Page 25 of The Beast of Moscow

Mostly.

It counted a little for respect.

Maybe he’d been a bit lucky in the fact that his last name came with a bit of power and privilege—sometimes, that was the only thing to get him through the front door with some of the men who shook his hand over the years.

“The political ball, wasn’t it?” Nico asked.

“The same night I meant Abram and Irina.”

A short, hard breath split from Nico’s lips, and he dropped Vaslav’s gaze. His friend didn’t need him to fill in that gap—how could either of them forget the night that would change the course of their history forever?

Not just him and Nico, but Irina and her father.

All of them changed after that.

Nico, then only thirty-four while Vaslav had just passed his thirtieth, was the bull tasked with personally guarding and minding the only daughter of Russia’s most notorious crime boss. Back then, there wasn’t a substance, gun, or pussy bought in the country that wasn’t owned or touched in some way by Abram Federov’s brigadiers. He even extended his control and territory into Europe, and in Canada and the states through smaller factions that had set up shop and grew over time.

The man was untouchable.

To sit at his table was a deal with the devil, and a person didn’t even need to know they’d handed over their soul before Abram had already taken it.

“She wore white that night,” Nico said.

Vas nodded, rocking a bit in the chair from the action. “All silk and chiffon. I have pictures.”

And sky-high heels.

When a man was six-foot-eight inches tall, it was hard to miss a woman who would almost meet him eye-for-eye in a pair of six-inch stilettos.

Vaslav blinked, then, into the growing darkness of the property, and his memories flashing in the back of his mind. What ones remained, anyway. He could still see Irina’s eyes from that night—maybe he’d mapped them in seconds and imprinted them to his memory forever. It was the first thing he’d noticed about her, and one of the few things his memory allowed him to keep.

Later, she told him, “All I saw was your smile.”

He’d loved her dark, dry humor the most. And how she’d never hidden anything from him until the very end.

By then, it was already too late.

“You were gone there for a second,” Nico noted, his murmur reaching through the haze of Vaslav’s past flashing in front of his eyes to rip him right out of it in a second flat.

“Did Khristina enjoy the trip, at least?”

Nico’s brow dropped at the sudden change in topic; just like before, he slumped back into the chair making Vaslav even more aware of how rumpled the man’s clothes seemed. “Of course, she did. She’s twenty-one, never been to Barbados, and had me eating out of the palm of her hand for days. It was everything I promised her it would be.”

“She was happy, you mean.”

Another sigh left his friend. Nico’s standard black-on-black-on-black three-piece suit, including shined, Italian leather loafers, just didn’t have the same sharpness it usually did. Those bags under his old friend’s eyes didn’t help, either, considering how deep they made his crows feet appear.

He’d turned fifty on that island with his new, very young bride, and had he just stayed in Russia after Vaslav found out the loan he’d given Feliks ... had he not run, in a way, he might have been forgiven.

Or at least, forgotten.

It couldn’t work that way, now.

“They say fifty hits you hard,” Vaslav said, scrubbing his hand down his jaw while he stared up at the dark clouds rolling through the blackening sky. Might it rain? “You didn’t really run, did you? You just didn’t want to disappoint Khristina.”

“She told me yesterday that she’s pregnant.”

“They’ll be taken care of,” Vaslav assured instantly, wanting that clear between them.