AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1 - Aleksei
I looked across the table at the men I agreed to meet with for a possible business deal, then glanced at my younger brother Yuri. He gave me the barest shake of his head and closed his eyes, as if he was praying. He was probably praying for these guys to make it out of here without any broken bones.
Despite having to know that the Morozovs were the most powerful and feared crime family in Miami, they chose to bring this dirty deal to my doorstep. Or, my older brother Nikolai’s doorstep, since we were having the meeting in Nik’s hotel. I was looking to increase my portfolio with a few more ‘clean’ businesses and when the owner approached me with his investment proposal, I decided to give them a chance. Chances don’t come easy with me, just like trust, so it irked me they were shitting all over both. I partly blamed myself for possibly not doing my due diligence when researching this start-up company, but at least I had the good sense to bring Yuri along to check the contracts before signing anything.
Not that a signature would hold water if they did try to double-cross me down the line. That’s not how things worked at all with my family.
“Show me what’s concerning you, Yuri,” I said, nodding toward the papers in front of us.
“Is something wrong?” the man in the crisp new suit asked. He possibly purchased that suit just for this meeting, to impress us. A clean contract would have been more impressive. Now I noticed a bit of sweat breaking out at the man’s neatly combed hairline.
Yuri leaned over, pulling the papers close and pointing out a few lines as he spoke low enough that only I could hear. “I know for a fact they only hold a lease on this building. One of my clients owns it. And he’s never expressed any interest in selling.”
Unlike our older brothers and me, Yuri mostly kept to the straight and narrow. He was a Morozov through and through, but owned his own tax law firm that was squeaky clean. He kept up a helpful relationship with law enforcement and was there for us when we needed him, but he didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Or bloody. The sour look on his face, which was almost a mirror image of mine, told me he was angry enough at their attempted deception to disregard his usual diplomatic ways, another trait that we shared.
“Tell me more about this building.” I wasn’t ready to let the deal go so fast. “Everything in this contract relies on you owning it.”
“And you don’t,” Yuri said.
Sadly, their stammering excuses screamed they were lying, and no Morozov took that sitting down. I gave Yuri a look telling him he could excuse himself and let me take care of this, but he was already grabbing the first man by his shiny new lapels. The other man jumped up so fast his chair tumbled backwards.
“Leaving your buddy to take the heat?” I stepped neatly in front of him as he tried to flee for the door, knocking him back a few steps. “That’s just the kind of dishonorable behavior I’d expect from someone who’d try to fuck with me.”
“Listen, no hard feelings,” he yelped. “Deals fall through all the time.”
I chuckled humorlessly at that, causing the color to drain from his sweaty face. “It’s true that deals fall through, but this deal collapsed due to its own rotten foundation.”
As his hand flailed to try to hit me, I grabbed it with my left, cracking his nose with my right. He slumped to his knees, spitting blood and scowling up at me. His partner made a move to break free from Yuri, and with a sigh, my brother slammed his head down onto the table with such force I heard a crack.
“You were stupid to try to screw over Aleksei Morozov,” he said, pulling the man’s hair to heartily reintroduce his face to the glossy wood table top. “And stupid to underestimate me.” Another crack and the table crumbled, taking the man to the floor along with it. I snickered. Nikolai wasn’t going to like that we were busting up his furniture.
My guy found his second wind and managed a swipe across my brow while I was momentarily distracted by Yuri’s unusual blood lust. It took three swift pumps of my fist for him to finally sink to the floor, groaning and holding what was left of his face.
Yuri hauled the other man next to his partner and dumped him onto the floor. “What have you learned?” he asked.
I actually laughed when he gave my brother the finger, but I quickly stepped in, kicking the offending hand hard enough that I was certain he wouldn’t be using it to sign any more shitty deals for the foreseeable future.
“The correct answer is that you don’t fuck with the Morozovs,” I said, pulling my foot back to drive home the point.
He curled into a ball, yelping out the most important lesson of his lifetime. “We don’t fuck with the Morozovs, we get it. Please, just stop.”
Yuri tore the papers in half, a big grin on his face, and tossed them onto the sniveling upstarts. I leaned down, flicking a piece of the contract off the leader’s bloody face.
“It would be wise to leave town,” I told him. “I wouldn’t want you taking advantage of anyone else in Miami.”
Now it was Yuri’s turn to snicker. As long as they left our area, they were no longer my concern. But they could keep doing their dirty dealings far enough away for all I cared. It wasn’t as if I could judge them.
At the broken man’s nearly imperceptible nod, I marched from the conference room with Yuri at my heels. In the hall, I motioned for Nik’s waiting security to come and take out the trash. Then I turned to Yuri and smiled at his joyous expression. Like he’d just gotten a birthday surprise. Was this really my staid, tax lawyer brother or a mafia lord in the making? “Do I need to be concerned about you?”
He shook his head, blond hair just a few shades lighter than my own falling into his deep set eyes. “Of course not.”
“Okay, because you seemed like you liked that a little too much.”
“I don’t mind it every once in a while.” He clapped his fist into his palm. “Gets the blood pumping.”
“Speaking of blood, you’re covered in it, rookie.”
He scowled at the splatter on his jacket, then nodded to my hands, which I was already running under the nearest water fountain. I was used to this sort of thing, so I knew how to lean away from the flying blood. My own suit was still impeccable.
