50. Bronwyn

50

brONWYN

We were met at the airport by two of Radimir’s men, who escorted us back to the penthouse so that we could freshen up and change. Radimir looked much more like himself, back in his normal three-piece suit. But he still looked grimly serious. I remembered the early days, when I’d wondered if I’d ever see him smile. Now I wondered if I’d ever see him smile again. He told me he had to meet with his brothers, and I nodded. “I’d like to come too,” I said nervously. “If that’s okay.”

First, he blinked at me. Then he cocked his head to one side and gazed at me for a long time, and he must have seen the change in me because his eyes suddenly became warm, as if I’d just made him very, very happy...and a little sad, at the same time. “Yes,” he told me, his voice ragged with emotion. “Yes, Krasavitsa , of course.”

When we arrived at Gennadiy’s house, a steady, ice-cold rain was hammering the roof and windows. We got soaked just running from the car to the door. Gennadiy showed us in, but seemed a little surprised to see me.

Radimir fixed him with a glare. “I told you: she’s family now.”

Gennadiy sighed and nodded and took us through to a wood-paneled room with a huge oak table. We all sat down and it was only when Gennadiy reached for the vodka bottle to pour himself a shot that I saw his hand and gasped. He was wrapped in bandages up to the wrist.

“Burns,” he muttered. “Spartak torched one of our casinos last night. I went in to make sure all the staff got out okay. Everyone’s alive but it was close.”

Valentin was hurt, too: someone had side-swiped his car and he’d rammed into a lamppost. The airbags had saved him, but his head was wrapped in bandages. And Mikhail was glowering, his hands shaking as he petted his dogs. He had two nestled on either side of him and was hugging them protectively. “We were walking downtown, and someone threw a piece of meat right in front of them. I managed to get it out of their mouths, and it was full of fucking rat poison. What sort of bastard tries to poison dogs?!” It was the only time I’d ever seen him angry.

Gennadiy got up and started to pace. “Spartak has put a price on all our heads.” He looked at me sadly. “Even yours. He has a lot more men than we do and they’re well trained. This place is fortified but you’re not safe outside these walls. Don’t go anywhere, not even down the street to get a cup of coffee.”

I nodded, feeling sick. Someone wanted me dead. Someone was willing to pay money to end my life : I couldn’t wrap my head around that.

Gennadiy sighed and leaned forward over the table. “I’ve called The Eight over and over. They’re still denying they told us to kill Spartak’s brother. They say this is all our fault and they won’t rein Spartak in. In the last twenty-four hours, he’s hit seventeen of our places. Bars smashed up, warehouses torched.” He dropped into a chair, defeated. “I’d say we’ve lost about a quarter of what we have.”

A quarter! A quarter of the Aristov empire just gone, in a day. Three more days and they’d have nothing left. Then I corrected myself and sat straighter in my chair. We. We would have nothing left. I was a part of this, now.

“Why would The Eight do this?” asked Valentin. “Call us, give us the order and then deny it? We’ve always obeyed them. And they want peace: that’s the whole reason all the families obey them, to keep the peace. They must have known this would start a war.”

We all looked at him hopelessly. No one had an answer. But then I frowned. A half-idea was slowly forming, a reflection of something Valentin had said. It felt like looking at the moon in a rippling puddle: there was something there, but I couldn’t see it clearly, yet.

“Our legal businesses aren’t doing much better,” said Radimir. He’d spent most of the flight making phone calls. “Three construction projects have just stopped because politicians have withdrawn their approval at the last minute. They’re people I have no hold over, I was relying on the other families to pressure them, because we all benefited. But no one’s playing ball anymore. We’re losing about two and a half million a day.”

Even the Aristovs would be bankrupt soon, at that rate. I kept frowning, still trying to make my idea come into focus.

“No one will even return my calls,” said Mikhail sourly. “They know that if they help us, The Eight will cut them off, too.”

Gennadiy knocked back a shot of vodka and poured another. “I wish I’d never answered that fucking call.”

