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I wave a hand dismissively, signaling to my brothers to take him away. Damien throws a black cloth bag over Erik's head, and Samuil throws him over his shoulder to carry him out.
Nothing bad is going to happen to the man. This is all for the sake of appearances and keeping our current location a secret. Nobody needs to know the Bratva works out of the Nicolaevich Brothers Taxi Company depot. We're just going to toss him into the back of one of our vehicles, drive around the block a couple of times so Erik's all turned around, and then we'll send him on his merry way until Friday.
“Well,One-Eye,” Roman says with a cheeky grin. “What are we going to do when the poor fucker can't pay up? Do we drive him out to a nice lake somewhere and have him look at the ducks?”
“He'll pay.”
“You sound so sure.”
“One way or another, we're going to get that money back. Either in cash, or we'll find a way to make him work for it.”
Roman puts his hands up in mock surrender. “If you say so.”
“Why are you still standing there? Don't you have work to do?”
“Are you so eager to get rid of me, brother?” Roman clicks his tongue, a sudden realization twinkling behind that smug face of his. “Oh, I know. You're still trying to hunt down our skimmer?”
I grit my teeth, swallowing my annoyance. My fingers twitch again, eager for a cigarette to hold. I settle for a nearby pen.
For the past three months, I've noticed an anomaly when tabulating the books. It started small at first, a couple of rubles here and there. I chalked it up to minor miscalculations somewhere in our lieutenants' reports. Nothing overly concerning, though it did warrant a long, boring speech about due diligence. Things were perfectly fine after that.
Until two weeks ago—around the middle of November—when I found a series of miscalculations yet again. This time, hundreds of thousands of rubles missing. To say I'm irritated about not realizing sooner is an understatement. Nothing is supposed to get past me, especially something as egregious as this. Someone within our ranks has been helping themselves to my family's money, all while under my nose.
Whoever they are, they're clever enough to only take small amounts at one time, and always infrequently. There's no pattern to it, no way to predict when it will happen again. And since most of our illicit operation is cash-based and filtered through our taxi company, it's damn near impossible to track. Now I have the wonderful task of picking through every single one of our businesses to find out where our skimmer has been lifting funds from.
At the rate things are going, it looks like they're saving up for one hell of a Christmas celebration. They could buy themselves a brand-new luxury BMW with how much they've managed to steal from us. I guess it's true what they say: there's no honor amongst thieves.
It's a fucking insult is what it is. I refuse to let them get away with it any longer.
“I'm dealing with it,” I grumble. “Now, get out so I can concentrate.”
“I think we should tell Andrei.”
Slowly, I rise from my chair and shake my head. “He doesn't need to know yet.”
“But—”
“Andrei and Sandra are enjoying some well-deserved time away with their kids. This happened on my watch, so I'll be the one to deal with it. He does too much for us and asks for little in return. I see no sense in bothering him with something this trivial.”
Roman smiles, cocky as ever. “Calm down, Mister Bleeding Heart. I just wanted to know if we should keep him in the loop, that's all.”
“I have everything under control.”
“You do?” When I glare at him, Roman throws his head back and laughs. “I mean, you do!”
“Nice save,” I mutter.
“Oh, don't be such a grump. Christmas is around the corner. Don't want to end up on Santa's naughty list, do you?”
“Has anyone ever told you how annoying you get around the holidays?”
“I'm annoying all the time,” my brother shoots back with a wink.
“That's not something to be proud of.”
“It's part of my charm.”
“Nothing about you is charming.”
