Page 76 of Marked By the Devil

What would this mean for my staying in this Mafia family?

27

VIKTOR

The spy shrugged and took another hit on his joint. “All I’m saying is what I’m hearing.” He shook his head.

Alexei and I exchanged a glance. The supervisor at the club had called us to come and listen to what he’d picked up from a few guests. Little did they realize that they were being monitored in that VIP room. And little did they realize that this specific club on the Strip was one of our businesses. It wasn’t formally known as a Volkov property. My father had dabbled with having some legitimate businesses that weren’t funded by our illegitimate businesses. The two men bragging about counting on a big paycheck were giving us tips that we really could use, though.

Alexei rubbed his face and let out a deep breath. “All right. Run this by me again. From the beginning.”

The manager indicated for the spy to speak up.

“They were talking about a big score coming up. Setting some places on fire, breaking in and smashing up places⁠—”

“Details,” I said.

He nodded and sighed heavily. “Sorry, Boss. Sorry. I’m just so fucking tired. Wife just had a baby and I’m not sleeping for shit anymore. Uh…” He rubbed his head again. “Okay. They were talking about big jobs that they had coming up.”

“For how much?” I asked.

“Twenty grand,” he replied. “Each. They said there’s a bunch of them, though, so they mean business.”

“Go on,” Alexei said.

“They’re going to hit the clubs.” He mentioned them by address, and they were by far the biggest ones we owned. “To start fires and get them closed down.”

Fuck.

We were already dealing with the fallout of a couple of people being hurt near our SUV that was blown up. I thought again how damn lucky I was that Wren hadn’t been close to it and that she’d gotten that note in time. And that Mila saw the lights underneath.

We didn’t need to deal with a mass casualty event like fires at our most popular clubs, too.

“They’re going to hit the stores. The jewelry stores.” The spy listed them by name. “Then they’re going to hit some of the houses.” He rattled off the names of some of the supervisors and top guards within the organization.

“I’m just telling you what I heard. They ain’t say who hired them. I’m just fucking lucky as hell that they didn’t name my place. That they ain’t going to stir up trouble with my wife and baby at home.” He shook his head sadly. “But this is fucking nuts. Fucking bullshit, Boss. All them people? In a hit this big?” He shook his head some more. “This ain’t right. It ain’t right at all.”

It wasn’t right, but this was war.

“Thank you for telling us,” I told the manager, who the lower-level spy had first reached out to. “And thank you for getting all that you could.”

The spy nodded. “But what the fuck are we gonna do?” He glanced between me, Alexei, and the manager. “We can’t just let them do this.”

My cousin and I shared the sentiment. But for as late in the day as it was and with the hits planned for the next day, it seemed like we didn’t even have the time to do anything fast enough.

As soon as we left, I called Paul and had him start contacting the supervisors and spies who were on the massive hit list. Many of the non-supervisory staff lived in apartment buildings or condos, and that meant more collateral damage.

“I’m assuming they’re going to bomb them,” Alexei said as he drove us back to the mansion so we could confer with Adrik.

“That’s the only way they could try to do this much widespread damage.” I texted Paul all the names, leaning on him as more of an assistant than a butler. “But the businesses?” I shook my head. "We can close as much as we can but if they still set fires or break in and do damage, that’s a hard hit to take. We can’t secure everything all at once.” We had an army, but not one that could mobilize all at the same time to protect so many different locations.

“And if they hit them with bombs, there’s the collateral damage of other businesses nearby.” Alexei slammed his fist on the steering wheel. “Fuckers. That stupid fucker just couldn’t stay dead.”

All that we’d heard indicated an escalation of an attack on us. Intercepting that communication was a fluke, too, because that spy had only been following those men because of their association with something minor. Now that we had this heads up, we had to make the most of what we could do to thwart them.

Adrik was frustrated once we told him. He paced in his office, rubbing the back of his neck. Twice, we ran through what the spy and manager at that club had told us. Lev and Nikolai were with us as well, but Maksim was off taking Carina and Isabel to the doctor for a checkup and he hadn’t been informed yet.

“What can we do to avoid their hitting any of those places?” Lev asked.