Chapter 9

9

Artur

W e join Polina in one of our private studies on the ground floor, careful to lock the door behind us. The last thing we need is other folks barging into our conversation. It’s already tense and awkward as fuck, especially since I could tell that Lyric wasn’t too happy about Polina’s interference or her presence as a whole.

Lyric is an intelligent and highly observant woman.

I know she saw it—the invisible thread that was once between Max, Ivan, Polina, and me. The thread we cut once we realized how she was playing us, using us, so she could marry Max and place herself as a stakeholder in the Sokolov Corporation. The betrayal I felt then still stings harshly to this day, though I’m sure none of us loathe her more than Ivan.

“You look good,” Max tells Polina, though it’s not meant to be a compliment. More of a stale pleasantry, at best. “How’ve you been?”

“Missing you for the most part,” she says, leaning against his desk.

He takes his seat, while Ivan and I linger by the bookcase to his left, keeping a reasonable distance from a woman who damn near tore us apart a couple of years ago.

“It’s been two years. You need to get over it,” I bluntly reply.

Max gives me a warning look. I know we’re supposed to play nice, but I find it hard to pretend with this snake. “Polina, here’s the thing. We all know how things ended between us, and I do not wish to revisit the past,” Max says. “I’m focusing on the future here. Not only for myself and my family, but for the future of the entire Bratva.”

“I’m just teasing,” she laughs lightly, seeing that we’re not playing her game.

“It’s a piss-poor joke,” I cut her off. “Considering how we parted.”

Her posture changes immediately. “I don’t need the reminder,” she bitterly replies, hurt lingering in her cold, blue eyes. “I regret it all. It was such a feat of miscommunication, a terrible misunderstanding.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Max reiterates.

Ivan pours himself a drink. “We need allies. The Feds are coming for all of us. We need your father to get on board with our strategy for the entire organization. For that, we need to buy White Plains from him, along with a few other properties. He will be paid handsomely, well above the current market price.”

“You’re joking,” Polina chuckles dryly. “My father would rather gouge his own eyes out than deal with the Sokolov’s.”

“And whose fault is that?” I ask.

She lowers her gaze for a moment. “Like I said, it was a huge misunderstanding.”

“And as Ivan just said, we need your father’s support, and you’re the only one who can get it,” Max cuts in. “Think about it this way, Polina. You fucked up. Big time. And instead of owning up to it, you turned around and poisoned the fountain. You lied to your father about us, fully aware that if we told him the truth, we’d expose our intimate life in the process. But what’s coming next is a war. If we don’t join forces, we will all suffer.”

“Or maybe we’ll profit even more,” Polina says, raising a devious eyebrow.

“Or maybe you’ve forgotten that we still have a monopoly on sixty-five percent of all high-end properties in and around Chicago,” Max shoots back. “Your father may have his hold on a small percentage of luxury apartments and condos, including White Plains, but they’re useless without our support, without our sway in the local councils. He is better off selling to us and supporting our mission. With a little bit of luck, our books will be so clean, the Feds will die of old age before they find something incriminating.”

“We’ve got our own forensic accountants working every fucking registry,” I add. “We’re working with retired white collar crime investigators. It’s time for the Larionov’s to join us.”

“Listen, I will talk to Papa about this, but I’m not making any promises,” Polina says, then gives Max another sweet smile. “What’s in it for me, though?”

“You’ll survive,” Ivan states, his tone flat and deadly.

Polina sneers. “Is that a threat?”

“You haven’t dealt with anyone from the FBI’s Chicago field office, have you?” I ask her.

She shakes her head slowly. “Am I supposed to be afraid of them? Or that Bowman schmuck? Word on the street is you had him and you let him go. Terrible business decision. What were you thinking? If anything, I reckon the other families will hold the three of you responsible if things go tits up for any of us. How will I convince my father to work with you on White Plains then?”

“You’ll think of something,” Max replies. “We’re making a good offer here. He won’t get anything better; I guarantee it.”

“Fine, I’ll talk to him and see what he says,” Polina concedes. For a moment, her gaze lingers on my lips, but then she quickly shifts back into her party-girl mood. “Come on guys, let’s go do some shots at the bar. Like old times.”

“You go ahead,” Max says.

She doesn’t appear too happy by being slighted, but she nods and obliges anyway. I can’t wait to never see her again—a feeling I wasn’t sure I would ever experience, especially in the months after the breakup. Yet seeing Polina now, I’ve realized I have nothing left in my heart for her. Not love, not affection, not any kind of longing. No respect whatsoever.

The only reason she is still walking and breathing is because of her last name. Because we couldn’t afford to go to war with her father and the entire Larionov clan. For better or worse, their presence in Chicago has been useful.

