Chapter 21: Sunday: Bratva business

It had only been a few hours since I’d brought Sonia home from my flat, but I was already missing her like crazy. I couldn’t wait to get her alone again.

After Miki met with Glowacki, we went into the city and spent the rest of the day running various business errands.

First, we filed a report with the Police. The restaurant that was trashed was totally legitimate, so this was the correct course of action for us to maintain our reputation as Russian oligarchs. The Police report was necessary for our insurance claim.

Thankfully, whoever broke in disabled the camera by spraying it with black spray paint, and so there was no video evidence. Therefore, the Police seemed to think that it must have been kids who broke in and trashed the place on some kind of dare or whatever since nothing was actually stolen. That theory suited us perfectly.

Next, we met Sergei to discuss the situation with our dead dealer and his wife. Miki had said Sergei shouldn’t get rid of the bodies of these two so that their families could properly mourn them. However, Sergei checked their flat and ensured that the evidence left by the attackers to frame the Albanians and the Polish was removed from the scene before the Police were called.

We didn’t want them to know about any issues. We needed to deal with our situation without any further Police involvement. As it was, the dealer and his wife couldn’t be linked to us, so while the Police would investigate, any evidence that could lead to the killers would be gone. It would just end up being another unsolved case.

Later, we checked on our other businesses, both legal and illegal, and ensured there were enough men in place to keep them safe.

After we finished, I returned home, hoping to finally see Sonia. But Ash grabbed me before I could slip past him, and I found myself heading straight back out again.

He had arranged for us to meet Sean and Juana.

Ash was in a very good mood initially, whistling away happily to himself. Gracie definitely had a positive effect on him, and I was glad, not just for him but for me. If Ash fell for Gracie, then he might understand my feelings for Sonia better, and if I was lucky, Ash might not even try to kill me. Oh, Ash would beat the shit out of me, and I’d likely let him, but hopefully, after he’d once he got over the initial shock, he would more easily accept our love. If he was in love himself. I couldn’t help but hope.

On the drive to the meeting, he chatted about Gracie and how she wanted to be a romance novelist. He was obviously totally enamoured with her. He gushed so much about her that I almost blurted out my own feelings for Sonia. Luckily, I stopped myself just in time. I didn’t have that much of a death wish.

Unfortunately, his good mood didn’t last after we got to the meeting.

Juana explained that it had taken her a few days to get back to us because the Somalians had been more cautious after Ash had been taken, beaten, and rescued. I guessed they were expecting direct retaliation for that, which we had yet to provide. Something we’d likely rectify soon.

“No problem. What have you got for us?” Ash asked.

Juana bit her lip and glanced at Sean. They both looked uncomfortable.

“Some information you’re really not going to like,” she said, shifting anxiously.

“Maybe we should get Miki and Marko on the phone first and tell everyone together?” Sean said.

Call it intuition, but somehow, I knew it had something to do with Krissa. There was just something about the look on their faces. My eyes met Ash’s, and I knew he had drawn the same conclusion.

“Just spit it out, no matter what it is,” he said through gritted teeth.

Sean took hold of Juana’s hand in support. I guessed something was going on between them. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone was getting some love action, and I smiled to myself. The more people around who felt like I did, the better, as they would be more likely to be on my side—well, eventually, anyway.

Juana’s words pulled me from my thoughts.

“What happened with Krissa was initially random, as we were all led to believe, but then Siri became involved.”

“What the fuck?!” I said. That fucking bastard, Siri.

“What do you know?” Ash said, his voice barely audible.

Ash had gone completely still, his thinly veiled anger permeating the air around him like a storm cloud waiting to erupt. He was definitely going to spiral, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

Juana took a deep breath before speaking.

“I better start at the beginning. Yesterday, Siri had a secret meeting; I expected it to be about the attacks on your family, so I followed him. It turned out to be that big-shot criminal lawyer dude, the one who defended Lev Petrov. I heard him tell Siri that Petrov was getting released early after making a deal to rat out somebody he had been sharing a cell with.”

“That fucker!” Ash shouted.

“Yeah,” she nodded.

“Anyway, he said he would be out in a few days and would be getting picked up by some undercover agents from the National Crime Agency to be taken into witness protection. The lawyer dude told Siri to make sure that didn’t happen and to get rid of him instead, as his boss didn’t need him anymore and he was a liability.”

“Why would he, and whoever his boss is, want his client dead?” Ash asked.

It did seem bloody odd.

“Wait, there’s more,” Sean cut in.

“Apparently, the lawyer dude’s boss is orchestrating the alliance between Siri and the Broxy’s, and so he wanted Siri to do the honours and frame you guys as part of the plan.”

I clenched my fists. It was way past time Siri and those other assholes got taught a lesson. I zoned out as I imagined all the ways I could do just that and ended up missing some of what Juana said next, just catching the end as Ash started pacing up and down, his fists opening and closing as he tried to control the impulse to punch something.

