One week later
Someone knocked on my office door.
“What?” I snapped, not lifting my gaze from the stack of papers in my hand. Instead of coming in, the person just knocked again.
My anger spiked, which, let’s face it, was a recurring problem as of late. It had been a week since we’d returned from the Til Death Games. Tatiana had made a full recovery, which I knew Nikoali was ecstatic about. Illayana sustained minor injuries and was now back with her husband in New York. I had a feeling that man wasn’t going to let her out of his sight for the foreseeable future.
If I was being honest, I expected to come back and find everything in a fucking mess. To see our accounts in the red. Our inventory out. Possibly even a loss in clients. Even though Aleksandr told me he’d handled everything, I still thought things might not be as okay as he portrayed.
But I was wrong.
Everything was fine. Better than fine, in fact. I’d been gone for nearly two months, but you wouldn’t be able to tell because Aleksandr and his new wife had done a spectacular job keeping up with everything.
Despite all the challenges they’d faced, they’d thrived, even going as far as bringing in new business, cornering New York and making it Bratva territory. An advantageous move. One I might not have taken myself, given what was going on at the time.
So, why was I angry all the time?
I had no idea.
It couldn’t possibly be because of a certain annoying, infuriating redhead, about the fact that she just turned around and walked away without so much as a fucking goodbye. That I had no idea where she was. What she was doing. If she was alive or dead. Why would I possibly care about any of that?
I fucking didn’t.
If she didn’t care enough to even say a simple, “see you later”, why should I?
The time we spent together wasn’t by choice. I didn’t miss her. Didn’t miss her voice. Her laugh. Her smile. The way she made me feel.
I didn’t miss any of it.
I didn’t.
I. Fucking. Didn’t.
My skin buzzed with annoyance and I found myself grinding my teeth together. My whole body felt tight. Like I couldn’t relax, no matter what I did. Even when I pushed myself to the brink in the gym, working out until I physically couldn’t stand anymore, my limbs aching and exhausted, I still couldn’t fucking calm down. The irritability prickling at my insides just wouldn’t relent.
Why did she just disappear like that?
Did everything we went through together mean fucking nothing to her?
Why did I even care?!
Fucking shoot me now.
There was another knock on my door, and I snapped. With a growl, I pushed to my feet and marched over to my office door, flinging it open in a rage.
“What?!” I snarled.
Mikhail stood there, that shit-eating grin he always wore plastered on his face. “Oh, I heard you. I was just waiting for you to get up and let me in.”
“You couldn’t let yourself in?”
“I could have. But, where’s the fun in that?” He breezed past me and strolled right on in, taking a seat in one of the armchairs in front of my desk. “We need to talk.”
I’d barely sat down before he leant over and punched me in the jaw. Hard. “What the fuck?!” I hissed, preparing to strike back, but his next words stopped me cold.
“That was for my son.”
Of course.
During all the chaos of the past week, we hadn’t had a chance to discuss what happened with Dayton.
I blew out a breath, rubbing my now aching jaw. “I’m sorry—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he cut in harshly.
The motherfucker just hit me in the face and now he doesn’t want to talk about it?
“Mikhail—”
“You heard me, Dimitri. Not now. I’m here to talk business.”
I wanted to argue. Force him to talk about it. But I knew from experience that I couldn’t force someone to talk if they didn’t want to. Especially when it concerned grief. It was something each person had to come to terms with in their own time.
“What business?” I asked, rearranging my stack of papers. It was all useless shit anyway. Quarterly reports on the various legitimate businesses we owned. Resumes for new soldiers. Employee profiles. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
“I want in. On Talon.”
I should have known he’d realise what I was up to. Since escaping the island, I’d tried to keep busy.
Keep your mind off Autumn, more like it.
Shut. Up.
I’d spent endless hours hunting Talon, trying to find out where that bastard had fled to after the destruction of his home. So far, I’d had shit all luck.
“Why?”
“Why not?” Mikhail shrugged. “I’ve got a score to settle with him, too. I was in that room with you when he set it on fire. He tried to kill me, too. Plus, you’re going to need backup, and I have this little inkling you won’t be asking your children for it.”
He was right about that one. I wanted to keep them as far away from Talon as possible. The crippling fear I’d felt in that arena…I never wanted to experience it again.
No. It wasn’t their battle. It was mine.
Mikhail nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He reached into his suit jacket and pulled something out, flinging it across my desk.
I picked it up and groaned in distaste. “What the fuck is this?”
“You know exactly what that is, my friend. An invitation to Sir Allistair The Third’s Annual Ball.”
Yes, I could see that. And I wanted to light it on fire. “Why are you showing me this? You know I hate these kinds of things.”
