Chapter Nineteen

Ilya

I glanced down at my Rolex for the tenth time in as many minutes because Brooke was late. She was never late. Typically, she showed up right on time at the absolute latest, but now she was fifteen minutes late. My first instinct was worry, but not that she'd blown me off. After the man—who I still hadn't identified—accosted her on the street, I was worried that she'd been accosted again. Or worse.

The first time I called, it rolled over straight to voicemail. The second time it rang and rang until the voicemail picked up. Two more calls went unanswered, and she was more than thirty minutes late. I was beyond worried at this point, and I rushed from the Vietnamese restaurant I'd chosen to be this week's meeting place, as fear slid down my spine.

"Take me to Montrose Accounting."

Sergei, my driver, nodded and ten minutes later I rushed into the lobby of Montrose Accounting, expecting to see something other than complete normalcy. My brows furrowed just as the receptionist approached me.

"Mr. Kuznetsov, are you here to see Mr. Montrose?"

"What? No," I barked, and her eyes widened with fear at my tone. "Sorry, Marnie. I'm here for Brooke."

Marnie's eyes flashed with worry. "She's, uh, in her office."

"Thank you," I bit out before I made my way down the small hall, beyond the cluster of desks to the left and turned right. The door was closed, but a quick look through the glass wall showed her on her knees with papers spread out before her on the floor. Her brows furrowed with frustration as she nibbled her bottom lip. Something was definitely wrong, and I was right to be worried, but she was safe.

That was a fucking relief.

I opened the door and stepped inside, but she didn't look up. "You missed our meeting." I kept my voice even, yet firm, and waited for her to respond.

Brooke froze for a long moment before she reached over and tapped the screen on her phone. Another frown darkened her features before she looked up at me. "I don't think we should meet anymore, Ilya. It's too dangerous, and, honestly, I'm not sure that's going to change anytime soon."

I tamped down my initial instinct, which was to accuse her of trying to get out of our meetings for personal reasons, but everything about the scene before me said she wasn't doing that. "Has something else happened? Dmitri looked into Maria's Cantina, and it wasn't bugged." He'd gone over every inch of the place just to make certain, and the place was clean.

She shook her head too fast.

"Are you listening to me, Brooke?"

"No." She was still shaking her head as she reached for a stack of papers. "Ilya, this is bad. It's really bad and I don't want to get caught up in whatever this is." She motioned to the papers on the floor. "It's worse than I thought, but I'd like to be sure about it all before I say anything. I'm sorry about missing the meeting, I honestly didn't realize what time it was. Can I call you when I've had a chance to go through all this?"

I snorted my disbelief, wondering if this was another ploy to distance herself from me. But then I took in her general countenance again. She was genuinely worried about something.

"Seriously, Ilya. This is concerning, and whatever I think of you and what you do, I really think someone is trying to screw you over." Her concern was palpable.

"Okay," I sighed. "You have until six o'clock. If I don't hear from you by then, I'll come looking for you."

"I will," she insisted. "I promise."

***

I reluctantly returned to my office at Envy and looked through my own records in search of what Brooke thought she had found. There were irregularities that she'd already pointed out, but beyond that it was mostly a jumble of numbers. It pissed me off that I couldn't see what she saw, and I vowed that, moving forward, I would make sure I understood every line of my accounts.

Instead of focusing on the numbers, I focused on what I knew I could see. People. I could read them as well as any book, so I left my office and watched the people who rushed around making sure the club was prepped to open this evening. I thought of Dmitri's warning that some of the men here with me were loyal to my uncle first, and that forced me to look at things with fresh eyes.

I strolled to the bar where the bartender, a good-looking blond man with a charming smile that kept our female clientele ordering expensive specialty drinks, was setting up. "Jordan, what do what we have that's new?"

He turned with a smile. "Hey, Mr. K." He launched into a long description of the new bottles that arrived yesterday. "The Brotherhood vodka is doing well, along with the celebrity tequilas. We can hardly keep 'em on the shelves. In fact, I'd recommend we stock up on those more than the bottom shelf booze. No one at this place wants to be seen drinking bottom shelf booze, it's all big names they ask for."