“He just wanted Petrov gone before either you or Glowacki got a hold of him. The boss didn’t want you learning that he was the one who had ordered Krissa to be killed.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Ash asked with barely controlled rage as he spun to face Juana.

“I’m sorry, Ash, I have no idea. That is all they said about Krissa,” Juana said, her voice shaking slightly.

Ash’s mood was obviously scaring the hell out of her. Sean put his arm around her and held her against his body, his eyes narrowing in warning at us. I stepped a bit closer to Ash. Not that I thought he would hurt Juana, but if he got really out of control, he would start throwing things, and I didn’t want her to get hurt in the crossfire. I knew Sean was thinking the same thing as he eyed Ash with such intensity.

“Any idea who the lawyer’s boss is?” I asked quickly. We needed to bring this meeting to a close soon before Ash lost it. He already looked like he was barely holding on as it was.

“No,” she shook her head, “But I did find out a bit more about the plan against you guys.”

She looked as if she was about to add something but stopped, obviously not wanting to add more fuel to the fire raging behind Ash’s eyes.

“What?” he asked, picking up on the fact she had more to say despite his spiralling. He was pulling great gulps of air into his lungs in an obvious effort to calm the fuck down.

“Siri said the Broxy’s had an informant inside the Bratva who found out the location of your lab. Ivor, he called him. Apparently, he followed one of you guys there one night,” Juana said in a rush.

Aw fuck!

So not only were there traitors in Glowacki’s Brotherhood, but there was a traitor in ours.

I watched Ash closely as we both processed this information.

We’d taken Ivor into our Brotherhood after he’d had an affair with someone’s wife and had to flee Russia just over a year ago. And this was how he repaid us? Well, he would be dealt with, and I would make sure that it was me who did the honours.

Ivor was my responsibility, after all. He wasn’t one of our most trusted men, but he was part of our inner circle, one of the personal bodyguards for the family, living and working under my watch. I felt guilty as fuck over the fact that he had discovered the location of our lab and told Siri, and now there was a plan to hit it this Friday when our next shipment of coke was due. The Broxy’s planned on hitting the Estate while the Malia Boys hit the lab in a two-prong attack on us.

As I listened to the rest of what Juana and Sean had to tell us, my failure hit me like a punch to the gut, and I tasted bile. I was pissed that I hadn’t been aware of his traitorous ways. If I hadn’t been so distracted thinking about Sonia and constantly checking up on her with Rolan and Armen, then I would have noticed what the bastard was up to. I should have. His betrayal was partly down to me. I’d dropped the ball, and I would do everything in my power to make him pay and ensure my family and our business remained safe.

“I thought they had wanted to frame the Albanians and then get Glowacki and us fighting each other as a distraction. What happened to that?” I asked.

“They will be doing more about that starting tonight. They have a couple of Broxy’s who are dressed up as Albanians, sporting fake tattoos, and they are going to be going around your dealers, making as much trouble as possible. They also have another couple of Glowacki’s men onside who will be with them so that it looks like the Albanians and Glowacki are working together,” she said.

We knew that Glowacki had traitors in his ranks again, but to find out that we did, too, was a definite problem. Glowacki was already fuming about the traitors he knew about, but to find there was even more was going to really make him pissed. Glowacki needed to clean house, but it seemed we did too because I had no doubt that Ivor wouldn’t be our only one. Miki was going to blow a bloody fuse when he found out.

To learn that Siri, Petrov’s lawyer, and his unknown boss were somehow involved in Krissa’s murder and were behind the current problems facing us was a huge problem.

This boss guy was obviously our enemy, one we never even knew we had. To make things worse, he had obviously been working against us for at least a couple of years now. We needed to find him and find out why. Then, we needed to put a stop to him. If he really was involved in Krissa’s murder in any way, then he had already signed his death warrant. He was a dead man. It was only a matter of time.

When Sean and Juana left, we headed back to our car. I was really surprised that Ash had managed to hold it together throughout our exchange with Juana and Sean. Still, as he called Miki and updated him on the situation, I could tell he was literally hanging on by a thread. I frowned. This wasn’t good. I needed to get him back under some sort of control soon, or he was likely to do something really stupid, like storming over to Siri’s to attack him. Siri was an egotistical idiot, but he was a paranoid one too, and so the security around his home almost rivalled our own. Going there without any backup would be a suicide mission.

As soon as he hung up, his breathing became erratic, his body tensed, his fists opened and closed, and he looked like he desperately wanted to punch something or someone.

“Fuck!” he shouted, slamming his fist into the dashboard.

“Shit. We’re taking a detour to the office so you can beat the shit out of something other than my car,” I said, yanking the wheel sharply to the left and turning towards our office in the city instead of home.

