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Their marriage hadn’t been one of love. It had been arranged for a reason: to join the Antonov and Baranov names so that Lyon could rule the bratva, so Kira and her father — may he rest in peace — could continue playing a part in its legacy.
The connecting door to the office opened and a large suited man, a weapon visible under his unbuttoned jacket, stood in the doorway. He looked at Lyon. “The Spies will see you now.”
Lyon glanced at Markus. He wouldn’t be allowed in the mansion’s inner chamber, and Lyon wouldn’t have accepted his company anyway. Whatever his fate, he would face it alone, the way he’d spent the fifteen years before Kira, the years he’d struggled and built and planned for the moment when he would be in charge of the bratva.
He nodded and moved toward the door. He felt acutely the lack of his own weapon, which had been confiscated at the door, but there was nothing to be done about it.
Besides, the Spies wouldn’t kill him. If they opted for the most extreme of punishments for Lyon’s crime, they would issue an execution order tied to a bounty and cut him loose. Then, the entire organization would gun for him, quite possibly even those men who’d pledged their loyalty to him. Lyon would have a couple of hours, at most, to run.
Not that he’d run.
The man held open the door and Lyon stepped into a large room with soaring ceilings. The house that acted as a headquarters for the Spies had been built in the early 1900s. Lyon suspected this room had been a ballroom, and the wood floors gleamed underfoot, a long runner at the door leading across the vast empty space to a curved table at the other end of the room.
Nine men sat behind the table, and Lyon caught the eye of Ivan Demenok, his mentor ever since his father’s imprisonment and death. Lyon was used to seeing Ivan in more informal settings, usually at one of several benches lining one of the parks at the edge of the city where no one from the organization would see them meeting.
Now Ivan looked like what he was: a distinguished member of the Two Spies, the governing body of the bratva: nine men who worked with the organization’s pakhan, or in the event of a power vacuum — as there was now — stepped in to issue rulings on important matters.
Ivan’s gray hair glinted in the room’s dim lighting, his bushy eyebrows giving him the appearance of a benevolent uncle, although his expression gave no indication of their friendship.
Lyon started across the runner and heard the door to the anteroom close behind him. The atmosphere was solemn, the room cast in shadows, devoid of decor except for the oil portraits of former pakhans that lined the walls and the long table at the other end of the room.
Lyon took his time, not wanting to betray his desire to get the meeting over with.
To know his fate, once and for all.
He let his eyes scan the other men behind the table, all of them older and distinguished, assigned to the Spies because of a combination of experience and perceived wisdom.
Silas Gorsky was among them, and Lyon remembered something from their wedding night: Kira dancing with Silas’s young son, head tipped back in laughter to expose her elegant throat, her face glowing despite the nature of their marriage.
He pushed the image away. He couldn’t afford to think about her now.
Or ever really.
Lyon came to a stop at the end of the runner, ten feet from the edge of the long table.
There was no hierarchy among the Spies. They acted as a democracy, with each member’s votes and opinions holding equal weight, but someone had to start the meeting, and Lyon was unsurprised to hear Ivan speak first.
“Lyonya Antonov, you come before this body to hear its decision regarding your fate in the Baranov bratva.” His voice was deep and sure in the large, unfurnished room.
Lyon gave a small bow. “I submit to the greater wisdom of this body.”
Would he submit? If they ordered his execution, would he allow it to happen? They were questions he’d asked himself countless times during the weeks in which he’d awaited news of his fate. Questions to which he hadn’t had an answer until now.
Now, faced with the Spies, he knew he would do neither. He wouldn’t allow them to have him killed. But neither would he run.
He would fight.
He would fight for the title of pakhan even if it meant taking out every man at the table in front of him, even if it meant dismantling the bratva as they knew it and rebuilding it in his own image.
Baranov bratva? No.
It would be the Antonov bratva. One way or another.
“We have spent many hours discussing the situation you find yourself in,” a man named Dema Litvin said. His hair gleamed black as a raven in spite of his advancing age. “It is a situation that affects us all, one that will affect this organization for many years to come.”
Lyon remained silent and made an effort to keep his expression impassive.
“Your assault on Musa Shapiev set off a chain of events that has thrust our organization into turmoil, destabilizing our authority. It has brought attention to us where we have worked to remain in the shadows,” Litvin continued.
