full of paintings and nothing else — he was buzzing.
He was certain half of the paintings in the vault were forged, while the others were real. He begged to come back to look at the real paintings. The one he was really obsessed with was by some French asshole with a forgettable name, and he tried to bore me with the details of how important it was.
“Please, let me come back and look at it.” He grabbed my jacket to make his case.
Bold move. I pulled my gun and waved it at him to let him know that I wasn’t running an art charity. He backed off real fast.
“This isn’t a fucking public gallery, buddy. Your work here is done.”
I nodded at my guards and they hauled the guy back to whatever dimly lit museum basement he inhabited.
All the records of deals involving these paintings, including signed statements from the curator, are in the files I’ve given to Maksim. It’s not like we’ve checked all of his paintings, either — this is the tip of the iceberg.
If the mafia got wind of this, the entirety of North America would erupt into mob wars. Years of truces that were painstakingly negotiated between rivals would go up in smoke.
Maksim’s face pales as he shuffles through the pages. He seems to be searching for something in particular.
I knock the butt of my handgun on the desk to get his attention.
“Here are my terms if you want to keep this quiet,” I gesture the gun at the pile of documents covering the table. “Non-negotiable.”
Maksim presses his hands together and turns to me with a cold stare.
“One. You can keep doing this art foundation bullshit, but the port is now our territory. You do not interfere, except for the secure vaults where the art is stored. How anything gets in and out of New York is no longer your business.”
He gives a tense nod.
“Two. My name comes off the blacklist. I’m back in New York, and I don’t plan on leaving again until well after you’re in a box.”
He narrows his eyes at me and lifts his chin slightly, which I take as a sign to continue.
“Three. I marry your daughter. Right now.”
At this last one his face breaks into a cold smile, his dim green eyes flicking to me with something like satisfaction. I guess he’s familiar with negotiating about his daughter’s weddings after four — no, make that five, after today — failed engagements.
“You want my seat on the Council.”
I shrug. “Everyone does.”
He presses a tongue to his cheek and I see the insults flash through his eyes. Probably something about my father being a nobody or my parents being unmarried. I know the way Maksim’s brain works, seeing the world in outdated hierarchies.
“You might think you have a foolproof plan, Aleksandr…” He says my name like it’s a piece of shit on the bottom of his shoe. I can tell that I’m in for a lecture. Maksim has always loved the sound of his own voice.
“…but of course, no scheme can change the fact that you are a simple brute. Marrying my daughter won’t change that, either. You’ll gain a Council seat, but you’ll have no idea how to use it. Is that what you want? Think carefully. I could make you a very rich man.”
These fucking people. Trying to tell me I don’t know what I want. I bundle my hands into fists.
“Your money doesn’t interest me.”
“It should. Money can be very useful, when you’ve got it.”
His words drip with disdain. I’ve been nice, until now, but rage starts to simmer beneath my skin.
That patronizing cunt.
“You have no idea what I’ve got planned for you, Maksim.
” I haul him out of his chair by the collar of his shirt and smash the butt of my gun across his forehead, satisfied at the flash of fear in his eyes.
He flinches when I lean close to his face to spit the words.
“This is only the start. I will take you for everything you are worth.”
I release him back into the chair, but my fists remain clenched.
“I knew it. No plan of yours would be complete without violence. You know, don’t you, that you’ll have to keep control of your emotions if you want to sit on the Council? It’s all about building relationships, Aleksandr.”
I blow a breath out my nose and take a lap of the room. I’m itching to get started on Maksim properly, but I don’t want to jeopardize my plan, not right now.
Wait until I’m named as the successor, officially, and then I can make the old bastard suffer for what I went through in Siberia. The freezing nights, the mind-numbing drugs, the utter humiliation, the terrible company, all of it.
Maksim Bryusov is going to pay.
When he speaks again, the mocking edge is gone from his voice. This is a business negotiation.
“The problem is, she’ll never marry you. She won’t marry anyone, as you saw today. Natalia is… Independent. Single-minded. Stubborn to the point of foolishness.”
“So I’ve heard.”
I’ve covered every eventuality, but Natalia is the one variable I couldn’t plan for.
She’s known for two things: jilting her fiancés at the altar, and the rumors that she has the body of a goddess.
She’s an enigma. Locked behind closed doors in the Bryusov household since the age of eleven, with private tutors going in and out and a few appearances at family dinners or parties, where she never seemed interested in speaking to anyone.
Nonetheless, there are several true believers in Natalia Bryusova’s attractiveness down at the docks, despite the exclusive invite lists to her weddings.
I have to reluctantly admit that the rumors may have been correct. The woman who ran out of the Romanov wedding is nothing but an angel. If angels had bodies that made you want to sin.
“Did you ever consider giving her a fiancé who didn’t have something to hide?”
“Everyone has something to hide.”
Too true, Mr. Bryusov. The thought of what I’ve left behind in Siberia tugs at the corner of my mind. I push the thought away.
I raise an eyebrow and gesture to the files. “Evidently.”
“The whole Bratva has secrets, Aleksandr. Trying to find an appropriate match for an heiress, well, it’s a difficult task that I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Funny, I never got an invite into that dating pool.”
These were the Bratva kids who came to our neighborhood to buy drugs and nothing else. Fyodor and Pyotr were the exception — but only because Maksim forced them to spend enough time at the docks that they got to know us. And actually learned how to work, for once in their sheltered little lives.
Maksim lets out a weary sigh and wipes a hand across his face. “If you think you can convince my daughter to walk down that aisle again today, you’re very wrong.”
“But if I can convince her, you won’t stop the match?”
He nods tightly, clutching the files to his chest.
“I will not stop the match. And you will not tell a soul what you’ve learned about the paintings.”