Page 67 of The Bratva’s Monster

He takes a step back, still glaring. Then he sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose as if he’s getting a headache. “Rikki,” he says, “We don’t have time for any of this. There are Irkutsks circling our Bratva. And the reason for that is as clear as day⁠—”

“I just need you to listen to me,” I push. “Alex, we three, You, me, and Yeva, decided when were children that we would never betray one another. That in a sea of mistrust, the three of us will always be able to count on one another.”

“I know that,” he growls and walks away from me to the drink caddy. I watch him as he takes out two glasses and starts pouring vodka in each. He holds one out to me.

I take it from him and as soon as I do, he pulls out a gun from his waistband and holds it at his side.

“If you’ve got proof,” he says, “let’s see it. But if you’re wrong…” He pauses, his eyebrows twitching as he stares at me. “If you’re wrong, then I have to give you your due.”

I nod. I suppose it was going to come to this however I showed up here today. “It’s in my car. A bag with several folders in it.”

I drink my vodka as he nods. He walks to the door and opens it, calling to one of the Boeviks. In Russian, he tells him to go to the car and get my bag, and I hear footsteps recede.

Alex walks back in the room, drinking from his glass, and he sits on the arm of a nearby chair while we wait. We do so in silence for a minute, then he says, “This isn’t personal. You understand that, don’t you?”

I nod. “I do. Heavy is the head and all that.”

He smiles sadly. “You know, I’ll have to kill Liz too.”

“Yeah,” My heart jumps a little in my chest at the prospect. I don’t want to fail her. But if I do… “If you could wait until after sunset,” I say to him. “Give her at least one full day before you do it.”

“That your final wish?”

I nod.

“I’ll honor it.”

“Thank you.” I hope Liz heard me when I told her what to do if I don’t return. One of us has to get out of this alive.

About five minutes go by before the boevik finally returns with my bag. He brings it in and drops it at Alex’s feet, then leaves. He kicks it over to me. I pick it up and carry it over to the pool table. “Gedeon had a pretty significant gambling problem,” I explain as I take out the first stack of papers. “That’s not news. We all knew it. What we didn’t know was how bad it was. He racked up thousands and thousands of dollars in debt at a time.”

Alex nods. “That’s sound motivation for selling us out to the Irkutsks.”

“That was my first thought, too.” I pull out another stack. The emails that he exchanged with Stefan. “He had a connection into the Irkutsks, but we know that too, thanks to the video Kostya’s people got of him.”

“Stefan.”

“Yeah.” I turn to him. “What if I told you that Stefan and he were friends? Since they were kids, before he joined our Bratva?”

“I’d say that your claim to his innocence is looking pretty thin, Brother.”

I sigh. “I spent hours looking through an email exchange that he had with Stefan over the course of years. Decades, even. In not a single email did he ever discuss business with him. And vice versa.”

Alex crosses his arms, his gun sitting on his arm. “There must have been something. He had fellowship with the enemy for decades and he never told him a thing? You expect me to believe that?”

“When was the last rat infestation we had in this Bratva?”

Alex frowns as he considers it. “There were several during Stanislav’s reign.”

“How many during our father’s?”

Alex starts to speak, then stops. I can see he’s struggling to remember.

“There haven’t been any,” I say. “Up until right before he died, there had been none. In the entire time, Gedeon has been part of this Bratva for as long as we have. And suddenly, he decides to sell us out?”

Alex regards me for a second, then stands up and walks over to the papers on the pool table.

“It’s all here,” I say to him. “He never betrayed this family.”