Fractured Ties by Bethany-Kris Page 0,34

then set the phone on the cradle.

“Still trying to work a deal on an order?” Grisha asked from the corner, never looking up from his work.

“You know how Vasily Markovic is,” Vadim returned.

Grisha nodded, but said nothing.

Vadim’s sharp gaze fell on Kolya. “Since when have you forgotten how to wait after you knock?”

“I assumed your non-reply was my okay.”

“You assumed wrong.”

“My mistake.”

Vadim scowled. “Don’t make too many of those. I would have to start correcting them, Kolya.”

That thinly veiled threat barely even brushed Kolya’s shoulders with tension. His father’s lessons had been coming for him ever since he’d learned to talk back. They’d only become harder and more brutal as he aged.

Vadim had always been a heavy-handed man.

At least, to his boys.

“Are we doing business with the Albanians?” Kolya asked.

Vadim leaned back in his large chair, and steepled his fingers together as he eyed Kolya. “In a sense, yes.”

“And what sense is that? Separation of church and state, as you like to say. We don’t usually do very much business with other Chicago families, unless it’s absolutely necessary. Tends to keep the peace in the city.”

Sure, they did the occasional small deal with the Albanians should they run short on something for their own streets. The Albanians were heavy into the drug trade, and while the Boykovs had their own connections and shops set up to cultivate what they could, they still needed to stock up in certain cases. The Albanians were close in that way. When the time called for it.

That was about the extent of their business relationship, however. It certainly wasn’t enough for Vadim to be inviting the second in command for the Albanians into the Compound.

“And then perhaps this is necessary, no?” Vadim finally returned, raising one straight, thick brow as if to ask Kolya to question him one more time. “We have a small deal coming up that they brokered for someone else—something they approached me with a while ago. I need to keep the peace with them long enough to see it through.”

Kolya wasn’t entirely sure what his father was going on about, but he also didn’t like the sounds of it. At the same time, he had gotten one of Vadim’s looks and it was more than enough to keep him from questioning his father on the topic more.

Vadim hated to be questioned.

Through the exchange, Grisha remained quiet in his seat as he flipped through whatever papers were in that folder. Vadim waited long enough for Grisha to find something in the folder, which he brought over to his boss and then took his seat once more. Vadim didn’t give the paper a second look; his gaze was firmly on Kolya.

“Well?” he asked. “Where is it?”

He didn’t even need to ask what his father meant. It was the whole reason he had been called in, after all.

Kolya dropped the small, black duffle he’d been carrying to the floor and opened it up. Pulling out the documents he’d retrieved from Ivan’s Kozlov’s property, he grabbed hold of the bag as well, before stepping forward to set both items on his father’s desk.

Pointing to the bag, he said, “A little over one-hundred grand in assorted bills—not ours, either. Actual cash. And the paperwork to his warehouse, home, and whatever other properties he had a hand in. I assume they’ll make a decent profit when liquidated, or in the case of the businesses, they’ll continue to be profitable, yes?”

Vadim’s gaze drifted over the papers, and then the duffle before he came back to Kolya. “Is that all?”

“For this.”

“And the run-down on what happened two weeks ago?”

Yeah, shit.

He’d been hoping to avoid all those details, but Vadim wasn’t the type to skip or skim. He liked to know it all, regardless.

“All in all,” Kolya said, keeping his tone level, “it went well. There were just enough faces we recognized in the warehouse to make sure word made the rounds that the Boykovs doled out appropriate punishment. As you wanted.”

Vadim’s gaze narrowed. “And?”

“Anatoly happened to step in the way when a bit of the business was going down, and shit happened. The issue was cleaned up and it’s gone.”

His father quieted at that. “Stepped in how?”

Here, Kolya had to lie. He wasn’t about to explain the real reason why Anatoly died because that would lead into the discussion of Maya, and no.

“An incident between him and Ivan,” Kolya offered simply.

Vadim seemed to take that as gospel, but frankly, he wouldn’t have anything else to go on to call