Glowacki was coming to the Estate to meet with us so we could fill him in on everything we knew and plans needed to be made as soon as possible. Still, it would take him time to get there, so we had time to kill, and allowing Ash to beat the heck out of one of our heavy-duty punchbags at the office gym would calm him before we had to discuss all of this stuff again.

If I was honest, I needed to blow off some steam myself.

A few minutes later, we pulled into the carpark for our office in the centre of London’s financial district. This was where we conducted our legitimate business and where most of Marko’s legitimate IT staff were based. There was also a fully equipped gym, which was much bigger and even better than the one we had at home. This one had a boxing ring, targets, and bags—just what we both needed.

The second we got inside, Ash went straight to his locker, pulled on some workout gear, stuffed his earphones into his ears, and started punching a bag to heavy metal music. I left him to it and jumped on the treadmill. Whenever I needed to think clearly, I ran. Running was a great way for me to clear my head and work through my thoughts and feelings.

As I ran, I went over everything I knew about Ivor, looking for the clues I had obviously missed that pointed to him being a traitorous bastard. I had never liked him, but I had to admit, the guy had covered his tracks well because, try as I did, I couldn’t think of anything that he had done that was in any way suspicious. I also wracked my brain to think about who else might have betrayed us. The only other person I thought might be working with him and Siri against us was Ivan. He was another fairly recent arrival from Russia. He’d joined us not long after Ivor and was a friend of his. The guy wasn’t one of our personal bodyguards, but he did work in security at the Estate.

Apart from him, I couldn’t think of anyone else but one again, though I was distracted. My thoughts kept turning to Sonia and what I was going to do to ensure that we could be together. I couldn’t seem to focus on either issue for long without the other problem making itself known.

Closing my eyes, I pushed all thoughts of Sonia aside. I would seek her out tomorrow and talk with her, and then I would call Uncle Maxim. For tonight, though, I would concentrate on the safety of my family. We couldn’t be together if our family was in jeopardy, so I would look at dealing with that problem first.

We’d been here long enough. By the time I managed to drag Ash away from the punchbags, his knuckles were raw despite the boxing gloves and strapping on his hands, and he looked like shit, but at least he was calmer.

We arrived back just in time to meet Glowacki and his son Dariusz, who was now his second in charge. Dariusz was a good guy. He would one day succeed his dad in place of his older brother, who was murdered by the Albanians at the same time my aunt and uncle were. We all headed into Miki’s office, where he and Marko were waiting.

Ash and I told them everything Sean and Juana had told us. As expected, Glowacki fumed when he heard that he had at least two other traitors in his organisation.

We were all bloody angry that we had traitors, and even though our first thought was to route them out and end them as soon as possible, we eventually came to an agreement that we would wait. We would find out who they were and use them in our plan to take down the rest of our enemies.

Glowacki also agreed we had to snatch Petrov and kill the bastard before he got a chance to enter witness protection, but naturally, he wanted in on the action. Since Petrov had been one of his men and had planned to overthrow him, it was his right after all.

By the time we had relayed all the information, everyone could see that Ash was beginning to spiral again. I thought it would be a good idea to take him to the home gym and let him work out his aggression again, maybe even on me when he got up to leave.

Marko and I started to follow him out, but we sat back down when he said he was going to find Gracie. We nodded to each other as he closed the door behind him. Ash had begun to spiral but was nowhere near his usual state. Gracie seemed to have a calming effect on him, and we both knew he would never hurt her, so going to her was probably the best thing for him right now. We had plans to make, but we would inform Ash of them tomorrow once he was in a better frame of mind.

Discussions were fraught with tension as we ran through different scenarios to grab Petrov and tackle the Broxy and Malia Boys’ threat. Emotions were high when we thought about the bastards who had been involved in Krissa’s murder and now threatened the peace of our families again.

It took a while, but Miki was the best planner and strategist I knew, and Glowacki was damn good at that stuff, too, so after a few hours of heated debate, we finally had a pretty good plan in place to tackle both issues.

We drank some vodka and said goodbye to the Glowacki’s before trudging upstairs to bed. I was desperate to see Sonia, but I couldn’t risk going to her room, not with her brothers around. I needed to think about how I was going to get her alone tomorrow.

I was just pondering how best to do that when I reached my room and found a note tucked under my door from Little Miss Trouble herself. I read it and couldn’t stop the huge grin that spread over my face, pulling the muscles in my cheeks until they ached. I didn’t have to worry about arranging a meeting with her after all; she had done that for me. We would be meeting up for an early morning run, with a lot of added fun if I had my way.

After setting my clock for an early start, I crawled into bed, not expecting to get much sleep despite my exhaustion. Surprisingly, I dropped off quickly and had the most fantastic dream about pretty blue eyes and a hot little body moaning for me.