And in a rush, the idea stabilized and snapped into focus. I drew in my breath...but I couldn’t speak. The four men had started arguing about what to do. And despite how much I’d gotten to like Gennadiy, Valentin and Mikhail, they were still intimidating as hell. They were Bratva. I was an outsider. But I couldn’t just stay silent. The words swelled up inside me as the argument got louder and louder. And finally, I closed my eyes and blurted. “What if they didn’t call you?”

The room went silent. I opened my eyes just in time to see Gennadiy shove his chair back from the table and stand. “You think I’m making it up? You think you can come in here and call me a liar, just because you spread your legs for my brother?”

Radimir’s chair screeched as he stood, too. “That’s my wife you’re talking to. Speak like that to her again and I’ll smash your teeth out on the edge of this table.”

I stood up, my heart thumping, and put my hands up to try to keep the two of them from leaping at each other. “I’m not saying you’re lying, Gennadiy. But what if the call wasn’t from The Eight?”

Gennadiy scowled at me. “It was! It was Domaslav! I’ve spoken to him a hundred times; he deals with all the families in Chicago!”

I put up both hands to try to calm him. “Deep Fakes.”

Everyone stared at me. Then Radimir said, “What?!”

“Before I started my bookstore,” I said, “I did a business course at night school. One of the modules was on banking and avoiding fraud. One of the growing threats is deep fakes. Someone calls you, pretending to be someone you know. They sound just like them because they’re using a computer to mimic the voice. They tell you to pay someone or move money to a different account. People have lost millions, tens of millions. Now what if...someone used the same trick on you? On this family? Only instead of defrauding you for money...they tricked you into killing Spartak’s brother?”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then, “That’s ridiculous,” said Gennadiy. But he sounded shaken.

I leaned in. “When Domaslav called you, did he know anything?” I asked gently. “Anything that only one of The Eight would know? A password, a code, anything that proves it was actually him?”

“We don’t use passwords!” snapped Gennadiy. “We’re—” He unleashed a long stream of curses in Russian, but I knew the anger wasn’t directed at me, and I knew what he meant. We’re Bratva. They were deeply traditional, they had honor. They did things based on trust, on promises. But that was exactly what had made them vulnerable and the fear in his eyes meant he’d realized it, too.

“Gennadiy?” asked Radimir quietly.

Gennadiy cursed again. Valentin put a hand on his back, but he shook it off angrily. “No,” he said at last. “No, they didn’t say anything that proves it was them.” He looked around at our horrified faces and shook his head wildly. “But that doesn’t mean...”

Mikhail nodded sadly. “Bronwyn is right. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Ever since you got that phone call, we’ve been asking why The Eight would want us to break the truce. Now we know: they didn’t. Someone fooled us.”

We all looked at each other in slack-jawed horror as the scale of it sank in. We’d been fooled into starting a war, and at the same time cutting ourselves off from all help. One fake phone call was going to destroy the whole Aristov empire.

I saw Gennadiy’s legs shake. He sat down heavily and put his head in his hands. “This is…” he swallowed. “It’s all my fault.”

We all came around the table and put hands on his shoulders. “Any one of us could have taken that phone call,” Radimir told him firmly. “We wouldn’t have questioned it, either.”

But Gennadiy just stared at the table, inconsolable. When he finally lifted his head to look at me, all the hostility was gone. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Without you, we’d never have known.”

The others nodded. Radimir looked at me with such a look of love and pride that I melted. But it was the looks the other three gave me that made my throat close up. For the first time in a long time, I felt like part of a family.

“So, who did this?” asked Valentin.

I thought about it. “It would have to be someone who’d spoken to The Eight, so they could sample Domaslav’s voice.”

Gennadiy ran his hands through his hair. “That’s a long list. Domaslav deals with all the families in Chicago. Any of our rivals could have done it. There are plenty who want us gone.” He shook his head as he finally accepted the reality of it. “It’s the perfect fucking crime. One phone call, and they make us start a war with a rival and cut us off from all aid. They’ll wipe us out without ever firing a shot.”

“Can we go to Spartak and explain what happened?” I asked.

Radimir shook his head sadly. “We killed his brother. He’s not going to forgive that just because we were tricked into it. Besides, we’ve got no way of proving it.”

“All we can do,” said Gennadiy, “is get ready for war.”