Page 19 of The Beast of Moscow

“Vas,” Igor said.

He still didn’t bother to look away from the scattered papers and images even as his man came into the line of his vision just beyond the edge of the desk.

“Why would she stay after all that?” Leaning forward on his elbows, Vaslav used the tips of his thumbs to press against his chin while his fingers wove over top each other. “She can’t dance,” he added even as the image of Vera twirling across a glossy hardwood floor of a dimly lit studio filled his mind. “I doubt her popularity is anywhere near what it was before. Her family rarely visits, although ... we don’t have to wonder why there.”

Or he didn’t, anyway.

A non-traditional bratva boss from the western world who held no connection to his motherland or the vory who made his position possible ... Well, that wasn’t exactly welcomed here.

“What does it matter?” Igor asked. “All she did was find you on the floor.”

Igor wasn’t wrong, but nobody ever said Vaslav was rational, either. If people predicted his strange compulsions and obsessions, or even his violence, would he be where he was today? He didn’t think so.

He rarely ever questioned his own curiosity—something else that had accompanied him since he was a child. It was that same sense of wanting to know and needing to solve the problem in front of him that had often steered him on paths that changed his life. Not always for the better, but he’d never been one to complain about that.

“I could look further into it,” Igor started to say, though the slow way he spoke the words suggested he’d rather not feed into Vaslav’s newest puzzle.

“Actually, I think I might ask her myself,” Vaslav said, finally glancing up to meet the stoic gaze of Igor, “once I find the time.”

“What do you—”

“Where the fuck is Nico?”

Igor hadn’t expected the sudden question if the way he rocked back on his heels before stilling on the spot was any indication. Good. It was always best to keep people on guard.

“As far as I—”

“As far as you know,” Vaslav mocked, happy he’d earned a wince from the towering man. “Just tell me where he fucking is!”

“Arrived back on Sunday night. I told him to give it a couple of days.”

“I told him to be here the second his feet touched the goddamn tarmac!”

“You didn’t even crawl out of bed until early Monday morning. I know, I called Mira every hour.”

Vaslav’s teeth grinded at the mention of his only servant. The woman had worked for his mother for years, and now edging toward her sixties, she stayed at the estate because he asked her to. The woman knew what he liked—his mother didn’t give a shit as long as a floor was clean and her sheets were fresh.

He wasn’t quite the same.

“Get him here,” Vaslav said. “Tonight, Igor, or else you’ll lose fingers this time.”

“I only wanted to give you time, boss.”

Glaring at the man, he asked, “Time for what?”

“To think, maybe. Talk first, shoot second.”

Smirking from his left side, Vaslav shook his head and twirled a finger over the file and mess of papers on his desk, drawing Igor’s gaze that way. “You see, I did think ... I’ve learned quite a lot. And none of it matters because Nico still did what he did when he gave an Abramov money from the bank account of one of my men. No matter the man.”

Even his closest spy.

That was not how this business worked.

“Get him here,” he ordered one last time.

Igor nodded, and didn’t say another word before he took his leave without being dismissed. Vaslav honestly didn’t mind.

Not three minutes after his head of security could be seen walking off the security camera at the front door on the television he’d turned on the second Igor left, Vaslav switched the scene back to show what was still on pause on his laptop.