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CHAPTER 1
DIMITRI
As I knock on my father’s office door, I remind myself that keeping the business running is the most important thing. Countless souls rely on us. I can’t think about the fact that, under different circumstances, I might kill my father.
He croaks, “Come in,” and then starts coughing violently.
His office is shrouded in smoke, with faint Las Vegas sunlight shining through the thick shield-like curtains. He smokes his pipe, staring at a projection on the wall. It’s the value of Sokolov Securities, the business we use as a front for our not-so-legal activities. My father doesn’t look at me. He takes another suck of his pipe while staring at the wall. It’s like he’s trying to convince himself everything he has done was worth it.
“You wanted to see me,” I say tightly.
Over the years, my father and I have developed a working relationship but not much else. My father is the Pakhan, the boss, which means he controls more than just Sokolov Securities. Until recently, he’s kept me away from theother businesses—the credit card fraud, the hacking, money laundering—but lately, seemingly out of nowhere, he’s started involving me.
My father doesn’t respond as I take a seat. He just keeps smoking.
I remember when he asked me to become the official CEO of Sokolov Securities. He had a sick grin on his face, as though I was four and not forty, and I should forget all the times I watched him do bad things. It was like he wanted me to drop to his feet with gratitude.
“I’m dying,” my father says after a long pause.
I make a sound, something like a grunt. It’s probably not the reaction he was looking for, but it’s the most I can drag up from deep inside of me. I’m not sure what he wants me to say. I’m not sure what he thinks he has any right to expect.
“Cancer?” I ask.
He looks at me sourly, his eyes shrouded in smoke. His hair has thinned and grayed over the years. His skin is sagging, and his hard living makes his body swollen, so he now walks with a cane. Yet he’s still a large, broad, tall man, like all the Sokolovs.
“How did you guess?” he asks dryly, then coughs as if to prove the point.
I’m sorry, I almost say, but that’s what he wants. My father thinks now that he’s ill, suddenly everyone should treat him like some new, better man. That’s not how the world works. He has only gotten away with all his sins because of his name and power. Power is all he ever wanted, after all.
When I don’t reply, he says, “I’ve been forced to think about the future of my empire. I’ve been forced to face certain realities. You, Dimitri, will now become the leader of the Sokolovs andallour businesses. It’s also time you found a wife.”
He says this matter-of-factly. I stay silent, though I’d prefer to snap at him. He drove my mother away and made her life hell. The only reason he even let her go, I found out years later, is because she threatened to leak some sensitive, intimate photos to the public that would have ruined his image. I don’t know what they were, but I bet they weren’t pretty.
He drovehiswife away, but he wants me to find one.
“In fact,” he says, “I’ve already handled that.”
Under the table, I clench my fist. The old man stares back at me.
“Handled?” I say, keeping my voice calm.
“Have you heard of the Petrovs?”
“Of course, I have,” I snap.
He grins like he’s saying,Ah, like father, like son. He wants me to snap and rage and let out my darkness like he always has. While we, the Sokolovs, run Vegas, the Petrovs have operations in LA and Orange County.
“We’re going to join with them,” he says, as though it’s already decided. “Together, we can run the entire West Coast, but you know what the Petrovs are like. Skittish. Violent. Paranoid.”
He could easily be describing himself.
“To that end, I have arranged for you and Mila Petrov to marry. She’s a nice girl, by all accounts?—”
“She won’t be when she becomes a Sokolov,” I growl. “She won’t be when I cheat on her every weekend, when I belittle her, bully her, hate her for not being what I think I deserve when I’m not even one-tenth of whatshedeserves.”
He doesn’t have to ask who I’m really talking about—him and my mother.
“You don’t have to like it,” he says flatly, “but it’s happening. To ensure this, we’ve put it into writing.”
