25. Alek

25

ALEK

I didn't go far from Mila. A couple of blocks down the street, my men waited in the basement level of a warehouse. Office suites had been renovated down here, and it was where my brothers and several other soldiers stood around and paced. Hiding and working in the shadows offered no pride, but until we took over, we would operate however we could. We weren't cowards, tiptoeing around Pavel and his men, but rather, cautious men at war.

I called them my men because they were. My brothers would always stand by me. These others were loyal to the Family, not Pavel himself.

Ivan and Dmitri nodded at me in greeting, and I went to stand with Nikolai and Maxim. He'd been treated. He had to have been, because he looked much better than he had the day before.

"Where is your wife?" he asked as I sat on a stool.

I'd already texted them to have one of our medics in attendance. I trusted Mila's stitches on my back and shoulder, but it wouldn't hurt to have another look at it.

"Resting," I replied curtly. The truth was that I'd stormed away from her, bothered by how much I wanted to let her in and feel for her. Emotions like that would be my downfall.

"Hmm." Ivan shared a glance with Nik, who failed to hide a smile.

Never mind that now. I didn't come here to hear them give me shit or tease me about why and how I would have made her so tired as to need to rest up this late into the day.

I shot them a stern look, hoping that a breather from her would lend me more clarity of mind.

"Who stitched you up?" the medic asked as he pushed my shirt further off my shoulder to look at the wound.

"Mila," I replied, then cleared my throat. I glanced around the room, lifting my chin as a gesture of approval. They understood that I wanted an update, not to be asked how Mila and I were getting along.

"Pavel is furious," a soldier said. "He has been led to believe that you shot Andrey."

I nodded. Just as I wanted.

"He's sworn revenge. He's placed a hit out for you." The man glanced around at the rest of us. "And we are all keeping tabs on the soldiers he's sending out to make that happen."

"I appreciate it," I replied solemnly.

"You will lead us, Aleksei," another said. A few others chorused the same sentiment, promising their loyalty to me and that they would follow my directions.

"It was a long time coming," someone else claimed. If anything, these men respected me more for believing that I'd killed Andrey. They weren't upset at losing the supposed heir to the bratva. Instead, they held me in a higher esteem for seeing the dirty work done.

I reiterated the need for caution, and they explained how they were also watching the Colver dock and tailing select members of the Kastava force.

"They want to set us up," Nikolai said. "They want to take us over with the shipment."

"But who is helping them?" Maxim asked. "I've looked over those codes several times, and I just don't understand."

I do. On the walk over here, I pieced it together. "The cops."

"Well, yes," Ivan said. "They will set us up to take the fall for that arms shipment. And the law enforcement will be on us like never before with a shipment that large."

"Not that large," Maxim argued. "Pavel never had enough to fund as large of a shipment as he boasted."

"Regardless, the cops will be there when it falls apart," Nik argued.

"Which cop?" Dmitri asked, realizing how confident and calm I was. He knew I was on to something.

"Did Mila explain it to you?" Nik asked. "She was working in that office. Their front company."

I'd dismissed that connection. Sergei never would have directly trusted her with any vital clues. I shook my head.

"But can she help? Can she give us any information?"

I tensed. "My wife is not a pawn to use."

They didn't speak up, hesitant at my dark tone.

"She has no information to give me," I said, knowing then and there that it had to be true. If she had anything to share, she would have. She couldn't go at this halfway. How could she want to save my life but not help me win this war?

"I don't need any more information. I've got it all. We have it all." With the medic finished inspecting my wound, I tugged my shirt and jacket back on then retrieved the papers from my inner pocket.

It had taken me too long to realize it, but rereading the coded lines over and over helped me piece it together.

"The Doc," I said.

"As in the dock ?" Maxim guessed. "Referencing the Colver dock that we want from the Kastavas?"

I shook my head. "No. As in the former doctor. The ‘Doc.'"

No one reacted, and I turned to Nikolai. He was most used to this specialty, used to going undercover on assignments. "Remember that rookie who moved up in ranks because he disguised himself as a physician to get closer to his targets on cases?"

He snapped his fingers and cursed. "That fucker."

"Who?" Ivan asked.

"Stephen Murphy. That fucking two-timing cop. I remember him."

"He's involved?" Dmitri asked.

