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I take my seat behind the great oak desk. I made the mistake of sitting in this chair once as a boy, and my father taught me a painful lesson not to sit in it again until the right time.
Well, the right time is here, and now this seat—once forbidden—belongs to me. As I settle into it, I can’t help but feel discomfort settling in. It’s not a very comfortable chair. But then again, a pakhan with enemies should never sit easy.
“I found this.” I reach into my pocket and toss the old photo from Paige’s apartment on the desk.
Dmitri approaches the table, frowning. I could’ve handed it to him, but making him take the few extra steps is his punishment for the sarcasm.
I point to the man standing in between the two little girls. “This was in her apartment. Do you recognize the man?”
Dmitri picks up the photo and studies it intently. “I’m assuming this is her father?” He smirks when I nod. “Is this a test, Andrei Vasilyevich?”
“It’s not a test, Dima.” Momentarily, my lips press into a thin line and I allow a moment of familiarity between us. “Everything about that picture looks familiar. But I never met this girl until the wedding. And how curious that the moment I do, it gets shot up.”
“You think the two are connected?”
“They must be.” She stood out at the wedding in a crowd of women wearing diamonds and designer gowns. Had bullets not started flying, and had she not performed that bit of emergency medicine, she would’ve remained a curiosity.
But now? She’s a person of interest.
“Do you remember how she treated my injury?”
“Shoved a tampon in it.” Dmitri nodded appreciatively. “Pretty damn smart if you ask me.”
“You know who else might know something like that?” I ask, but I don’t expect him to answer. When he doesn’t, I continue. “Old-school Bratva guys who made their money running guns, drugs, and everything else in the old country. Same guys who fucked off to places like London, Paris, and Tel Aviv before the dwarf in the Kremlin started eyeing their cash.”
“Girl doesn’t look like she speaks a word of Russian,” Dmitri says. “No way she’s Bratva.”
“I don’t know,” I sigh. “But I can’t rule it out. The Karamazovs were waiting outside of her place. Didn’t even lift a finger when I stepped out of my car. They started moving aftershecame home.”
“Which means they weren’t trying to ambush you,” Dmitri muses. “They were gunning for her.”
“Exactly.” I lean back. “So look at the photo again. Do you recognize the house?”
His gaze shifts, and gradually recognition smooths the line between his eyes. “Now that you mention it, itdoeslook familiar,” Dmitri says. “One second, Andrei Vasilyevich.” His finger flicks the torn edge, tossing the photo onto the desk.
The photo stops spinning in front of me. And I take in little Paige standing by the man. How she smiles but stands slightly away from him. As if she’s too old to show affection.
Dmitri runs his fingers along the spines of the books on the walls. “Your father had me collect evidence as part of my initiation. Digging through trash, following leads, stuff like that. Ah, here it is.” He opens a binder, flips through a few pages, and pushes it toward me, tapping on a photo.
I place my photo against it and the two pieces form a complete image.
“That,” he proudly announces, “is Ivan Sidorenko. Old-school killer. Igor’s personal cleaner, as far as I recall. One of the best in the business. Recently deceased … of natural causes.”
I know Ivan Sidorenko—the man was the living embodiment of singular devotion to the Bratva life. I stare at the complete picture. But instead of answers, I just have more questions. “So, who is Paige’s father? Bratva?”
“Can’t be. No tattoos anywhere on him in this photo. Wait a minute.” Dmitri sits down on the edge of the desk. “I recognize the house now. It’s in neutral territory in the Poconos. Maybe he’s a tourist that rented one of the Karamazov cabins, and Sidorenko showed him in.”
Bratva families vacation there. I did as a young boy. It was a place where minor differences were discussed, not battled out. It diffused many situations before things got out of hand or became deadly. Like a United Nations for the East Coast Bratva. No guns allowed around the wife and kids.
“Sidorenko isn’t someone who takes pictures for pleasure,” I reply. “And he hates children.” In the picture, his other hand is pointing toward Paige and her sister. There’s something off about this entire picture. Something I can’t quite put my hands on.
“Whoever her father is, he must be associated with the Bratva to be there,” I reply, staring at the photo again. “To be standing next to Sidorenko.”
Dmitri shrugs. “Maybe he was a friend of the Bratva.”
I chuckle mirthlessly. The Bratva doesn’t have friends. We have people who are useful to us, people who work for us, people who want to join us, and people who want to kill us. Outsiders who are lucky enough to be allowed in face strict limitations.
If Paige’s father was in the heart of Bratva neutral ground, then he wasn’t there by accident. Nobody invites an outsider to the one place where the Bratvas hash out differences.