Smirking, Mikhail said, “Oh, I know. I remember.”
For most of my life, Father had forced me to attend events just like that. High society gatherings and galas. Extravagant balls that only the rich aristocrats put together.
I was given etiquette lessons from a very early age. Taught how to conduct myself well and behave like some eighteenth century gentleman.
At first, I didn’t understand why that kind of shit was so important to my father. If I didn’t show up for the lessons, or fucked around during them, he used to have me whipped until I passed out.
When I was older, I found out the real reason why he treated those lessons like they were the fucking gospel: not because he told me, but because I’d uncovered the truth about our past. A truth he’d been so desperate to hide.
Our family hadn’t started from the top, like my brother and I had been led to believe.
We started from the bottom. The very bottom.
My grandfather was nothing more than a cleaner in the Ivanov household, the family who ran the Bratva before we did. He was on the bottom of the food chain, which meant he got treated like garbage.
So did my father.
Sergei Volkov grew up dirt poor, bullied by the other children in the Bratva his entire life for being the son of a valet. After constantly being picked on, stepped on and ridiculed for his place in the hierarchy, he grew hateful. Vengeful. And he decided he was going to do something about it.
His ambitious mind came up with an ingenious plan. The help was so often ignored. A lot of people never saw them, never cared what they said in front of them. And because of that, my father was able to screw with the Ivanovs in a way no one else could have. He watched. He listened. And when the time was right, he striked, toppling their entire kingdom. He turned the Ivanov soldiers against them with the promise of a better future under his rule.
Of course, that was complete bullshit. Once the men helped him with the takeover and served their purpose, Sergei executed them.
He could never trust them to protect him when they’d so easily betrayed their first Pakhan.
He’d then made sure to erase any knowledge of who he was before. He killed all the kids who used to bully him. Killed all their parents. Then, he started fresh with a terrifying reputation under his belt. He rebuilt the Bratva empire from the ground up, shaping it exactly how he wanted, making sure people only knew him as Sergei Volkov, Pakhan of the Bratva. Not Sergei Volkov, son of Arkadi Volkov, valet for the Ivanov family.
It was why his legacy was so important to him, why he cared about it more than anything else in the world. He’d worked his entire life to build his empire, to have people see him as more than just someone to clean their toilets. And he refused to have that image jeopardised by anyone or anything.
He took the same lessons he’d forced on me and Dominik, so people would believe we came from old money instead of the gutter. He worked his way through high society, either with bribery or threats, to ensure he was invited to all the big events until eventually, there wasn’t a guest list Sergei Volkov couldn’t get on.
I was dragged to them all. Forced to socialise and mingle with people I would have rathered disemboweled. Forced to dance with prospective wives set up by my father.
I hated every moment of it.
“Why the fuck would I go to this?” I asked Mikhail, flicking the gold-embossed invitation back and forth in the air. I had much more important shit to deal with than attend some frivolous party.
Like finding Talon.
And Autumn.
No!
I wasn’t going to waste another fucking second thinking about her. She was out of my life. Good riddance. And if I ever saw her again, I’d kill her.
“Because I got a little peek at the guest list, and Anthony Danforth has marked that he’s attending.”
I stared at him. “Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”
Mikhail kicked his feet up onto my desk and leant back casually, hands behind his head. “When I first started looking into Talon, I decided to follow the money.” Good idea. Money never lies. “Talon has three separate bank accounts. One in the US, one in Switzerland and one in the Cayman Islands. Now, the US one and the Cayman Islands one didn’t interest me. There was nothing uber suspicious about his transactions. Just the usual rich boy shit. But the Switzerland one? That one was interesting.”
“How did you get access? Swiss banks safeguard their clients’ information like Fort Knox.” I knew that because I banked with one.
“A buddy of mine helped me out.”
I gave him a deadpan look.
He smiled. “Okay, okay, you got me. Someone was in the hole with me. 150 grand. I graciously offered to wipe her debt if her sister could get me some information. She just so happened to work in the accounts department at Talon’s bank,” he winked. “Pretty sneaky, huh?”
I grunted.
“Anyway, I took a look at his transactions. One in particular stood out to me. On the first of every month, like clockwork, Talon would transfer Anthony Danforth fifty thousand dollars.” He pulled out a tablet. He tapped away at the screen and then handed it to me.
On the screen was a photo of an attractive man. African American, looked to be in his early to mid fifties, with chestnut brown hair and eyes to match.
“Meet Anthony Danforth. Fifty-four years old. Born in London and moved to the States twelve years ago. He owns several high-end hair salons, and from what I can tell, has absolutely no ties whatsoever to any underground or criminal organizations. He’s just your normal, average working joe.”