I nodded. Rereading those clues within the emails Maxim intercepted was all it took to jog my memory. Stephen Murphy had always been a thorn in our side. All the cops and detectives wanted to bring the bratva down, and he was the sneakiest of the bunch. He'd once snuck in undercover at a prison, pretending to be a doctor, to get a statement from one of the men the bratva had nearly killed. It was a nasty case of he said versus they said, and on and on, and since that time, everyone knew he would never be trusted.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Ivan asked.

I shook my head. We had to do this right. If Murphy or any other cop was trying to help Sergei Kastava set us up, we had to be just as sneaky and careful with getting them back. "We're not waiting . We're planning."

And we did. With these dozen or so loyalists, I schemed and strategized how to fight back. Nikolai and Maxim worked on the laptop, hacking into surveillance software to find where this asshole cop might be. We'd already put a tracker on Pavel and Sergei, too.

The rest of us tried to think of how we could change the details of the shipment's arrival so the Kastavas wouldn't screw us over. Their men and soldiers would have to be at the dock. They would man the crews unloading the goods, but the transportation of the arms from the docks to the warehouse was where the trap would be set. The cops couldn't find the Valkovs at fault there, but instead, Sergei's men.

For another hour, we deliberated the best method to make sure we wouldn't be taken down with the blame for this scenario. If anyone was going to be caught by the law with one of the biggest North American arms shipments ever, it wouldn't be us.

The longer I stayed apart from Mila, the more I began to consider that I could trust my gut with her. I didn't want to think that I was missing her. Not already. We'd been thrust together with such close proximity for so long now that it felt weird to be apart from her.

But she's not the enemy. She had no choice in being born a Kastava, but through marriage, I'd helped her fix her identity. She was a Valkov now. She was mine.

And I felt closer to being ready to trust her.

She hadn't once asked to see those papers. She hadn't said or acted in any other suspicious manner.

Most importantly, she saved my life. I had to give her credit and seriously start to think that she might want to be on my side without any nefarious plans lurking behind her eyes.

"Alek?" Dmitri walked up closer, holding his finger up to get my attention. "I've got a bead on Murphy." He put his phone back in his pocket and nodded.

I knew it wouldn't take long. Other than these men in here, more were out there working the streets. More yet were guarding the building where I'd left my wife crying on the bed.

Enough. I can make it up to her later.

"Let's go." It was about time someone located the cop referenced ambiguously as "The Doc" in those coded and encrypted emails. "I'll come with you to… talk to him."

Because the faster we put our trap in place to screw over our rivals, the sooner I could go home and address my wife.

Acting on this war would make me feel better. I would feel productive, like I was accomplishing something. All this time since I'd instigated this war and shaken things up, I'd been hiding, lurking and keeping Mila out of anyone's reach.

Her safety was paramount. She was my priority, my future, but in the meantime, I could be the leader I was born to be. I would show these men, my men, how Pavel had failed to guide us.

A real leader would go out in the warzone and handle battles himself.

Dmitri got into the driver's side of a car parked out back, but he waited to turn the key.

"What's wrong?" I asked as he reached into his jacket.

"I went through Pavel's safe like you'd asked."

I frowned.

Nikolai joined us, sliding into the backseat.

"You told me to search for Father's things. To find Mother's ring to give to Mila before you married her," Dmitri said.

"And we couldn't find shit. I thought he'd burned it all or something," Nik added from the back. "Until I thought to look in his safe."

"He broke into it," Dmitri said. "We didn't find the ring, or anything of Father's, except this." His expression was guarded and sorrowful, almost as though he didn't want to show me what this paper would reveal.

I took the document, realizing it was actually a pair of them. The first was Pavel's birth certificate. The other was our father's. They were twins. We all knew that, and as such, there was nothing to question. They were legitimate sons of our grandparents. Not bastards.

I shrugged.

"The times," Nik advised.

I looked again. Then again. Back and forth, I tracked my eyes over the numbers that couldn't lie.

Pavel wasn't the firstborn twin.

My father, Pyotr Valkov, was.

Which meant Andrey had never been the actual heir to the bratva.

I am.

I slammed my fist to the dashboard, furious at my uncle's deception.

"All the more reason to finish this business," I said, letting my ire leak through my words.

Because he's next. And he'll be the last to ever try to ruin the truth as I know it.