The Soldier - S.R. Jones Page 0,26
killed for what he did, horribly and violently by my men, and despite Vasily and others looking into it at the time, we found nothing linking the crime to anyone else.
“Really? So long after?”
“Yeah, and this comes from a cast iron source. It seems Kyrylo Voloshin helped your father do what he did.”
I sit back in my desk and take a deep breath. The name is such a blast from the past it takes me a moment to process what Vasily has said. Kyrylo is dead now, but he wasn’t then.
Holy fuck, I need a drink. Whenever I think about Yulia’s death it slays me all over again, so most days, I don’t think about it. At all. We never found anyone inside our organization who had helped, and my father didn’t name anyone even under extreme duress, or what some might call torture. Vasily worked him over good and proper, and the only names he got from him were lowlife street thugs. We’d pretty much concluded my father had worked with some level shit to put his plan together.
“I don’t understand,” I speak my thoughts out loud.
Kyrylo was a Pakhan, a Bratva boss. In fact, he was the man who ran most of London and the southeast of the UK with an iron fist. He was also on Andrius’ shit list, although Andrius has always sworn he didn’t take the fucker out. I can’t fathom why the bastard would be involved in what happened to Yulia.
“It makes no fucking sense,” I tell Vasily. “Are you sure this intel is accurate?”
“Deadly. Basically, when you moved to England, Kyrylo was the boss down there where you are, right? You were a big Bratva man in Moscow… Hell, K, let’s be honest, you’re the fucking king. That’s even what they call you here, King K. You moving to London must have seemed a threat to Kyrylo even though it was for legit business. He’d seen you take out lesser guys in the Moscow territory, and he didn’t want you doing the same there. He killed Yulia to send a warning that you could be reached. Then, like the piece of shit he was, he panicked about it and never sent you the message that it was partly his doing. Of course, he’s dead now, and Boris Popov is in charge, and Popov was the one who did the dirty deed of setting it all up, at Kyrylo’s command.”
Yeah, and no surprise because he’s as big a piece of shit as his dead boss. More of one, actually. Popov is a fat fucking psycho, and unluckily for him, he’s now number one on my shit list.
Boris Popov hasn’t managed to keep the same tight lid on things that Kyrylo did. He runs the weapons side of the business, but lost control of everything else. The weapons side of things, he runs with the help of Andrius’ old boss, Allyov. I think there’s also some involvement with the Greeks. This is going to be awful messy.
Messy isn’t necessarily bad, though. A little bit of chaos can be a good thing now and again. Shake things up, let the dice settle where they may.
“I can’t let this go unanswered,” I say.
Vasily sighs. “Boss, it’s a big undertaking. You take out Popov, and you’ll need to either put someone in his stead, or even take over yourself, and you wanted to keep things in the UK legit.”
I massage my temples with one hand as I think. If Vasily found this out, others know, and if not yet, they will. Me not retaliating makes me look weak. Very weak. On the other hand, if I do retaliate, I upset a very finely balanced apple cart.
Most of us Bratva focus on weapons, leaving the drugs to the Italians, and the girls… Well no one admits to running the girls, but I know for a fucking fact that Allyov doesn’t, or Andrius would kill him. That fucker has a strong moral core when it comes to that shit. I don’t run women and never have. I doubt Popov does. It’s a complicated game, trading in flesh, and you need a lot of connections, legitimate connections, who will look the other way. Popov doesn’t have those so far as I’m aware.
I could do with finding out for sure.
So yes, it’s a mess. We all play in the same sandbox, and none of us harms anyone else in that sandbox. I run things in the Western US. Allyov runs the North