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“Another shipment was intercepted. All the product stolen this time,” Fyodor says, his voice hollow. “And this was delivered to headquarters this morning.” He gestures to several cardboard boxes that I hadn’t noticed behind Simeon and Misha when I walked in.
Cold lead drops in the pit of my stomach. The dark stain coloring the corner of one box hints at what I can already guess is inside. Balling my fists, I steel myself before approaching the boxes and stooping to fold open the lids.
“Yebanaya pizda.” I spit the profanity between my teeth as I stare down at Artem’s severed head along with several of his men. My best captain, the one I could always count on. Dead. Mutilated. His face a sickly blue color that tells me he was beaten before his death. His half-open eyes are hauntingly vacant. Rage boils up inside me, drowning out the world around me as my pulse roars in my ears.Who the fuck is this?
We’re well past my original thinking from a year ago that this could be discontent from Nicolo or any of the Marchettis. This is a sign of war, and my aggressors mean business. More specifically, they want to take my business, my territory. They’re circling it like vultures over a lion’s kill, swooping down to pick at it whenever the opportunity arises. My warehouses have been broken into on multiple occasions since last year, our shipments raided, and significant amounts of my product have been stolen. A few times, my men have gone missing or turned up injured. But those of our clan we have found can’t seem to identify who is responsible. And no matter how hard we’ve tried, we can’t seem to nail down a lead.
This, though, this is a challenge. Whoever it is has just thrown down the gauntlet. They want a fight. And as my body starts to shake with the rage building inside me, I’m more than happy to oblige. They killed Artem–along with seven of his men–desecrated their bodies by removing their heads. I will rip whoever is responsible to shreds, just like we did the last time someone thought they could best us. Only this time, we can’t seem to ferret out who our enemy is.
I fear it might be the same Bratva we thought we had destroyed–the Temkin–coming back more viscous and far better prepared than before. It was a bloody war the first time around, and if they did somehow manage to survive the complete annihilation I promised, then they will have had time to form a new strategy using all the information they collected on us over years. Before, I thought of them like vermin, needing to be exterminated. But if this is the Temkin, then I gravely underestimated them. If they are, in fact, responsible for my men’s deaths, then they are a metastasis, a spreading tumor seeking any opportunity to grow into existence at the slightest point of vulnerability.
“Gospodin,” Fyodor rasps behind me, his Russian heavy with unspoken grief. “What will you have us do?”
“Deliver the men’s heads to their families, and ensure they are well compensated for their loss. I want each family to be generously taken care of.”
I turn away from the boxes, unable to stand the sight of the men I failed so horribly any longer. Their deaths are on my conscience. They put their trust in me, and I am the one who fell short aspakhanbecause I alone am responsible for ensuring their safety, of hunting down and rooting out any potential threats to our clan and our operations, of destroying anyone who might stand in our way.
I meet Fyodor’s gaze, my chest filled with a fierce hatred that threatens to burst from me with overwhelming force. “And when that is done, we are going to find theseublyudki,” I promise, “and we are going to flay them alive. I will make them watch as I cut them open, and they will know what it’s like to taste their own entrails before I let them die.”
Fyodor gives a subtle bow, the same thirst for retribution burning in his eyes. I nod, silently excusing him, and Fyodor jerks his chin toward Simeon and Misha. They quickly collect the boxes of my loyal men’s heads and make a beeline for the door.
When the door shuts behind them, heavy silence fills the room, leaving my ears ringing with the absence of noise. Artem, my best captain, is dead. He was the first of my father’s men to see potential in me as a leader, the one who knew how to lead his men flawlessly and stand by my side without question. He gave me all his trust. And now he’s gone.
All the emotions of unbridled hatred, disgust, and unwanted fear blast through me like a tidal wave, leaving me frozen and mute as the world around me turns red. I could kill a hundred men with my bare hands right now and it wouldn’t be enough to satiate my bloodlust. I want to obliterate the men who did this. I want to see the light leave their eyes.
And underneath all the rage is a niggling self-loathing that I could let this happen. That I haven’t been able to find these fuckers and put an end to this before they could kill my men. Eight good, loyal men. They are dead because of my shortcomings as apakhan. Because I haven’t been able to get this situation in hand. It’s continued to escalate, and now I have no clue what their next move might be.
That knowledge overwhelms me, and I release a feral roar as I turn toward the nearest object, snatching the lamp off my desk, and launch it across the room with such force that its stem snaps, the bulb shatters, and a decent-sized dent appears in the wall where it hit. Sweeping my arms across my desk, I snarl, releasing the fury built up within my body. Then I grip the edge of the solid piece of wooden furniture and up end it. One of the carved mahogany legs snap off, and I pick it up, using it as a club to beat the shelves of books, bringing pages and spines to the floor in a storm of loose, shredded paper. I destroy things blindly, hell bent on tearing down the world around me.
And when I’m finally done terrorizing my office, it looks as though a tornado ripped through it. The fine leather of my reading chair bears large gashes. My desk is broken beyond repair. Not a single piece of glass is left intact. My chest heaves as I study the destruction I wrought.
My temper tantrum brought little relief from the anger permeating my body, but at least it seems to have cleared my ears of the ringing and my vision from seeing red. I can’t undo the past. I need to look to the future so I’m not caught blind again. There are an infinite number of ways they could choose to hurt me next. Now, I need to act, to get ahead of their next move before they destroy me. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I dial Bianka’s number. She answers on the second ring, and the sound of her voice immediately eases some of the tension in my shoulders.
“Ilya, hi! How are you?”
A loaded question. One I’m not about to answer right now. “I need you to come home this weekend,” I state bluntly.
“Oh, um, okay. Of course. What’s wrong?” Her tone shifts to worried immediately as she reads my distress through the phone.
“We’ll talk about it when you’re here. But, Bianka?”
“Yes?”
“Be careful. Don’t take any unnecessary risks. Go to school and straight home this week. No nights out, no shopping, not until we speak,” I command.
“You’re freaking me out. What happened?”
“Promise me!” I demand.
“Okay! I’ll wait to go out. See you Friday?”
“Good.” I start to pull the phone away from my ear, but Bianka’s tentative voice brings me back.
“Ilya, please tell me you’re okay,” she almost whispers it, and it tugs on my heartstrings to hear her sound scared.
“I will be.” That’s the best I can give her because I’m not okay. Not by a mile.
And when I hang up the phone, I know I need to do something to get my head on straight. It’s too late in the day for me to make any headway on finding who’s responsible for Artem’s murder. I need to come up with a plan for how to smoke them out, and with how slippery our enemies have proven, I think it’s time I get my hands dirty. Starting tomorrow, I will be joining my men in the field. I refuse to let this cancer take another stab at my Bratva, not without me bringing their plot down around their ears. Even if I have to work twenty-four, seven until I catch them, I will.
