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Why else would their brigadier, the pakhan’s son, invite them to his home?
“Thank you for coming,” Roman said, standing at one end of the table. “What I’m about to tell you might get me killed. You’ve all been chosen because of every soldier in the bratva, every brigadier, you’re the ones who have garnered my trust.”
They were quiet, their gazes fixed on Roman.
Tima: a brigadier about Roman’s age, engaged to be married in the fall.
Matvey: an up-and-coming brigadier whose steady earnings in a difficult environment spoke to his leadership and ambition.
Yury: well into his sixties, his decades of experience with the bratva — and Russia — would be invaluable to Roman.
Vasely: portly and gregarious, he was the oldest member at the table, his hair thinning almost to the point of nonexistence.
Pavel: tall and thin, the youngest of the group, and as an associate, the lowest-ranking soldier at the table.
And Max, his friend.
His brother.
Roman could still see him at seventeen, when they’d been assigned to the same brigadier, both of them lowly associates because Igor had believed that to understand the business, Roman had to partake in every part of it.
One of the very few things on which Roman and Igor agreed.
He and Max had spent twenty years together in the bratva. Now they would either run it or they would die together.
“But there’s something else you must know,” Roman continued. “Your presence at this table, in this conversation, may get you killed as well. On the other hand, it may make you as rich as Hades and far more powerful than you are now.”
Yury shifted in his seat, but his gaze remained on Roman.
“My point being,” Roman said, “that if you’re not willing to roll the dice on those outcomes, you are free to leave, and no one will fault you for it.”
He waited, looking from one to the other of them, searching for uncertainty, for signs that his careful choice of men had been faulty.
He saw none. “You may or may not have noticed that the organization is running too lean. Our collections have become more urgent, our expenditures under more scrutiny. Those things have happened in tandem with your dwindling bonuses for a reason — the New York bratva is broke.”
Pavel’s eyes grew wide, and the others looked at each other like they couldn’t quite believe what Roman had said.
“That said, you might have noticed that nothing has changed for those at the top of the food chain.” Roman looked around the expensive loft. “I still live in this eight-million-dollar apartment. My father still has the house in Brighton Beach and others you may or may not know about. That’s not leadership in my eyes. Leadership is shared success, but it’s also shared failure. You celebrate, I celebrate. You suffer, I suffer.”
He had their attention now.
Time for the moment of truth.
“I have submitted idea after idea for remaking the bratva, for returning it to its former glory — and its former profitability. Those ideas have been met with deafening silence as we continue to do things the way they have always been done. That way isn’t viable in the twenty-first century, something that will become increasingly clear over the next five years. We’ll either die a slow and painful death until someone takes over from the motherland or we’ll evolve and save ourselves. I plan to do the latter.” He paused. “And I plan to do it by seizing control of the organization from my father.”
The men glanced nervously at each other before retuning their eyes to Roman. The tension in the room was palpable, but now that Roman had said it, there was no turning back.
“If you’d like to leave, now is the time,” he said. “You’ll suffer no repercussions. But if you stay, I’ll take your presence as an oath of loyalty, not to my father, but to me.”
“What’s in it for us?” Matvey asked. He was an imposing man, nearly as tall and broad as Roman, although without Roman's hair-trigger temper.
Roman looked from Matvey to the other men at the table, the background he’d done on each of them flashing through his mind.
Their families and debts. Their interests and ambitions.
Now that his team was assembled, he was ready to do business. “I’m glad you asked.”
9
