Page 3 of Fractured Ties

At all.

Kolya had already thrown on the black slacks and he left the black dress shirt unbuttoned when he passed by Konstantin on the way out the door. He’d button it up in the car because he had already wasted enough time. Vadim would be worked up enough as it was, without Kolya adding to it.

“You should have splashed some water on your face,” Konstantin said. “Showered, yeah? You smell like you bathed in cheap vod—”

He punched his brother hard in the arm, a silent warning for Konstantin to back the fuck off before he got Kolya worked up.

Konstantin bared his teeth. “Mudak.”

Kolya laughed darkly as he headed down the dimly lit hallway with his brother on his heels. “Ouch, that hurts my soul.”

“Nothing hurts you,” Konstantin said when he moved ahead of Kolya to grab the door for him, “I don’t think you even have a fucking soul to hurt.”

“Nyet. I have a soul—I just don’t own it anymore.”

Kolya tossed the keys for his Hummer to Konstantin over his shoulder without even looking back. He heard Konstantin catch the keys, and smirked. Sure, he ribbed his brother a lot, and the two were at each other’s throats more often than they weren’t.

But at the end of the day?

At the end of every single day?

Konstantin was still a Boykov. He was still Kolya’s brother, and Vadim hadn’t beaten enough lessons into his oldest son yet to make him forget it, either.

It meant something to Kolya.

At least for now.

“You drive,” Kolya called. “I’m not legal, brat.”

At least he was walking straight, though. That had to count for something. Maybe by the time they made it across the city to where Vadim was waiting with whatever fresh hell he was ready to lay at their feet, he wouldn’t look like he just woke up from a night-long bender.

Unlikely.

One could still hope.

Konstantin made a noise in the back of his throat. “Begging for Vadim to throw a fit, Kolya.”

Maybe he was.

Maybe he fucking was.

• • •

If there was anything Vadim Boykov loved more than money, and pliable, compliant men in the business of the Bratva, it was his theatrics. Sometimes, those theatrics came in the forms of lessons he liked to teach his men, and other times, they manifested in nothing more than Vadim showing off in a variety of ways.

Kolya never really understood his father’s need for those sorts of things, and he rarely found himself surprised by them anymore.

Walking into the Four Seasons hotel room to see two young ladies—likely a couple of years younger than him—dressed in what looked to be only short, white silk robes was nothing uncommon for Vadim. Both young women were draped over the four-poster bed, rolled onto their stomachs with their legs high in the air to give just a peek of their backsides beneath the robes, and overlooking magazines or some other nonsense.

The sheer curtains on the four-poster bed had been pulled as if to shield the girls from the view of the men, but that was only for show, too. Vadim meant for the girls to be seen, in the same way he demanded that his men didn’t look at them for longer than it took to notice they were actually there.

The women didn’t pay the entering men any mind.

Too busy pleasing his father with their games, likely. Pretty, young women were a favorite of Vadim’s, and he preferred to keep one or two on call for whatever his fancy was on any given day. Back when Kolya was a teenager, seeing this sort of thing had affected him much differently than it did now.

Back then, his mother had still been alive. Cervical cancer was the worst kind of monster because it took without care or concern, caused terrible suffering that couldn’t be appeased, and stayed hidden until it was already too late.

God rest my mama’s soul.