He sounded sincere and astute. "Thank you, Jordan. I'll take that under advisement."

It wasn't Jordan and it wasn't the bartenders at any of my other establishments. It wasn't any of the waitstaff or drinks girls either because they were never in a position to access large sums of money. I'd gone through most of the hired staff, but those were all predominantly cash based. There were only a handful of people I hadn't spoken to. I would get to them, though, if not before tonight was over, certainly before the weekend closed out.

I made it back to my office just as my phone vibrated with a phone call. Looking at caller ID my heart sank. "Oleg," I answered with a tight voice. "This is a surprise."

"You are keeping secrets."

His voice was clear, almost like he was standing in the next room. "What secrets am I keeping from you, Uncle?"

"You have a nosy numbers girl," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. "And you haven't taken care of it yet. I hope you're not thinking with your dick, Ilya."

I bit back the frustrated sigh that threatened to escape because I couldn't afford to let Oleg read too much into anything I said or did. "I never think with my dick," I assured him. "Who told you that I have a nosy accountant, Oleg?"

"Oh, I have my ways, boy." His tone was smug, which pissed me off. "You need to get rid of her. That's an order."

Get rid of her. He wanted me to kill Brooke, which was absolutely not going to fucking happen. "Is that necessary?"

"Yes, it is. You're not going soft on me, are you?" He accused.

"Of course not," I answered.

. "She knows more than she should about your business."

"That isn't true. The numbers weren't adding up and I asked her to look into it." He didn't know that she had no idea about my illegal businesses, which put him at a disadvantage.

"That's an order, Ilya." He ended the call.

"Fuck," I grunted to myself. Somehow, Oleg knew about the numbers and Brooke, which only Dmitri and I knew about, which meant he had an inside source. I had a suspicion about how he was getting his information, but I needed to talk it out with someone, and my second-in-command was always a good listener.

***

Thirty minutes later I was on Dmitri's doorstep, angry and worried as fuck for Brooke. Oleg knew about her, which meant he knew where she worked, and likely where she lived. I'd kept to my initial vow of not investigating her as I would any new employee, as I trusted what we'd had in the past. But now I wondered if perhaps I should have looked closer—not because I believed she was untrustworthy, but to ensure that no one could get to her or find any weak points—I needed to know she was safe at her home. If I didn't act quickly, he would send someone else after her.

Again.

"Ilya." Dmitri's surprise put me on edge. "What are you doing here?"

"Is this a bad time?"

He shook his head. "No, come in. What's wrong?" he asked, and stepped back so I could enter.

"Oleg ordered me to kill Brooke. Says she knows too much about my business. Mentioned her by name." I was still shaken by the order and implication of what it all meant, that I didn't realize we weren't alone until it was too late.

"Alexei. This is a surprise." I looked at Dmitri and then to his father, who had been exiled from the bratva since the night my father was killed. I should not be talking bratva business in front of Alexei, but it was pointless backtracking, now as he'd heard what I had said.

"He's visiting," Dmitri said with an easy shrug. "How did Oleg know about Brooke?"

"Exactly. You and I are the only ones within the organization who know about this, so who could his source possibly be?"

"Our men are loyal, if there was a spy in our ranks then I would know."

Dmitri was correct. You didn't get to my status without a degree of paranoia. I never held sensitive conversations anywhere but my office…

My mind went back to the footage I had watched of me and Brooke fucking in my office, "The CCTV!" I exclaimed. While I ensured that no recording took place whenever meetings were held, and only visuals were recorded at other times, what if someone had overridden the settings and were using our own equipment to eavesdrop?

"Shit," Dmitri grunted. "We were so worried about the cantina we didn't stop to think that we were bugged."

"Why would he do this?" It made no fucking sense, and I hated when shit did not make sense.

"I may have some insight to offer," Alexei said as he lit up his cigar. "If you want advice from an old man who couldn't save his best friend, that is."

