Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
The two of them exchange a look as I grab a bottle of water. Mikhail nods. “Yeah. We have an urgent matter to discuss, but we wanted to wait and do it in person. Just us.”
In other words, they waited for my mother to come so she could watch the kids. None of the nannies work Sundays.
Interesting.
I toss the empty water bottle, reach into the fridge, and grab a protein shake, twist the cap off, and down half of it in a few gulps. “What is it?”
Mikhail frowns. “We’ve discovered a connection between the attempt at poisoning Harper and the attack on Lev.”
I stand up straighter, instantly alert. The type of retribution demanded by this situation will fall squarely on my shoulders.
When someone needs to die, I’m the one called.
Seven minutes later, I’m freshly showered and dressed, sitting on Mikhail’s balcony that overlooks the ocean. Aleks sits on my left, and my younger brother Viktor is to my right, nursing a cup of coffee. Mikhail’s on his way because he had to consult with his wife, Aria, our head hacker and cybersecurity pro.
“Aleks, what’s going on?” I ask.
Aleksandr, who works alongside Aria, broods, looking over the Manhattan skyline visible from Mikhail’s balcony.
He shakes his head. “Wait for Mikhail. We all need to be present.”
Viktor, silent and hulking, sits brooding. Our group heavy’s mere presence— hulking, tattooed, and typically dressed in leather— can be enough to ward off enemies. And if it isn’t, he’s willing and able to get shit done.
Lev, however, gets to his feet and begins to pace. Our youngest brother by several years, Lev is a trained fighter and our team strategist. With his athletic build, he’s the one we send in to maneuver through tricky situations and defend himself if needed. Confident, with a magnetic personality that makes women swoon, Lev doesn’t ever get romantically entangled. He’s too occupied with other things.
“Ollie joining us?” Lev asks, his jaw tight.
“Remotely.”
Jesus. It’s been over a year since Mikhail and Aria had their son Sasha and our brother Ollie’s been working in Moscow. He came home for Sasha’s baptism, then went straight back to Moscow.
“When’s he coming home?”
Aleks shakes his head, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Don’t know.”
“We’re stronger when we’re together,” I say, shaking my head.
“While that might be true,” Mikhail says from the balcony doorway as he comes out to meet us, “in this case, it might not be.”
What does that mean?
Mikhail joins us and shuts the door behind him. I watch him curiously. I know that look on his face. Whatever he needs to tell us is big.
“Aria and Aleks unlocked some prime intel,” Mikhail says, walking past the chairs toward the edge of the balcony. He leans against the wrought iron fence and crosses his arm on his chest. His deep-set dark brown eyes beneath heavy brows, golden, tanned skin, and dark brown hair tinged with flecks of gold make him look almost godlike. And while Mikhail might appear a bit more civilized than the rest of us, there’s a reason he’s called the Siberian tiger.
“You know we’ve been on the trail of those who attacked us for some time now. We’ve narrowed it down to rival Bratva and a few subsidiary groups. In recent weeks, Aria has discovered that the subsidiaries weren’t actually behind any of the attacks but funded by the larger groups.” His tone grows sober as his eyes harden. Mikhail is known as the Siberian tiger for a reason.
“We have names.”
Unlike other rival groups in New York, ours is one of the only not held together by blood. Like other Russian factions before us, our father decided he would ensure allegiance to our family by adopting all of us. But blood isn’t what bonds us all together.
Loyalty. Honor. Trust. The ties of familial bonds run deep despite the way we came into the family.
When Mikhail calls us by name, it’s like a call to arms. A summoning. A flare that lights the night sky, calling all of us to action. Any one of us would lay down his life for the other, a claim some of our rivals could never make.
“Names,” Lev says, his jaw tightening. Recent years have hardened the softer features of his younger face. He suffered during an all-out attack, resulting in a beating that left him hospitalized shortly after Mikhail was made pakhan in the wake of our father’s death. He was outnumbered and left for dead outside a nightclub.
Mikhail straightens. While Lev was personally attacked, Mikhail’s wife was nearly poisoned to death. “Ivanov. Petr Ivanov.”
“Son of a bitch,” Lev says under his breath, shaking his head. “After all we did for him.”
“Right.”
When my father was still here and we were a fledgling group, we ran surveillance for Ivanov at our own risk for what turned out to be a pittance in hindsight.