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“Don’t make me resort to chopping shit off your body, Alexey. Be a man. Take your death respectfully. Tell me what I want to know,” I order, my tone steady but as lethal as a viper’s bite.
I don’t want to hack away at him to get him to talk. It’s messy, and it’ll piss me off. If I go down that road, he’ll wish Dimitri had killed him. I’ll draw every slice out longer, in slow, agonizing strokes.
“Sokolov found out some of my wait staff were offering services on the side to high rollers.” He breathes, taking a full breath before continuing. “He somehow knew that Mischa didn’t know I wasn’t reporting that income.”
His eyes flick away from me momentarily to compose himself but not before I catch the bleakness taking form.
Good, I think to myself. He finally realizes he won’t be walking out of this house. He’ll only make his death quicker and easier on himself if he comes clean.
“I hope there’s more,” I urge after he’s silent for too long. “If you tell me Sokolov was blackmailing you for being a pimp, I’m going to let Damien do what he wishes to do to your dumb ass while I walk away.”
One side of Damien’s mouth twitches. He’d love nothing more than for me to issue the order. I have no problem ending the life of someone that justifies it. I don’t get off on the kill, but I don’t lose sleep over it. It just doesn’t excite me like it does Damien. The sadistic fucker enjoys torturing people, but I’ll give him this, it’s only those that deserve his brand of crazy. After all, he did blow up the Canadian Pakhan’s compound with Ivan and most of his men inside.
I flick my wrist and eye the time, exhaling as I drop my hand back to my side. “Can we speed this up? I have shit to do,” I tell him. I don’t, actually, at least not until this evening when I have dinner plans, but my sister is at a doctor’s appointment for the baby.
I need this finished before she gets done and figures out where I am. Like the asshole I’m fucking, I too track my little sister’s whereabouts on my cell phone, and I also allow her to know where I am at all times.
“Were you paying Dimitri off for only two years, or was it going on longer?” I push.
“I wasn’t paying Sokolov,” he admits.
My brow arches. “Then where did the fifty mil go?” A frustrated breath expels from my body, my nostrils flaring.
“Others knew too. I had to keep them quiet so Mischa wouldn’t find out.”
“If you paid them with hush money instead of killing them for even considering blackmailing you, you’re even more of a dumbfuck than I originally thought. What the fuck did you pay Sokolov with?”
Because it was something, even if it wasn’t cash.
Alexey has never been the brightest motherfucker when it comes to street smarts, but he was always a whiz with numbers. He graduated from MIT, for Christ’s sake. How is he this goddamn stupid?
I knew he had a prostitution ring with at least five of his waitresses. He has for five years. When my father first learned of it, he wasn’t angry, but he wanted to ensure the women weren’t being forced or abused. I investigated it personally, learning it wasn’t even Kozlov’s idea. One of the women was in debt from student loans. There are only so many hours in the day a person can work, but she wasn’t making enough money to get her head above water. She was drowning and desperate. She wanted to do it. It was her idea; others found out and wanted the same opportunity.
I concluded the women were adults and could make their own choices. In a shitty way, Alexey was helping them, but he was profiting from them too. My father decided to let it continue without Kozlov knowing we knew. I agreed with his decision as long as we kept an eye on Alexey to ensure it did not become forced. After two years, I reassigned that job tosomeoneelse.
I force my stare to remain on Kozlov instead of flicking over in Stepan’s direction. I had my reasons for sending him along with Damien to apprehend Alexey. I’m likely going to kill two birds with one stone today. Stepan’s job was to check in on Alexey’s businesses, both on the books and off. As the bookkeeper, he spent a week in New Orleans once a month, as well as in Miami, Vegas, and Chicago, making sure the Avtoritets in charge of smaller territories’ loyalties stayed intact while also collecting money from them.
When he doesn’t answer, I ask, “Who were the others you paid to keep your little secret?”
Kozlov’s subtle glance away from me tells me everything I need to know. It was my job to ensure loyalty. I should never have placed that duty on Stepan, but I had a purpose behind doing so—he failed. His loyalty wasn’t to me or the brotherhood, not even to my father, who was his Pakhan at the time. Whatever his reasons are, I’m not in the mood to hear them.
I lift my arm in a smooth but quick motion, pulling the trigger when I’m sure my aim is accurate. The gun fires, but with the suppressor attached to the barrel, the pop isn’t quite as loud as it would’ve been without it. Stepan drops, the shot nailing him between the eyes and killing him instantly.
“Now that that’s out of the way, let’s circle back to Sokolov. You’re going to tell me why he was here and what you were supplying him with if it wasn’t money. If you don’t, your death will be drawn out, unlike his.” I flick my eyes to the dead heap in the corner and then back to Kozlov.
I’m about to get Damien to apply more incentive to get Alexey’s mouth to open when the sound of a car door slamming snaps my attention in that direction. It’s too close to be someone at a neighboring house, which alerts me to someone being in my driveway.
I nod to where Damien stands behind Kozlov, silently ordering him to check it out. No one knew we would be here, leaving me to think it’s likely my sister snooping, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to assume it’s Sasha without making sure.
“Krishna, please,” Alexey starts, his voice grinding on my nerves. “I’m a good asset. You know this. I’ve made the Bratva a lot of money over the years. Give me another shot. I’ll increase revenue, double it if I have—”
A semi-automatic weapon fires, the round nailing Kozlov in the chest, dead center of his heart.
Whirling around, I lift the weapon in my hand, prepared to fire it into the motherfucker that stole not only my kill but prematurely did so before Alexey answered all my questions. I blink, my finger itching to pull the trigger as I stare at Domenico. He has Damien shoved against the case opening from the kitchen with a firearm pointed at his head in one hand and the one he used to kill Kozlov in the other. After a beat, he lowers the one he fired as we stare at each other, only I don’t do the same or remove my finger from within the trigger well.
My nostrils flare as the onset of a smirk threatens to form on his lips. No one but me and maybe his siblings would recognize the twitch he’s trying too hard to hold back. I ought to shoot him on principle.
His finger pops out from the trigger well. Dom tips the weapon away from Damien toward the ceiling as he steps past him, walking in my direction. His arm drops, and within seconds he holsters both handguns under his suit jacket. He’s dressed the part of the underboss today: a black designer suit with a black dress shirt underneath. Usually, he opts not to seem like a mirror image of his father, but that’s exactly what he looks like today in his all-black attire.