“Then why is Talon sending him fifty grand a month?” I frowned.
“Swipe to the next screen,” Mikhail prompted.
When I did, a video sat idle. I pushed play. A grainy image of a sidewalk appeared, a bunch of stores lined up along the left side, the road on the right. People walked up and down the street, carrying shopping bags and chatting amongst themselves. A black Bentley pulled up and parked in front of a store called Vintage Elegance. A man got out of the car, dressed in dark pants and a long, dark trench coat with the collar up, shielding half his face from the side. The dark cap on his head helped to further hide his identity, but familiarity sparked.
Anthony came running out of the hair salon in excitement and jumped into the man’s arms. He kissed the man passionately, accidentally knocking off his hat and revealing his face.
My whole body shot to life. Talon.
“Anthony is Talon’s lover,” I whispered under my breath.
“Bingo.” Mikhail clicked his fingers. “I dug further into Anthony. It turns out, once a year, he would take a sabbatical from work and travel. Whenever I tried to track down exactly where he went, I hit a break wall. No matter how hard I tried, I always lost him when he got to Naples. It was like the trail just went cold.”
“He was taken to the Island,” I said, connecting the dots.
“Bingo again.”
My mind ran a mile a minute. “When was this video taken?”
“Three days ago. Now, before you get all excited, Talon’s not there anymore. I sent men to talk with Anthony, and he clamped up instantly. He wouldn’t talk. My men had orders to take him if that was the case, but Talon was smart enough to put a team of guards on him to protect him. My men couldn’t do shit without attracting a fuckton of attention, so they had to leave. Unfortunately, that was exactly what Anthony wanted. The fucker went into hiding, most likely with Talon, and I can’t find them anywhere.”
Fuck’s sake. “Here’s where Allistair’s Ball comes into play,” I grumbled.
“Damn, Dimitri, you’re really on a roll today,” Mikhail said, pointing a finger at me. “ Yes. Anthony has marked he’s attending, so I’m thinking we go, kidnap him, torture Talon’s location from him, then finish the night with some Chinese food. Sound like a plan?”
I dragged a hand down my face. It wasn’t exactly ideal for me, but the pros far outweighed the cons. I could handle one night dealing with ridiculous, old-timely traditions, idiotic people and pointless conversations if it meant I got my hands on Talon.
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed with a sigh. “When is the ball?”
“In one week.” Mikhail took back the tablet and stood, making his way to the drink cart in the corner of the room. “So, are we going to talk about what has you in such a foul mood, or are we just going to keep pretending everything’s hunky-dory?”
Rolling my eyes, I leant back in my chair and shook my head. “Hunky-dory? Who talks like that?”
“Me,” he said, giving me a thousand-watt smile. “Drink?” he asked, raising a glass in the air.
I waved a hand through the air and he brought one over, sitting it in front of me.
He took a sip of his drink before placing it down on one of the side tables. “It’s the redhead, isn’t it? What’s her name? Angela? Annabelle?”
“Autumn, and no, it’s not,” I gritted out before downing my drink in one hit.
Mikhail barked out a laugh. “Right. Are you trying to fool me or fool yourself about that?”
I slammed my glass down on the desk so hard that it shattered. “I said it’s not, so fucking drop it.”
Mikhail arched a brow, his eyes flicking to the shards of glass now all over my desk and back up at me. “So, yourself then? Interesting.”
“Mikhail,” I growled in warning.
“Dimitri,” he growled right back, completely unafraid. “You know you’ve got your people absolutely terrified of you right now? More so than usual. Your maids tried to stop me from coming in here because they were afraid you’d kill me, you’re in such a bad mood. People play the damn Jaws theme song when you walk down the hall.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But I did. That irritability I mentioned a while back? Yeah, that unfortunately was something I had a hard time hiding. Since returning from the island, I’d been snapping at everyone over everything.
Someone’s shoes squeaked as they walked? Snap.
Someone coughed or sneezed? Snap.
Someone ate their food too loudly? Fucking snap.
No one was safe. It didn’t matter if it was something small or something big. I was barking at anyone who came in my path, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“You’re going to have to talk about it eventually, my friend.” The sympathy and compassion layered in Mikhail’s voice just made me angrier.
I didn’t want to fucking talk about it.
There was nothing to talk about.
But before I could say anything back, Mikhail started backing towards the door, his hands raised, palms facing me in a show of surrender. “I’m just saying. If you won’t talk to me, talk to someone.”
“How about I just shoot you?”
He opened the door, a wide smirk on his lips. “You wouldn’t shoot your best friend.”
Wouldn’t I?
I got to my feet and pulled out my gun from behind my back.
“Or maybe you will. Okay, bye!”
