Page 127 of Fractured Ties

“I’m concerned it may be a bit late.”

“I certainly hope not.” Saban shifted in his chair. “What else can I do for you tonight, to begin correcting this process?”

Vadim gestured at the man Kolya was still holding hostage. “You can make him tell us everything we need to know to retrieve the woman.”

“Fuck you, you—”

“Shut up!” Saban barked at Valbon.

Vadim continued on like the exchange hadn’t even happened. “He clearly has information—we need it.”

Saban stood from his chair, and Kolya saw from the corner of his eye as the man opened a hand up to the Albanian beside him. A knife was handed over. “Give me an hour, then.”

• • •

Kolya gazed over the flickering lights on the tarmac just outside the port windows of the plane as the wheels finally touched down. New York was not unfamiliar to him in a sense of what and where it was. As a place he enjoyed being, though? That sentiment couldn’t be further from the truth.

The jet’s wheels bounced on landing, which made a few people sitting around him shift in their seats, clearly uncomfortable.

Kolya didn’t care. He had other things on his mind. He was so fucking close to Maya now that he could practically feel it thrumming in his heart. A solid, steady beat that threatened to entirely throw him off his game if he didn’t focus.

“Saban was sure?” he heard Vadim ask from the next row over.

“Positive.”

His father grunted something indecipherable. Saban had needed less than an hour, actually, to draw all the information he wanted to get out of Valbon. Including how he’d agreed to work with Vasily through Alexei because he figured it would be better for the Gashi organization in Chicago once the Markovic bastard took over the Boykov faction.

Kolya wished he could be surprised that Vasily Markovic was involved, and basically the brains of this whole operation. He couldn’t be too shocked, though, because snakes were always going to be snakes at the end of the day.

God knew Vasily had a hard fucking nut for Chicago—always had, too. Some things never changed, and nothing was as it appeared in this business.

The only good thing about this whole shitshow?

Kazimir wasn’t involved.

He might be the only Markovic man next to his brother who would come out of this unscathed once Vadim was done with all of them. But that really depended on a hell of a lot of things, too.

And Vadim was fickle.

The plane taxied to the end of the runway, but Kolya was already unsnapping his belt and getting up to walk to the front. He didn’t feel the need to wait, even as the one flight attendant on the private jet asked him to sit back down until the plane stopped moving. He simply brushed her off with a wave of his hand, and a glare.

Vadim spoke as Kolya waited near the front of the plane. “You may take one man with you to help with getting the woman back.”

Kolya passed his father a look. One man? What good would one man do for him? “Why did we bring a small army, then?”

Not really a small army—about ten Boykov men who were willing and capable of doing something like this. Storming a warehouse, and removing something—or in this case, someone—from within before disappearing without a sign that they were there to begin with other than the carnage they left behind.

Vadim tipped his chin up as arrogant as ever. “They are here for me.”

Ah.

Once again, Kolya was unsurprised.

“One man,” his father repeated. “Pick one.”

Kolya quickly ran through the men on the plane, and which ones had the skills that might be most useful to him in this moment.

Konstantin was quick to speak up. “I would like to go with him, then. I will go as a third.”