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I was used to hostility being exchanged between our families, but as we sat in the room, not even flanked by his guards, we seemed like the odd ones. His guys sat around the room either smoking, drinking, or playing pool. Sometimes all three at once. But none of them looked tense.
“Someone drove a crowbar into the rear windshield of one of our vehicles, targeting Nikolai and his wife. We roughed him up for answers, but it seems someone snuck onto my property to take him out. He was found with a bullet in his head before we could get anything out of him. And you didn’t have anything to do with it?”
More confusion stitched into Alphonse’s face. He shook his head and mashed his cigarette into the ashtray. “Honestly, boys, I didn’t think things between us have been that bad. Sure we lost two of our own, but no love was lost between me and my cousins. I was happy enough to have them out of the picture so I could take over. It’s rather refreshing.”
I looked at him incredulously. “That’s it? What about our scrap?”
Alphonse shrugged. “Eh, it was only that. A scrap. We were only exchanging a flex of our power—as every family does at some point. But that comes with the territory.” He chuckled and pointed at me, looking at Ivan. “This one has an impeccable punch, that I will say. Other than that, everything has been peaches and cream here.”
“What about our refusal to negotiate territory?” Ivan asked, suspicion still laced in his features.
“Nah, that’s merely a wrinkle to be ironed out over time,” the Balakin head stated, reaching up to snap toward one of his men. “Bring me a whisky.”
Nodding once, the goon got up and went over to the bar. Before long, the glass was placed in his grasp. Alphonse sipped it and exhaled deeply.
“You may have refused me, but I haven’t let it fuel any hits on you or your family. After our scraps since I was made head of this family, I realized I had been no better than Sergey, and that was humbling. If the day comes, I may make my move, but as of today, I don’t care for a street war.”
Ivan and I exchanged strange looks, unsure of what to think.
Then, Ivan fished his cell out of his pocket and turned it around for Alphonse to look at. “You’re sure this isn’t your man?”
Alphonse hummed to himself and nodded, leaning back in his leather chair. “That’s my man alright. Or he had been, at least.”
“Would anyone want him taken care of?”
The Balakin head swirled the whisky around in his glass for a moment. “He had already been out of the picture for some time. He was too power-hungry and pushy, and he refused to stay in his lane. He was banished back to Russia. As far as we knew, he went.”
“He obviously came back,” Ivan added, curious. “But why?”
Alphonse shrugged once again. “Your guess is as good as mine, Morozov. By that, I mean I didn’t order the hit. It’s out of my hands.”
A sinking feeling brought me back down to reality, remembering what I had seen. I motioned toward Ivan. “I watched one of Grigory’s men walking around this place before, maybe they were in contact.”
I watched as the realization slowly worked its way onto Ivan’s face, trying to hide my smug look. It seemed I had been right, even if my brother refused to listen to me then. “Mila told me not to trust her father, but I’m still not convinced she’s in the clear. She could…”
Trailing off, a dull alarm within my head told me I needed to get home. Something felt off, and that intuitive feeling nagged at me.
Ivan eyed me, surely watching me falter from the overwhelming feeling. I couldn’t help it.
Wordlessly, I tore away from Ivan and the Balakins, unable to form my thoughts into anything coherent. Rushing out of the building, I waved for one of our guys we called for backup to get away from the driver’s seat, and I climbed in.
Roaring the engine to life, I skirted away from the side of the road and hammered down the highway. I raced through traffic, making some questionable choices as I swerved in and out, overtaking when I shouldn’t have.
But I didn’t care, I needed to make sure Mila was okay. That Kat was okay.
You can’t trust my father.
The words repeated again and again in my head, glaringly obvious then. What I didn’t get, however, was why she asked to see him the very next day. If he was up to something, then why would she want to be near him?
It didn’t make any sense, and it made me more suspicious of her.
But I didn’t want to lose Kat, not after discovering the joys of being a father. She gave me a gift I never could’ve comprehended before, yet that was at stake.
If my suspicions were correct, I might lose Mila in the process too.
The devastation of that solidified inside me, and I swallowed back the regret. I could only hope she was innocent. There were many things I hoped for, but I had to shove them all aside.
My feelings didn’t matter at the moment, not while the nagging in my stomach only persisted.
