Page 17 of Wicked Mafia Sinner

Someone is building a parallel structure to our international operations. Patient, well-funded, deeply knowledgeable about the old Bratva networks that predate my move to Chicago. Enzo confirmed what I already suspected. Someone is rerouting our cargo, flipping our operatives, and feeding our shipping details to authorities. I know what they're doing. I know how deep they've dug. I don't know who's signing the checks.

I don't have a name.

But I will.

The night air hits my lungs when I push through the front doors. Cold enough to strip the basement staleness from my lungs. I pull my keys from my pocket and the ring on my finger catches the streetlight as I walk toward my car.

A reminder of the cost of death. I turn the warm metal around on my finger. There’s always a price for the harm you do to others. I know because it’s all I used to live for. But that wrath, rage and violence cost me and so did being Pakhan to the old guard.

But those are years gone by.

Using Ilona against Enzo leaves a taste in my mouth I can't rinse out. A man's love for his daughter turned into a crowbar is effective, but ugly. I know because my own son has been used against me and the heartache never fades.

My son has been in Chicago for a few months now. Nikolai. Thirty years old and I still can't say his name without the guilt arriving like a punch to my gut. Twenty years ago I put him on a plane to boarding school back in Russia at ten because I told myself Chicago's underworld was no place for a boy. The truth is simpler and uglier than that. I didn't know how to be a father without becoming my own father, and the fear of repeating that cycle was stronger than the shame of sending him away.

But that was all for nothing.

Three months ago I sat across from my son for the first time in over a decade. The boy I put on a plane at ten years old walked into that restaurant as a man I barely recognized. He moved through the room like he owned the floor beneath his shoes. He held his chin high, shoulders squared, and scanned every face with the cold efficiency of a man raised by wolves. My wolves. The old guard Bratva I tried to keep him away from had carved him into their image and dressed him in a suit to hide the monster they created. I’ve heard the rumors. He’s been busy building his own empire and a few bodies left here and there are his work.

I keep tapped into the information running through my connections, but even I have blind spots.

That night the boy I fathered didn't embrace me. He pulled out his chair, sat down, and looked at me the way you look at a business meeting you're forced to attend.

But the woman on his arm made me pause. She had no business being in that room. White hair spilled down her elegant back. Her pale eyes shifted in the candlelight, but what really caught my attention was the sprig of tiny white flowers tucked behind one ear.

She belonged curled up on a couch with a mug of tea and a book, not sitting in a five-star restaurant on the arm of a man bred for the Bratva. Everything about her was soft where everything about my son was sharp. The contrast made my stomach tighten because I've seen what men like us do to women like her.

Dinner lasted forty minutes that night. Long enough to see that whatever softness my son carried at ten had been burned out of him and replaced with my father’s cruel handiwork. And I only have myself to blame.

The woman beside him sat with her elbows tucked close, her laughter timed to match his, and her gaze dropping to his hands every time they moved off the table.

We had almost made it to the end of the second course when the real demons revealed themselves.

I didn’t witness it happen, only the aftermath of my son shooting to his feet after the waitress spilled the wine. Had I been fast enough I could have prevented him from lashing the back of his hand across the waitress's left cheek. But I couldn’t take my eyes off his date.

Violet eyes met mine and then silence filled the entire restaurant.

With fifty sets of eyes on me, I slowly stood, helped the waitress to her feet and pressed folded bills into her trembling hand.

When I turned back, the woman with the white hair was across the restaurant on her way out.

She turned, looked back and I swear to everything I hold true she changed something in me. I don’t know what the fuck she did to me, but I followed her out and I haven’t spoken to my son since.

“Cora Vale.” I test her name on my tongue. A beautiful name for a beautiful creature I’ll never see again.

My car sits low against the curb, and I fold myself into the driver's seat, swiftly pulling into traffic.

There’s a reason I’m alone. If there’s no one at my side, no one can get hurt. It’s better that way. But not everyone thinks like I do. My brothers don't and that’s okay. But neither does my son. Men like Nikolai don’t care for anyone but themselves.

The drive to Redthorne takes twelve minutes at this hour. The city moves around me in its late-night rhythm, restless and electric, a pulse that never fully sleeps. I let the engine noise fill the silence and turn the intelligence over in my head. Three rerouted shipments in six weeks. Two port contacts gone dark in Odessa. A clean operation in Rotterdam flagged by customs with details only someone inside our network could have fed them. None of it connects to a single source, and the harder I dig, the less I find.

I scrape a hand down my face and downshift the car as I pull into the underground parking of Redthorne.

A short elevator ride up reveals the thirtieth floor is dead this time of night. The elevator doors open onto a corridor of empty desks and dark monitors, the secretaries and assistants long gone for the evening. Overhead lights run at half power, casting the polished floors in a dim amber glow that turns the executive suites into something closer to a cathedral than an office building. My shoes are the only sound on the marble as I pass Rafael's corner office, the door closed, his desk lamp still burning since the man can’t stand a dark room whether he’s in it or not.

Male voices carry from the back conference room. I follow the sound down the main corridor, past the kitchen where someone left a pot of coffee burning long enough to turn the air bitter.

I push through the heavy oak doors and take it all in with one sweep.