"Alexei, you are like family to me. Anything you have to say I would like to hear."

He crossed one ankle over his knee, exhaling the thick smoke on a heavy sigh. "The night of the party, your father, Nik was in good spirits. You were doing well in America, and he was so proud that you were attending one of those fancy universities so you could take our organization into the next century." He laughed. "He had a vision for the future of the bratva and you were it, so he and I were celebrating and commiserating, knowing our boys would be leaving us behind." His sadness was palpable even today. "It was a good night that turned into a horrible fucking night. The worst night of my life."

"He was like a brother to you," I said, understanding his grief.

"He was a brother to me in all the ways that mattered. That night, I was glued to his side because it was my job and because we were brothers. Oleg was there too. He was always there," Alexei remembered. "He sent me to pick up a package," he scoffed. "It was a job for an errand boy, but he insisted that I take care of it and Nik agreed. He was surrounded by family and feeling good, he didn't think anything of it. I didn't like it, I never trusted Oleg, but Nik insisted. ‘Go and hurry back. We have a bottle of vodka just for us waiting', he said. Only, when I got back, there were two bullets in his chest, and he was gone." Alexei hung his head in shame, his eyes were glistening, and it looked like the old man was about to cry. He gave a shuddering sigh and sucked on his cigar, watching the smoke drift up towards the ceiling.

"Oleg sent you away?" I asked in disbelief.

Alexei nodded. "He did. The package was a fucking envelope of cash, ten thousand US dollars, nothing that couldn't have waited. At that moment, I knew it was Oleg behind your father's murder."

My heart stopped at his words. "You think Oleg orchestrated it?"

He laughed, but there was no trace of humor in it. "You don't? Who else stood to gain as much as him?"

Dmitri looked from his father and then to me, "If Nikolai had lived, you would be in charge now. Oleg wouldn't have the power he has now. Or the life."

Logically, it made sense. No one gained more from father's death than his own fucking brother. "But who would have done it? By all accounts, Oleg was just a few feet away when the shots rang out."

"Money is a great motivator, Ilya. He could have paid one of Nik's men or just a random man in need of cash. Had I not been off running a useless errand, I would have been there. Maybe I would have spotted the gunman in time. If nothing else, I would have taken those bullets for Nik."

"I know, Alexei. He knew that too." I didn't want to believe that Oleg orchestrated my father's murder, I couldn't reconcile that in my mind with the man who had taken care of me in the aftermath of his death, the man who had helped my mother, until her grief over my father's death took her to Paris and away from the bratva—or maybe she left to get away from Oleg? It was unbearable to think about, but I could not deny the evidence before me. "Fuck."

"It is hard to hear, I know," Alexei sympathized. "I struggled with whether or not to share this with you, Ilya."

"Why did you? Why now, Alexei?"

"Because I have nothing left to lose. Dmitri is here with you, out of Oleg's clutches, and I am an old man running out of time." He puffed on his cigar and shook his head.

"Father has cancer."

"Shit, Alexei. I'm sorry to hear that. If you need anything, I'm here."

His smile was sad. "Thank you, Ilya. But I am good."

"The offer stands, Alexei." I meant that. "And thank you for letting me know. You will stay here in America?"

"That is the plan, yes."

"Good." I turned to Dmitri. "You will look into Oleg and let me know what you find?"

"Are you sure you want to know?" The concern in his gaze was unsettling, but I didn't just want to know. I needed to know.

"I am certain."

"Good." He handed me a black flash drive. "Everything you need to know is here. After Father shared his suspicions with me, I looked into everything. I had to. I knew I could not bring this to you without proof."

I smiled, gratitude filling my chest. "You are a true brother, Dmitri."

"Always. Would you like me to keep an eye on Brooke?"

"No." I needed to do that myself. "I'm going to her now. She thinks she found something else and I have a bad feeling about all of this. I'll be in touch."

"Good luck, brother."

"Thank you." We shook hands. "Both of you." These men were the only family I had, the only people I could trust. "Stay safe."