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He took a deep breath and perched on the edge of the ten-thousand-dollar sofa he’d had imported from Milan, his gaze drawn to the lights of the city across the water. Somewhere out there, Ruby was sitting in an elementary school auditorium in the company of a man who didn’t deserve to breathe the same air.
He grunted in disgust, cracked his neck, and resumed his pacing. What the fuck was wrong with him? He had to stop thinking about her.
Tonight was important.
He’d made the first big move in seizing control by talking to Lev. Now he had to rally an army.
This part was complicated. He needed men to protect him, men he could trust.
But he also needed someone big in his pocket, a member of the Two Spies, the governing body that ruled the bratva in tandem with the pakhan.
There were nine of them, mostly old men who collected fat paychecks from the bratva in exchange for convening once a month on important matters and for ensuring the pakhan didn’t go rogue and forget which side of his bread was buttered — the Russian side.
It would be easy to think the Spies didn’t matter, but Roman knew better. Nothing happened in the bratva without their permission — explicit or otherwise. If things went south, it was the Spies who would call in reinforcements from Russia, the Spies who would decide whether a pakhan stayed or went.
And there was one in particular who had more sway than the others: Mikhail Lavrov.
The problem was that if Roman approached Mikhail before he had protection, he might be dead before he made it back to the loft. And if he approached the men he planned to recruit as soldiers before he secured Mikhail’s support, those men might calculate his odds of overtaking the brava as slim and use the information of his impending coup to further their position with Igor and the Spies.
Which also meant Roman would be dead.
It was a quandary, one that had no clear answer.
In the end, Roman had decided to approach the men first. He needed them to back him not because he had Mikhail’s support — or anyone’s — but because they believed in him, saw a brighter future with him at the helm of the organization.
Fear didn’t breed true loyalty. He knew that firsthand.
It was respect that did that.
He’d chosen five men he thought he could trust, men who’d been loyal to him so far, men who’d tried to hide the light of dissatisfaction with Igor’s leadership when around Roman, believing Roman to be loyal to his father.
It was far from foolproof. There was always the danger that one of them would go straight to the house in Brighton Beach to tell Igor about Roman’s plans, or worse, that they would go to the Spies before Roman had the chance to talk to Mikhail.
But the path ahead was fraught with risk. It had been since the second he’d met with Lev.
He had to start somewhere.
His phone buzzed again from Max:Tima is here. He came with Matvey.
Send them up.
Roman crossed to the gleaming table in the open area that was designated as the dining area by a large rug, or so the interior designer had said. Roman didn’t care. He’d never eaten at the table, had never even sat in one of its chairs, carefully coordinated but not matching because, the designer had said, he didn’t want to look like he was trying too hard.
The loft was equipped with every luxury — including a play room designed to sate his more extreme sexual proclivities — but it was more like a five-star hotel than a home.
He’d never invited a woman back to the loft, and he’d certainly never hosted his men. He held his meetings at Arkady, the Russian restaurant his father hated, or at Venus, the strip club they used as a money-laundering operation — one of many — that was frequented by the bratva’s soldiers and brigadiers.
But this meeting was different. He was about to ask these men to defy Igor, to throw their support — and their lives — behind Roman with nothing more than a handful of promises.
It was more than business. It was personal.
Because nothing was more personal than losing your life for throwing your support behind the wrong man.
The buzzer rang at his door and he crossed the poured-concrete floors to answer it.
Half an hour later, the first two men had been joined by three more, plus Max, who was still nervous about leaving the front of Roman’s building unprotected.
They sat around the dining table, looking at him with guarded curiosity, probably thinking they were about to be called on the carpet for some mistake or misdeed.
