Denis is out working. I let him choose the men he trusts, and they’re making sure our shipments arrive and leave, that payments come through on time. Then there are new deals and shifts in the status quo here and there that we’re putting on stasis for now.
Some we may lose, and some we’ll keep. I’m okay with that. The strategic side of deal-making and moving the pieces on the bratva board is the side I know. I do it for Demyan—did it for Demyan—and I understand that pauses work.
Things are made stronger in the bratva’s standing because of it.
So in that regard, I’m not worried.
What I’m worried about is failing the mission at hand: finding Melor.
If I can find him, then I can work on Simonov. That’s a more complicated thing, Simonov. Part of the issue is that, like any smart play, Simonov—who has nothing against me on a personal level—is just conducting business.
Don’t get me wrong. I want him dead. But I understand the play.
Melor offered him a quick way of forming an alliance with the Belov Bratva, so he took the gamble. And lost. Now we’re enemies. He could offer me anything, and I wouldn’t be swayed.
The only saving grace in this, for him at least, is he didn’t touch Alina as far as I know.
That was Melor.
And touching her more than sealed his fate.
My stomach churns at the thought of her and those bruises. The gold rims of her blue irises seemed to flare bright when she saw me in that cabin. And?—
“Ilya, it’s done.” Denis limps in, a black cane with a gold tip in one hand. He shrugs. “I’m not bringing a crutch out on the field. This is less handy, but it looks better.” He grins. “And I hear looks are everything.”
I smile at his joke. “How many are jumping ship?”
“A few. We’ll know more in a few days. It’ll be a few, but less than I thought. Seems some are eager to see what a relationship will be like with the new pakhan.” He eases down onto the sofa, pulls out his phone, starts to scroll, but pauses to type. Then he looks up. “Family shit.”
He puts the phone away. “For some of the few, I ended the deals and withdrew from the possibility of alliance.”
He looks me in the eye.
I nod. “Why?”
“Because they pissed me off,” he says in Russian. “I don’t like being pissed off.”
I wait, but he doesn’t elaborate. I toy with pursuing it, but in the end, I don’t. They either did or said something to make him hesitate, so he showed them the door.
He wants to succeed, and he not only took a bullet for the bratva, but he stayed to help me and the men. I trust a man like that.
If he wanted me out, he’d have done it there and then, as the hero status would’ve been something he could have built on. Then he could have ousted Melor, or at the very least, worked with him.
In fact, it’s something he could still do.
He doesn’t, so I let it slide.
“Send me the reports,” I tell him.
“We’re effectively shuttered and running at bare minimum to keep things rolling. Next move?” he asks with a small nod.
I pour two drinks and hand him a vodka. “Find Melor. Put every man I have on that.”
“Which isn’t many.”
“Well,” I say, “we better get on it, then.”
Denis downs his drink and stands. “I’ll see what favors I can call in. And there are rumors as to why your wife isn’t here. My advice? Get her back.”
