“Pffft, forget him,” I mumble to myself.
I’ve had my fair share of one night stands and wild flings over the years. The last thing I needed tonight was going through that whole dance and ending up with some needy boy at six o’clock in the morning.
Screw that.
And yet… I haven’t actually been able to get him out of my mind since he left. We only spoke for a couple of minutes, and mostof that was him refusing to look at me, let alone give me a single indication that he might actually be interested.
I shake my head and take my phone out of my pocket. As usual, the screen is full of messages from my street soldiers. Men who up until a few weeks ago I would run alongside day and night, enforcing our law and making sure that the Kamedov name was being upheld at all costs.
Now, they look at me different.
I’m no longer their friend. I’m their pakhan.
And the truth is that I see them all differently too.
Could it have been one of them who either deliberately or inadvertently gave away my brothers’ location to a rival? The thought would have seemed absurd to me before. But not now. Right now it feels like every single one of them has got an agenda.
Are they trying to cozy up to me to gain a promotion?
Do they want to know my location to pass this on to whoever killed my brothers?
Might they be plotting to kill me and finish the family off for good?
“Another,” I bark, slamming my empty vodka glass down on the bar and scowling over toward the bartender. “And make it quick.”
The messages on my phone can wait.
And so too can anything and everything else in my life.
I’ve got vodka, and nothing but a long night to drown in…
* * *
“Wait…whowants to meet me?” I ask, my head thick with the fog of a truly nightmarish hangover.
“Volkov,” Padraig says. “Viktor Volkov.”
I look across the diner table and rub my eyes. Is Padraig talking about the Viktor Volkov? My brothers had plenty of run-ins with Viktor over the years, some of them good and some of them not so good.
“What the fuck does he want with me?” I ask.
“Says he wants a sit down,” Padraig answers. “Nothing major. No proposals on the table. A meeting.”
I grit my teeth before taking a gulp of the black coffee in front of me.
I try to run the play in my head. Viktor knows that my brothers are gone. He knows that I’ve been thrust into the situation of being pakhan. An operator like Viktor will probably sense that the family is weak, unstable, almost certainly not running like it did when my brothers were in total control of things.
I’ve heard all about the moves that Volkov has made over the years. The Downtown Devil is a nickname you get for a reason, after all. The idea of walking into a meeting with him sounds like just about the most insane thing I could possibly contemplate right now.
And then there’s Padraig…
He’s been my running mate for years. Irish blood, but a Russian heart. That’s how we’ve always seen Padraig. By the time he was fifteen, he practically lived at our mother’s house. And the two of us being the same age meant that I never went without company while my brothers were out there making moves without me.
But when it comes down to it, Padraig has always known that there would be a limit to how far he could climb in the business as long as he stayed with us. The bloodline isn’t there for him to reach the top. He’s always known that. And, so far, it hasn’t been a problem. But people change over time. And I’d be a fool to imagine that Padraig would be immune from the kind of jealousy, spite, and low down underhand bullshit that almost every other damn person on this planet is capable of.
“Problem, Kane?” Padraig asks. “Sorry,pakhan, I should say.”
“Kane is just fine,” I reply, my bleary eyes staring deep into Padraig’s bright blue eyes. “You say that Viktor contacted you personally?”
