by Bethany-Kris
His father was trying to sell him this plan, having worked it out in advance with Maxim before Roman’s arrival. No doubt. Another fucking setup. So this was how his father was spending his time while he was left to tough-it-out in jail.
Another teachable moment.
As if it had ever worked before.
“And in return you’ll gain access to some of our trafficking routes, Demyan. I’ll make sure it is worth your while. We can have our spies work that out between themselves, no?”
Demyan tipped his head once, saying only, “Works for me.”
Wait ...
“You can’t just demand I—”
“And how long do you think this will last?” Demyan asked, interjecting before his son could get a decent word in edgewise. “Roman in Chicago, I mean. For his mother’s peace of mind, give me an estimate.”
Demyan was asking all the questions for him, as if this was a regular job interview or some shit. Except there was nothing regular about this, and it wasn’t just any job. It was repayment. A lesson being taught to a truant son.
Roman saw through all of it. All the terms and conditions had been discussed before he had even stepped out of the jailhouse, he was sure. He wasn’t going to get a say here—that much was clear.
“For as long as it takes,” Maxim replied, offering a wave of two fingers in Roman’s direction. “And so, I suppose it really comes down to him, no? And how dedicated he is to making it work.”
Roman said nothing.
What was the point?
That didn’t seem to bother his father.
“This will be good for us all,” Demyan added.
“For whom?”
Roman’s sharp words—the only ones he could manage without saying something he might seriously regret—went unheard by the men.
“New things are on the horizon, Roman. Good things, maybe. A challenge, a new environment ... friends to make, even?” Maxim offered him that as if it was something he might enjoy. “It’s not a bad way to spend a year or two.”
“Or longer.” Demyan steepled his fingers under his chin, saying more, “This is the only way we can make the legal issues go away currently—the Yazovs will handle that as long as you do what you need to for them. Quite a big pile of legal shit that you have got yourself into, considering.”
“I didn’t ask for help to get out of it. I have managed to single-handedly get out of every other pile of shit just fine,” Roman snapped back.
“Have you ever faced something like this before? You’re looking at eight or more years in prison,” Maxim interjected. It took every ounce of control he possessed to keep himself from pouncing at the man. “And that’s if I tell my legal side of things to back off on applying pressure to the police I have in my pocket. If they keep digging beyond the hole you’ve already dug for yourself ... Roman, it only gets worse from here, I assure you.”
Then, Maxim smirked wickedly. “But move to Chicago for a few years and all this goes away, yes? See, simple. And I can make it happen.”
Now it was a few years?
Right.
He knew better than to ask for options.
There weren’t any.
His feet moved in the direction of the door before he truly comprehended what he was even doing, the heaviness of disbelief still thick enough to keep him quiet for the moment. One didn’t just walk out of a room where two pakhans were in conversation. He should have waited to be dismissed, but what were they going to do—shoot him? By the sounds of it, Maxim needed him.
Demyan had long ago given up trying to educate his son in the proper displays of respect when it came to better men. And still, his father’s angry, dark shout hit his back as he retreated from the room. “Roman!”
He let the door bang hard enough to echo on his way out. It was only the sight of his mother, standing at the end of the corridor, that made him pause long enough to subdue the sudden urge to trash the entire hallway.
“Can we talk?” she asked, the high pitch of her tone making him wince.
Claire was the kind of woman who put decorum and order above everything else. For her to drop that act, considering who was in the house, well it didn’t spell out anything good. He assumed her anger was with him, but Roman stilled in place when she rushed toward him, clutching at the long string of pearls around her neck.
He was tempted to simply walk past her, and ignore the pleading in her eyes. But then she reached for him when she was closer, curling her fingers around his left bicep and gazing up at him with love—pure love from a mother. Emotion so raw, it always made him want to look away when she leveled it on him. Roman had always known his mother loved him. It was inexplicable—something he just knew when she was around him. A tangible feeling beyond the understanding. There was a part of him that thought it weakened him because he loved her, too. But he had never been able to say that love was enough to keep him from causing her pain.
