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He shrugs. “Even better.”
“As much as I would love to be in a room alone with Mikhail Sokolov”—if only to figure out what thefuckhe was thinking attacking my fiancée at The Coop—“I’m not interested in fighting a war on two fronts.”
“Maybe we wouldn’t be. I mean, if the Sokolovs are the ones behind the attacks, then it would still be only one front.”
“Which is why we’re going to drop in on them.Withoutcrashing through their gates,” I add. “We’ll feel them out. See if anything is out of the ordinary.”
Legs said she got a bad vibe from Konstantin Sokolov, which isn’t surprising. It’s hard not to get a bad feeling around his creepy, anemic-looking ass. With his pale face and ghost-blond hair, it’s like he just crawled out of his own grave.
But I don’t want to discount her lead. Rooster and Legs have always been trustworthy before. I just wish there was a way to follow the lead without leaving Cora home alone.
“Who is on duty back at the house?” I ask.
“Aleksei is in the security shack and Dima is on the monitors.” He glances over at me. “Are you expecting trouble?”
“Trouble is all I expect these days.”
Every time I turn around, Cora is in the crosshairs of some attack. I can’t remember the last time I felt stretched this thin. No matter where I am, my head is somewhere else…
Unless I’m with her.
“Yeah.” Yasha sighs. “I sense trouble coming, too.”
I tense. “Back at the house? If you have information, you need to fucking tell me right—”
“I’m not worried about Cora. She’s taken care of.” He peeks sidelong at me. “I’m worried aboutyou,man.”
I blow out a harsh breath. “Fucking hell, Yasha. Don’t say shit like that. I’m fine.”
“I think you forget sometimes that my entire job is to gather intel. It’s to be observant and pay attention to people. Even you. I know you too well to ignore what I’m seeing.”
My skin prickles with sudden awareness. “But you know me well enough to know you should shut the fuck up right now.”
Anyone else would back down, but Yasha just laughs. “That’s true. And I will… but not until I say—”
“Nothing. We need to prep for what we’re going to say to Konstantin when we—”
“—Don Pushkin is never going to approve of Cora,” he finishes, ignoring me. “He’ll never agree to her joining the fold.”
I snap towards him, fist clenched. “No one is asking him to approve of her. She’s part of a plan. Nothing more.”
Yasha presses his lips together, staring straight ahead at the road. He might be even less convinced by my words than I am.
We wind through the hills up towards the Sokolov property for several quiet minutes before Yasha speaks again.
“Transitions of power are messy, Ivan. Even when they’re planned. Even when the passage is from father to son.” He drums his fingers nervously on the wheel. “Sometimes, no matter how much people want a peaceful changeover, the old guard has to be dead and gone before the crown fits right on a new head.”
My second is talking around the point, but it’s still impossible to miss.
A coup.Against my father.
If anyone beyond me heard him say it, he could be killed. He knows that. And yet…
“You’ve always been loyal to me, Yasha. More loyal to me than anyone. My father knows that and he has tolerated it. But if he hears even a whisper of something like that from you,” I warn, voice low, “even I might not be able to stop what he’ll do to you.”
Yasha makes a final turn into a long drive. Black gates like prison bars mar the otherwise pristine landscape ahead. As the car slows to a stop, he turns to me. The mischievous smile is back on his face. “Whatever you say,boss.”
We park and get out. “Overcompensating,” Yasha whispers as we walk toward the front door.
