Page 124 of Fractured Ties

It worked for him.

The brothers didn’t waste time once they were inside the bar. A few thousand dollars into the right hands had given them floor plans and all the information they’d needed as to what the inside of this place looked like, and where the important shit went down. It was a Friday night—Fridays always meant Saban’s men showed up to pay their dues while he sipped on expensive liquor in a private section of the bar.

Kolya was the first of the two brothers to enter the main floor of the bar. He pulled back the trigger on his rifle in quick succession and let bullets pepper a wall, bottles on shelves behind the bar, and even the ceiling. The noise and surprise attack sent several people to the floor to protect what they could—fucking predictable.

With the few extra seconds that gave them, Kolya and Konstantin quickly slipped through the bar to the back rooms. Kolya kept his AR aimed at anyone who looked like they might shoot back.

“Fuck,” Konstantin muttered as they rounded a corner.

There, at the end of the hallway, two Albanians stood with their own weapons already aimed and ready to fire. They’d expected this to happen, but Konstantin always liked to have hope that shit would be easier than it was. He was the optimist—Kolya was the fucking realist.

There they stood like a bunch of fucking idiots with guns aimed at the Albanians while they stared down their fucking guns, too.

“There’s no exit out of that room you’re trying to protect,” Kolya told the men, “so how about you step the fuck aside, and let us go talk to Saban, yeah?”

The one on the left spat something at them in a language Kolya couldn’t understand. Already, he was sick and tired of this shit. Entirely over it and ready to draw some blood.

“Relax,” Konstantin murmured.

“Stop pointing it out,” he barked back.

His brother rolled his eyes. He was seriously going to punch Konstantin for this shit.

They didn’t have to play chicken for very long with the two fools. The backup they’d been waiting for stormed the bar with bullets flying. Kolya smirked a bit as Russians started to fill up the hallway behind him.

Not all ten, no.

A few had to stay on the floor.

It was still enough to well outnumber the two down the hall.

Then, Vadim came, too. The men separated for their Pakhan to walk through without a word. Including Konstantin and Kolya. Vadim didn’t pass them a look, but he came without a weapon in his hands and no Kevlar strapped to his chest like the rest of the men.

Maybe his way of being so fucking arrogant it was ridiculous, but it was more likely his way of offering a hand of trust to the Albanians.

Or both.

Likely both.

Vadim smiled. “Tell Saban he has a meeting with Vadim Boykov, and I don’t like to wait.”

His father offered those words to the waiting men but said them more than loud enough for whoever was inside the private room to hear. It took all of ten seconds for one of the Albanian’s head to turn to glance inside the room before he came back to Vadim with a nod.

Wordlessly, they stepped aside.

Kolya almost let out a sigh of relief. There really was no other way this could have ended, what with their plans, but sometimes, people got fucking cocky. One could never prepare enough and trust that everything would go exactly as planned.

Vadim gestured with one hand for the men to go ahead of him. Kolya went first, with Konstantin and the rest following behind. Guns lifted and aimed. Ready to shoot the first thing that moved.

The men inside the room sitting around various couches and chairs were not an unexpected sight. Given this was the night Saban’s men came to pay him, they expected Albanians. A lot of them.

Hoped for it, really.

There was only one Kolya really gave a fuck about. The moment he laid eyes on him in the corner—Valbon Gashi—that’s where he went. Kolya dropped the pretenses; he no longer cared about the fucking plan.

The barrel of his rifle met Valbon’s head so hard that the man’s skull cracked against the plaster of the wall behind him. Kolya was sure his gaze burned with iciness as the Albanian stared up at him.

“Where the fuck is she?” Kolya demanded.