Demyan was the king of New York, wielding unimaginable power over an entire state in the country. From the time he could walk, Roman found himself under his father’s feet constantly, and yet as a child, it was with his mother where he felt safest.
Somehow, that hadn’t changed.
“What do you want to talk about, Ma? Please, don’t act like you didn’t know. He wouldn’t keep something like this from you.”
Claire’s grip on him tightened, her nostrils flared as her lips twitched. Wetness welled in her green eyes. He couldn’t do tears.
No fucking way.
Not right then.
Not from his ma.
Roman was not the man mentally wired to handle his mother’s sentimentality at the same time when he was ready to spontaneously combust from rage. He didn’t want to be an asshole, but he was quickly running out of solutions to keep that from happening.
He tugged at his arm in an effort to pull away from her, but Claire held on tight.
“Yes, I knew. He told me. I know you won’t believe me because you think nothing about this family is worth your while, but I fought him on it. I did, Roman. I don’t want you to go to Chicago. I love having you here ... even if you don’t want to be most of the time.”
As her voice trailed off, Claire finally released her son, making him step back.
“It doesn’t fucking matter, does it?” he asked, letting out a clipped laugh. “The boss made his decision, and we all know what it means. Bratva before blood, Ma. Right?”
It was the brotherhood’s way. A long time ago, he thought he knew what that meant; even believed he was born for it.
“Roman.”
Her chiding did little for him.
“I’m not wrong, though.”
Claire stood a little stiffer. “Even so, your father has never made the wrong decision for this family.”
She held her head high, because God knew even if it broke her heart to send her son away, her loyalty for Demyan would never waver. No matter what happened—love means for always, she told him once when he dared to ask how she could love a man like his father, even if I don’t always like who he sometimes is.
Roman couldn’t help but wonder what that would feel like, to have a woman by his side who was that devoted—someone who blindly loved him, and would sacrifice anything asked if it meant being with him.
He couldn’t imagine it.
Or maybe he didn’t want to.
“Yeah, well, he is right about one thing,” Roman told his mother, refusing to meet her burning gaze. He didn’t want to watch as she fought conflicting emotions—he didn’t want to be one side of the war she had to fight. In the end, she would never defy her husband, and a part of him understood why. “A change of scenery will do me some good. I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here, and stay gone.”
“Don’t say that, you don’t mean—”
He simply walked away from his mother, feeling her stare follow him the whole way down the corridor. He didn’t look back.
FIVE
The one thing Roma
n knew for sure about Josef Pavlov was that he was nothing like Marky. Older, tattooed from head to toe in the symbolisms of the bratva life like everyone else in Chicago affiliated to the Yazov organization, he wasn’t exactly Roman’s first pick as a partner.
If one wanted to call him that.
Even though the two men were spending a lot of time together in close quarters—the way Roman did with Marky back in New York—Josef was being paid to do it here. And that wasn’t something he could afford to forget.
Standing side by side, the two smoked their cigarettes, Roman eyed the different rings that had been tattooed to the man’s fingers; an interesting take on a spider had been added to peek out of his sleeve at his wrist, too. He hadn’t realized how different it would be to work with men who were more traditional in a sense when it came to the Russian mob. It took him very little time in Chicago to realize his lack of decoration—by way of tattoos he should have earned over his life as a vor—was simply something that would cause suspicion for men who didn’t know him upon sight.
Josef was the only one brave enough to point it out.
He and Josef surveyed the workers in construction hats milling around the building in silence. It was a way they had found to start the day that didn’t include too much conversation usually.
Fun.
In the two weeks since he first landed in Chicago, there weren’t a lot of things Roman found he liked about the city. He wasn’t a real look-on-the-brightside type, either. He didn’t care to look for silver linings just to make his current existence better. However, he did have his own setup here getting off the ground, and even though he was well aware of the Yazov eyes constantly watching him, for the most part, they left him alone.
