68
IVAN
“I say we break through the gates. Just plow the car straight through the wrought iron.” Yasha has a wicked grin on his face. “After what Mikhail pulled last night, it would serve him right.”
“It would also start a war.”
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 the fuck he 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. Without crashing 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 about you, 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.
It swings open as soon as we’re on the porch. Konstantin’s middle daughter, Kira, stands in the doorway.
“Mr. Pushkin!” She smiles up at me, her adult teeth still too big for her thirteen-year-old mouth. She ushers us inside the way she was no doubt trained to do. “It’s so good to see you. I wanted to go to your party with my dad the other night, but I couldn’t make it.”
“Because it was after her bedtime,” Yasha mutters to me out of the side of his mouth.
If she hears him, she does a good job of hiding it. It would be rude for a polite young lady to defend herself, after all. Quiet submission is the name of the game in the Sokolov household. In most of the underworld, really. If it was up to Konstantin, he would hand his middle schooler over to me as a bride, and she wouldn’t even know how to begin to fight the sick deal off.
Even the thought of it turns my stomach. What kind of twisted fuck looks at this little girl and wants to marry her off?
She smiles, her lips coated in a purple gloss. “I’ll go tell my father you’re here.”
“No need. I know the way to his office.”
Kira stops in the middle of the hallway, her eyes wide. “Oh. Well… I’m supposed to tell him when people—He might be in a meeting.”
“It’s alright. He’ll make time for me.”
We turn the corner and see Konstantin’s office door closed. I rap one knuckle against the wood before I shove the door open.
Konstantin is sitting behind his desk, one leg crossed over the other. Much to my surprise, Mikhail is here, too. He’s standing in front of the private entrance to the office at the back of the room.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you didn’t wait for me to receive you,” Konstantin drawls, a sense of forced laziness in his tone. “You aren’t one to follow the rules of social etiquette.”
“I don’t like to bother with etiquette. Not when I’m amongst friends.” I take a pointed look around the room. “Your little girl thought you were in a meeting.”
“Kira has grown up a lot since the last time you saw her.”
“Is she finally out of her booster seat?” Yasha asks with a sarcastic smile. “Good for her.”
Konstantin’s gaze turns icy as he stares at my second. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, gentlemen?”
“We didn’t expect a visit,” Mikhail adds. “Word on the street is you’re spending all your time with your new fiancée.”
For the first time, I turn fully to Mikhail. There’s a bruise on his right cheek—evidence of the time he spent with my fiancée.
I open my mouth to warn him I’ll kill him the next time he touches her, but Konstantin interrupts.
“Mikhail told me he had the pleasure of meeting your woman last night. Cora, was it?” He looks to Mikhail for confirmation. His son nods once. “Well, Mikhail tells me Cora is lovely. As your friends, we both wish you nothing but the best.”
“How generous of you both.”
Konstantin dips his pale blond head. “But of course, I believe if you want the best, then you would marry a Sokolov daughter.”
“We tried that once before. It didn’t work out.”
Konstantin’s smile falters. “The details of our alliance were written down. I kept a copy, and I’m sure your father did, as well. The verbiage makes it clear that you agreed to marry the eldest available Sokolov daughter. That would make Kira—”
“A child bride,” I grit out, unable to hold back my disgust. “Does the verbiage explain why a father would hand his child off to a grown man?”
Konstantin’s neck reddens, but he doesn’t react. “She is mature for her age. If you spent any time with her, you’d see that.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t spend a lot of time with middle schoolers.”
Mikhail leans forward like he is going to do something. What that might be, I have no idea. I made it clear last night that I could more than handle him by myself.
But Konstantin clears his throat.
A look passes between the men. A shared expression that sets off alarm bells in my head.
“Perhaps we’re not ready for that discussion yet,” the man demurs.
My father would instruct me to keep my cards close to my vest here. Even though I want to chuck my cards out the window and wring both these men by the throat.
Fuck Konstantin Sokolov. And fuck his creepy son, too.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I give it a second’s thought,” I snarl. I give each of the Sokolov men a withering glare. “Keep your fucking hands away from my family.”
Without another word, I turn to leave. Yasha follows.
“We didn’t learn anything,” he warns as we march down the hall.
“We learned enough.”
The Sokolovs approached Cora last night at the club. Their names have popped up too many times for it to be a coincidence. If they plan to make another move on Cora, I’m going to beat them to the punch.
“Okay. So what’s our move now?”
“We exterminate these fucking cockroaches.”