Page 2 of Twisted Little Game

Maks Petrov

Got it.

Maks is standing 50 feet away right now.

Because I did come with company.

Maks is behind a tree, in the shadows, watching over me with a loaded gun. He’s the only one of my cousins I’d trust with my life. Maks is more like a brother to me than a cousin, and he always has my back.

Can never be too careful taking meetings these days.

“I have a job for you,” Yegor tells me, pacing around beneath the tree. When he steps out into the pale moonlight, he’s smiling at me.

“From the Bratva?”

“Yes.”

I set my jaw, then release it. “I told you not to contact me with more jobs.”

“Yet you accept them from Maks?”

“I respect Maks.”

He bites the inside of his cheek. “Then why did you meet me?”

My finger twitches at my side. When I don’t respond to him, the low chirp of crickets is the only other sound in the night air.

A breeze blows through the leaves, and cooler air kisses my skin for the first time in months.

The ending of summer can’t come soon enough. I need the cold.

“I met you here because I don’t want you showing up at my fraternity house,” I finally tell him. “And I thought you might have been stupid enough to try it.”

The fact that Yegor has come this close to the school’s edge already makes me consider sending him home with a black eye.

We’re not on the Crimson College campus anymore, we’re below it. Technically. I don’t conduct family business on campus.

One of my rules.

I’ve also told my cousins, a thousand times, not to contact me with petty new small-time jobs from within the family, but Yegor seems to think he’s an exception.

Repeatedly.

He looks like he’s trying to play the part of a young mafia kingpin’s son in a slate peacoat and black hat. The only thing I’m afraid of is his ignorance, because in my eyes, he still looks like a baby.

“There’s a new sophomore transferring into Crimson this fall,” Yegor finally says. “Someone wants him taken care of.”

“Kill him yourself. I’m done doing dirty work.”

“Not taken care of like that. Protected.”

I exhale, my chest falling.

I wasn’t expecting that.

Yegor’s favorite jobs often involve cutting limbs… breaking bones… securing prizes like molars.

Not protecting people.