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Lyonya Antonov.
The Lion.
She knew from background that he was thirty-eight, born in Tula, Russia and brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was two years old. He had piercing dark eyes and a thick mane of black hair.
But she had a feeling they didn’t call him the Lion because of his hair.
“Marcus said you were in here.”
The voice pulled Gabriella from her thoughts and she turned to find Chloe Turner stepping into the room and closing the door behind her.
“Got a call from Garcia,” Gabriella said, returning her attention to the wall. “They can’t turn anybody. We’re going to have to work with what we’ve got.”
“Okay,” Chloe said. “But we’ve got a lot. We have a confession, on tape.”
“It’s not exactly a confession,” Gabriella said. They had Vitsin talking about Bayard Owens, the murder victim, mentioning the river where his body was found plus a few other choice phrases that were obviously a reference to the planned murder, but none of it was airtight enough to guarantee a conviction.
“Close enough,” Chloe muttered.
Gabriella turned to the younger woman and smiled. She remembered what it was like being one of many young Deputy District Attorneys on a big prosecutorial team, back when it seemed obvious that the bad guys would go to jail and Lady Justice would prevail.
She didn’t want to erode Chloe’s faith in the system. The system would do that for her in about ten years. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than anything else that had been tried, a realization they all came to eventually.
“I’m kind of surprised they can’t turn Antonov,” Chloe said, her eyes fixed on the picture of him.
Gabriella understood, both the statement and the fixation on Lyonya Antonov. He seemed to watch them from the photograph, his eyes boring through time and space to see them standing in front of the bulletin board.
She’d found herself staring at the photo, fixated on his face, more times than she could count.
“I know what you mean,” Gabriella said. “I’d pinned my hopes on him too.”
By all rights, Antonov should be in Vitsin’s shoes. Higher even. The Antonov family had a long history of leadership with the bratva, both in the U.S. and back in his motherland.
Twenty years earlier, Lyonya’s father had been a respected leader of the Obshchak, one of the two organizations that comprised the Two Spies. There had been whispers that he was favored to ascend to the role of pakhan, but he’d been arrested as an accessory to murder and Viktor Baranov had become boss instead.
Lyonya’s father had swallowed his ten-year sentence like a fine wine, with nary a complaint or a whisper of turning State’s witness. He’d still been behind bars when he’d died of cancer five years ago. Lyonya hadn’t even been twenty when his father was sent to prison, and the grace with which his father had taken his arrest and prosecution had earned Lyonya a secure place under first one brigadier, then another.
But his father’s imprisonment had put an end to any whispering of an Antonov becoming boss of the bratva.
Gabriella had hoped he was nursing a grudge, that he’d be willing to bring down Baranov for letting Lyonya’s father die in prison and consigning Lyonya to a role far beneath the one to which he was entitled.
“Why do you think guys like him stay loyal?” Chloe asked.
“It’s all they know,” Gabriella murmured. “Bratva is blood, stronger than family. But Agent Garcia thinks Antonov has his sights set on something bigger in the organization.”
“He’s pretty far down though right?” Chloe said. “Not even a brigadier. How high can he be expected to go?”
Gabriella thought about it. “Hard to say. For awhile, Antonov ran his own rackets, kicking money up to Baranov and his various brigadiers. Then he started working under Vitsin who had Antonov assigned to his personal detail. I’ve always wondered why.”
Gabriella hadn’t been following the bratva closely back then, but when she came across the information in her research for the trial, she’d been surprised. A bratok, a soldier who worked for a brigadier like Vitsin, made good money by running small rackets of their own.
Had Vitsin compensated him for the lost income that would have been a side effect of essentially becoming Yakov’s personal bodyguard? And why would Vitsin pull someone like Lyonya Antonov, a talented earner, to work as muscle? Had Vitsin been worried about Antonov’s ambition? Or had he wanted him by his side because he trusted him?
Gabriella sighed and straightened, raising her arms overhead to stretch. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Lyonya Antonov is just another bratva soldier, as loyal as the rest of them. We’ll have to win this the old-fashioned way — by convincing twelve men and women that Vitsin is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“Can we do it?” Chloe asked.
Gabriella stared at the bulletin board, her eyes moving from photo to photo and settling on Yakov Vitsin. “I don’t know.”