We need to make sure it stays that way.

“That did not go as planned,” I say as soon as we’re alone.

“No shit,” Ivan scoffs, pouring himself another drink.

Max takes a deep breath. “How much do you think Lyric heard downstairs?”

“Ah, the billion-dollar question,” I say bitterly. “Pretty sure she heard every drop of poisoned honey coming out of Polina’s mouth. We’re just lucky Polina didn’t see her.”

“What the fuck are we going to do?” Ivan asks, looking at his brother, then at me before taking a seat on the sofa by the closed door. “We can’t take our eyes off Lyric. We obviously can’t stay away from her. We need Polina and her father, and you know Polina’s going to try and spin this in her favor, one way or another.”

It’s a disaster already and we haven’t even gotten to the worst part. The Larionov’s have been an important part of the Bratva ever since the Russians came to Chicago centuries ago. When the Feds were combing through Al Capone’s IRS documents, the Larionov’s were buying up properties, including White Plains, bribing local councilors and pushing deeper into Italian territory with veritable impunity on behalf of the Bratva.

Max and Ivan’s father never considered buying White Plains from Larionov—then again, he never had to deal with our current shitstorm. For some reason, the Feds kept things slightly more civil with the old man.

With us, it’s different.

“We know that Smith and Bowman are pissed off because we’ve been cutting our proxy ties to the local Feds’ office,” I say. “It’s why they’re so determined to nail us. By taking our businesses out of the gutter and into the public domain, we cut off a major money supply for their dirty operations.”

“That makes Larionov vulnerable too at the end of the day,” Max surmises.

“Not if he decides to work with them,” I warn him. “He’s always vied for the top spot of the Bratva. What stops him from selling us out to the Feds to get it? We go down, and he gets to step in and take over, despite your father’s wishes. If he were alive today, he’d—”

“He’s not,” Ivan cuts me off. “We’re on our own. We’ve been on our own for years now.”

“And Larionov knows it. So does his daughter,” I grumble.

“Which means she will try to use it against us,” Max says, lowering his gaze. “As if we didn’t have enough on our plate already.”

I nod in agreement and decide to focus on the only aspect that we can control. “Whatever happens next, we can’t lose Lyric.”

The words hit deep because we’re all on the same wavelength here. Lyric stumbled into our lives and everything changed—our objectives, our limits, our willingness to compromise in aspects of our business and in personal matters.

I don’t know if she’ll stick around but I do know that I want her, and so do Max and Ivan. That much became clear tonight.

“She’s different, isn’t she?” Max chuckles softly, a warm twinkle lingering in his eyes.

“I did some research,” I confess. “As much as the Internet would allow anyway. Apparently, Lyric is quite the computer whiz with a major in computer science and a minor in finance. I am officially curious as to what her doctorate’s thesis is about, considering she was supposed to meet with Bowman.”

“Pretty sure she mentioned something about geopolitical repercussions,” Max says. “Yeah, she’s brighter than most, that’s for sure.”

“A bit of a homebody,” I add. “She doesn’t waste nights and weekends at clubs and house parties like many others in her social circle. Generally speaking, girls with political heads for fathers tend to act out.”

Ivan smiles subtly. “Pretty sure her way of acting out was cutting most ties with her father. Moved out on her own, refuses to work for him, keeps to herself, and makes her own money. That makes her even brighter, especially given what an asshole her father is.”

“And that makes her all the more precious,” I reiterate. “This whole thing with Polina tonight is going to get worse. We need to talk to Lyric about it. We need to tell her the truth so she’s aware of our history, at least.”

“And we need to keep Polina away from her,” Ivan replies.

At the same time, we also need to watch our fucking backs, because everybody seems hell bent on gunning for us. I wonder what Piotr Sokolov would have to say about this. Max and Ivan’s father ruled over the Bratva with an iron fist, but when we came back from active service and proposed all of these business changes, he was the first to say yes.

It was as if a weight had been lifted from his weary shoulders after decades of playing the same dirty games and getting the same payoffs. He did warn us, though. I remember that conversation all too well.

“Be careful,” old man Sokolov told his sons and me. “It won’t just be the Bratva families that you’ll have to sway in your favor. You will also have to deal with the parasites who have been leeching off us for years and years, and those leeches have grown big and fat. They’ll be angry.”

Especially the leeches within the FBI’s field office in Chicago. I had no idea how deep their corruption went until we started looking into it. Until we started shifting gears, changing business strategies, and stirring the pot at a time when everyone expected us to simply carry on like the others before us.

It will cost us to go legit.

I just hope the price we have to pay isn’t too steep.