Page 24 of The Beast of Moscow

Push me, Vaslav thought.

Natalia kept walking instead.

“Like I said,” he called after her before she could no longer hear, “say hi to Nico.”

8.

It was a quarter past nine before the pat-pat of footsteps on the cobblestone path broke through Vaslav’s concentration once more. Despite his mother’s unwelcome visit, he still managed to make through almost an entire cord of wood from what remained in his log pile. He’d have to get the young men from last summer back on the property with their machines to cut and haul a few trees from the rear property again.

Another task completed.

Something else he wouldn’t have to worry about.

Vaslav wondered what the point was, now.

“How was your trip?” he asked, spinning on his booted heels to face his new companion.

Nico fell into the chair facing the one Vaslav was heading for as he finally laid his gaze on his sovietnik. Slumped in the rattan chair with his hand resting along his cheek, his friend only stared back but said nothing.

“You don’t want to make small talk?”

Nico shrugged. “I’ve been here since seven.”

Yes, Igor made sure when Vaslav said now, he meant not one second later this time around. But that didn’t mean he had to actually grace Nico with his presence or attention until he wanted to. So, the man had sat just outside the gates of the estate, where the neighbors across the large road on their own private property would be able to see him should they look out the window.

Maybe not who unless they had a pair of binoculars, but that wasn’t the point. He only wanted Nico to wait.

Anyone who believed Vaslav had a heart left would probably think those hours Nico sat in his car were meant to give him time to find another way out of the situation they found themselves in. Except that just wasn’t the case. It was only their easy friendship over the years and shared memories that even allowed Nico to sit in the place he did beside Vaslav.

That was a lot.

Vaslav demanded far more than just friendship and a past when it came to forgiving those who he had extended his trust after they broke it in some way. When he said he didn’t trust anybody, he meant that. Loyalty was one thing, and obviously a required trait in the handful of people he kept around him, but that trust?

Priceless to a man like him, and once gone, there was no going back.

He didn’t so much as break bonds between himself and those he felt betrayed him as much as he just obliterated them. All at once. No questions asked. There was not a soul on earth who could unring that bell for Vaslav once it was rung.

That was his entire life in a nutshell.

Behind him laid a road he’d paved of broken bodies, burned bridges, and ruined lives from doing this very thing time and time again. Some, like his mother, were not the same because from practically the start, well, he’d known not to trust the bitch.

Others, though, like Nico ...

Vaslav never said his choices didn’t hurt.

That didn’t mean they were wrong.

Nothing he did was ever wrong.

“Do you remember the first night we met?” Vaslav asked.

He’d seated himself in the chair opposite of his friend, letting his axe rest against his leg while he folded his other ankle over the same knee.

Finally, he earned a reaction from Nico when the man smiled a bit as he bobbed his head. “You were a very different man then.”

“Or it was just a different time, yes?”

A decade and a half ago, he’d been protecting the Russian oligarchs and still trying to find his footing in the brotherhood outside of prison walls. Just because he had been given his eight-pointed stars on his shoulders in prison, and earned spires on his chest for his time, meant nothing in the world of the wealthy and elite outside of cement and bars.