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Roman’s father beamed. “You flatter an old man.” He turned to Roman. “You know Roman, I’m sure.”
Valeriya turned her gaze to Roman. “We’ve met in passing.” She extended her hand. “Hello, again.”
She wasn’t wrong. They traveled in the same circles, although their orbits were quite a bit different. On the rare occasion that Roman found himself out with the casual acquaintances who thought they were his friends, he was almost certain to see Valeriya across the room, ordering $1000 champagne and doing caviar bumps like they were cheap coke.
“Hello,” he said, lifting her hand and grazing his lips across its smooth surface.
She was tall and elegant, her skin scented with expensive perfume. Her eyes were the ice-blue of a glacier, her brown hair falling in gleaming waves around her face. Her bone structure was pronounced enough that she might have been one of the runway models at Fashion Week, a blue wrap dress hugging a body that had probably been beaten into submission with private trainers and customized meal plans.
She was objectively one of the most beautiful women Roman had ever seen, and she left him as cold as an arctic tundra.
Her gaze raked Roman’s body and a sly smile turned up the corners of her mouth. She looked like a cat about to dine on ten canaries, and it occurred to Roman that any other man might have been flattered by the obvious approval in her eyes.
But he felt nothing, and he had a sudden flash of auburn hair streaked with burgundy, heard the melodious laughter of the barista at Roasted.
Ruby.
He forced himself not to shift in his chair at the thought of her. There would be time to stop at the coffee shop between this meeting and the next.
Maybe.
Valeriya tore her gaze from Roman and looked at Igor. “May I offer you something to drink?”
“Vodka,” Roman’s father said.
How cliché.
Valeriya nodded and walked to the hall, then barked out a name, followed by a series of angry instructions in Russian.
When she returned, her expression was composed. “Please make yourselves comfortable.”
Roman waited while his father and Kon got settled on the sofa, then took the other end as Valeriya claimed the chair next to her father.
“My daughter is a prize,” Viktor said to Igor without preamble. “Why should I give her to your son?”
Roman looked at Valeriya, but if she was bothered by the crudeness of her father’s introduction, it didn’t show. Her expression remained serene, as if it were commonplace to be offered up like cattle in a modern marriage negotiation.
Roman’s father wasn’t as adept at hiding his emotion. Maybe Viktor didn’t see it, but Roman had spent his life learning to mark his father’s anger. The flush creeping up his father’s neck meant that Igor was furious. His fists, balled on his knees, meant that he was trying not to give in to it.
Roman had seen a lot of the former and very little of the latter. Igor’s restraint was saved for others.
“I am the pakhan of the largest bratva territory in the country,” Igor said. “With my position comes great power, great… influence.” The Kalashniks could no longer boast the wealth that had once been part and parcel of Igor’s position, but the influence was still there. America’s power brokers and politicians still owed Igor favors, and if that didn’t work, there was always the army of men willing to commit violence to curry favor with him. “My son is the beneficiary of that power and influence. His wife’s family will become our family.”
Roman fought against a yawn. His father used the termbeneficiaryloosely. He had no intention of giving up his title to Roman anytime soon.
Which was why Roman was going to take it.
Viktor studied Igor with shrewd eyes, and now Roman saw that Viktor’s earlier boredom had been a front. “And what makes you think I don’t have similar power and influence?”
“Our spheres of power and influence are perpendicular, not parallel,” Roman’s father said carefully. He had to make it clear that there were things the bratva could accomplish that Viktor couldn’t without insulting the other man. “You have the capital the bratva needs to grow, and we can lead the way through channels you may find… perilous to navigate.”
It wasn’t hard to decode the message: Viktor had money, but there was too much attention on the oligarchs now. Approaching politicians and other high-profile people had become too dangerous — for the politicians mostly.
They couldn’t be seen lunching with an oligarch, but Igor’s business interests had long ago been set up to appear legitimate to the untrained eye. There were whispers about his connection to organized crime, a handful of men who’d gotten caught and done time to protect the organization, but that’s all there had ever been, and more than a few politicians were happy to ignore the whispers in exchange for a campaign donation.
“In addition,” Igor continued as Viktor studied him, “we have certain assets which are trained in less… conventional ways of getting things done.”
Translation:we have people who will pull the trigger so you can keep your hands clean.
