Page 53 of Fractured Ties

A lot like the Boykovs.

Kolya suspected it was all true.

He still wasn’t bothered or concerned by Idriz, even as the Albanian’s gaze lingered on him for a beat in time as though he were sizing him up. Just as quickly, Idriz nodded at Kolya without as much as a greeting and strolled down the hall with his man on his heels.

It was only when Kolya couldn’t hear echoing footsteps that he crossed the space, and knocked on his father’s office again, even though Vadim could have just used his fucking speaker to allow his son entrance. He didn’t bother to wait for his father to grant him access to the office, instead just opened the door and walked on in.

Vadim sat behind his large oak desk with his back to Kolya and a phone pressed to his ear. In the corner, his father’s right-hand man, Grisha, overlooked papers in a file and didn’t even glance up at Kolya’s entrance.

“I will see what we can do to try and make that happen, Vasily,” Vadim said, still turned around in his chair, “but I make no promises, comrade.”

Kolya cleared his throat, but his father only lifted a single hand in response as if to shush him from saying or asking anything else.

“It’s the best I can do,” Vadim said after a beat of silence. “I’m sure you’ll come up with a suitable counteroffer, no? I’ll wait for it.”

Vadim said nothing else as he turned in his chair—giving Kolya the perfect view of his father’s annoyed expression—before he pressed a button on the phone’s base and then set the phone on the cradle.

“Still trying to work a deal on an order?” Grisha asked from the corner, never looking up from his work.

“You know how Vasily Markovic is,” Vadim returned.

Grisha nodded, but said nothing.

Vadim’s sharp gaze fell on Kolya. “Since when have you forgotten how to wait after you knock?”

“I assumed your non-reply was my okay.”

“You assumed wrong.”

“My mistake.”

Vadim scowled. “Don’t make too many of those. I would have to start correcting them, Kolya.”

That thinly veiled threat barely even brushed Kolya’s shoulders with tension. His father’s lessons had been coming for him ever since he’d learned to talk back. They’d only become harder and more brutal as he aged.

Vadim had always been a heavy-handed man.

At least, to his boys.

“Are we doing business with the Albanians?” Kolya asked.

Vadim leaned back in his large chair, and steepled his fingers together as he eyed Kolya. “In a sense, yes.”

“And what sense is that? Separation of church and state, as you like to say. We don’t usually do very much business with other Chicago families, unless it’s absolutely necessary. Tends to keep the peace in the city.”

Sure, they did the occasional small deal with the Albanians should they run short on something for their own streets. The Albanians were heavy into the drug trade, and while the Boykovs had their own connections and shops set up to cultivate what they could, they still needed to stock up in certain cases. The Albanians were close in that way. When the time called for it.

That was about the extent of their business relationship, however. It certainly wasn’t enough for Vadim to be inviting the second in command for the Albanians into the Compound.

“And then perhaps this is necessary, no?” Vadim finally returned, raising one straight, thick brow as if to ask Kolya to question him one more time. “We have a small deal coming up that they brokered for someone else—something they approached me with a while ago. I need to keep the peace with them long enough to see it through.”

Kolya wasn’t entirely sure what his father was going on about, but he also didn’t like the sounds of it. At the same time, he had gotten one of Vadim’s looks and it was more than enough to keep him from questioning his father on the topic more.

Vadim hated to be questioned.

Through the exchange, Grisha remained quiet in his seat as he flipped through whatever papers were in that folder. Vadim waited long enough for Grisha to find something in the folder, which he brought over to his boss and then took his seat once more. Vadim didn’t give the paper a second look; his gaze was firmly on Kolya.

“Well?” he asked. “Where is it?”