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12
Lyon sat in the warehouse conference room and stared at the whiteboard with unseeing eyes, his mind a jumble. Distraction was foreign to him. He’d spent nearly two decades focused on the goal of taking over the bratva, and for the past ten days, he’d barely been able to focus.
It was her fault. Kira.
He couldn’t say how exactly. Since their moment in the kitchen, she’d gone out of her way to avoid him, even taking meals in her suite when he was home. He told himself it was for the best, that he had no desire to be in her company anyway, but deep down, he knew it wasn’t true.
Another way he’d slipped: lying to himself, something he’d sworn never to do.
She was so quiet, so unobtrusive, he might have thought she wasn’t home at all if not for the birds chirping softly from behind her closed door. If he got close enough — and sometimes he did, although he never would have admitted it aloud — he could hear her cooing to them.
It was ridiculous: his fascination with her, the way his body responded at the thought of her, the birds in their fancy cage.
All of it.
He looked up as Alek entered the room. “What have you found out?”
Alek sighed and took a seat on one of the chairs. “It’s not good.”
Good news or not, Lyon was relieved for the distraction. He was meant to be creating an empire, not mooning over a woman. “Tell me.”
“Word has gotten out,” Alek said.
“And?” Lyon asked.
Lyon had tasked Alek with putting an ear to the ground on the blowback from his altercation with Musa. Lyon had been out of line — one brigadier didn’t strike another, and Lyon was still a brigadier until the Spies deemed him pakhan, something that would only happen if the other brigadiers unanimously supported it.
But it wouldn’t do for Lyon to seem concerned.
“Word is the Spies are discussing potential disciplinary measures,” Alek said.
“And the men?” They were all that mattered. In the bratva, shit trickled uphill. The Spies, if they knew what was good for them, followed the lead of the men handing over envelopes of cash every week.
“Mixed,” Alek said. “Musa has his share of enemies. They’re feeling pretty satisfied that Musa got what was coming to him. The traditionalists are the ones screaming for punishment.”
Lyon could hear them now: it wasn’t done, order must be maintained, a breakdown in convention meant anarchy that would rot the organization from the inside out.
“Any whisperings from the Spies?” Lyon asked.
Alek shook his head. “Not yet.”
Lyon had called Ivan the night of his run-in with Musa to give the old man a heads up. Even over the phone, Lyon could tell Ivan wasn’t happy with the development, and Lyon had gotten off the call feeling like a child who’d disappointed his father.
Musa had deserved more than he’d gotten. Whatever conflict existed between Lyon and Kira was private. On paper, she was his wife, not to mention Viktor’s daughter. That demanded a certain level of respect.
Maybe the traditionalists should worry about that.
Still, Lyon was half surprised Musa, not exactly coolheaded, hadn’t taken retribution into his own hands.
“What’s done is done,” Lyon said. “We’ll take it as it comes.”
He wasn’t overly worried about the mistake as it related to his takeover. In the bratva, it was always better to err on the side of violence than pacification. The men wanted to know a boss could do what must be done.
Lyon had proven himself more than willing over the years, but that was a double-edged sword. While many in the organization celebrated violence, there were others who worried about Lyon’s reputation, who worried he didn’t have the even temperament to be boss. For those men, Lyon’s handling of Musa might be a validation of the concerns he’d been working to address.
Alek turned his attention to the whiteboard. “How are we looking?”
Lyon followed his gaze to the names that marched up one side of the board, some in green, some in yellow. He lingered on one of the names in yellow — Lev Dobrow — then focused to the only name written in red: Musa Shapiev.