Except for Josef.
The bull assigned to him by Maxim Yazov didn’t fool Roman for a second. His job there wasn’t purely for protection. Josef wouldn’t have hesitated to pump a few bullets into him, and deliver him dead to the Yazov Bratva if that was his order.
Shit.
Maybe someday it would be.
For the moment, though, he shared a conversation with Josef like any guys working together would. What other choice did Roman have? It wasn’t like he knew anyone else in the city. And he couldn’t say he was keen on changing that, either.
Now that he was starting to kick things off with the chop shop, he’d already planned to bring in some of the crew from New York. The men who had worked with him for years while he built his business were as crucial to its success as his own instincts. They knew what to do, and how Roman liked to run the show.
Which was the only thing that mattered.
His circus—his fucking monkeys.
“So you literally chop the cars down, yeah?” Josef asked.
He was sucking in his cheeks to draw in a long drag of the cigarette, pulling the smoke straight into his lungs, and then releasing the gray cloud in curls around his face. The smoke almost formed a halo, making Roman grin because there was nothing holy about this man. Nothing holy about any of them.
“Yeah, it’s way easier to ship parts of a car than the whole fucking thing. Gets through ports faster, too. They never know what the fuck they’re looking at, you know? The guys I work with overseas—they put it all back together,” Roman explained.
Josef nodded his head along like the fog was finally clearing, and things were beginning to make sense to him. “And these contacts, you trust them?”
“Never had a reason not to. I’ve been fucked over in the past, and it took me a long time to build a trustworthy team of guys I work with, in New York and overseas. I mean, we are who we are—gotta be real, man. It still comes down to a goddamn word. A man’s word still counts for something here.”
“They said you did it yourself, I heard.”
Roman’s lips twitched with an urge to smirk, but he held it back. Barely. The whispers about him and his business—and the reason why he found himself in Chicago—were already making the rounds, it seemed. It was even getting back to him.
That was fast.
“My father trafficks guns—I did better with cars,” Roman offered with a shrug. “It’s not really the same kind of business, if you know what I mean.”
Josef pursed his lips, impressed, sending Roman’s thoughts into a tizzy while he tried to figure out if this conversation was even genuine. Ever since that meeting between the bratvas—the day he tried to steal Dima’s Bugatti—he felt like everyone around him was screwing him over. Or he was paranoid enough to think it might be happening.
Including his own father.
Roman was now beginning to understand why his grandfather had always told him that he should never trust anybody. Least of all, the guy who shaved his beard.
Think about it, Roman, if a man was untouchable—bulletproof—who would you pay to do the deed on an unkillable man? Then, Anton would grin and add, His barber, of course.
Just because Josef engaged him in a chat didn’t mean they were suddenly friends. He was still a Yazov bull, and Roman was just the Avdonin Prince who had been chopped down and shipped to Chicago to pay his dues. Just like the cars that had brought him here in the first place.
Not a single day went by that he wasn’t reminded he was walking a tightrope. The only reason he was here was to make money for the Yazovs, another check and balance that he wouldn’t be free and out of prison if it wasn’t for the friendship between Maxim and Demyan. They would have left him in there for as long as it took the Avdonins to get him out while Maxim’s people kept pulling their goddamn strings.
All he was expected to do now was to stay out of trouble, keep his head down and set up the chop shop scene in Illinois. Once that was done, and Maxim was sufficiently satisfied, he would be able to return to New York. Roman didn’t know if this would also redeem him in his father’s eyes, but he also couldn’t say he cared. It wasn’t exactly a puzzle—this had worked out perfectly for both Maxim and Demyan. His father believed his son needed to be taught a lesson that forced him out of New York, and away from his privilege.
Away from bad influences, his familiar streets, and the power he could so easily extend because of who he was.
Maxim got a new business venture in return. One that would bring him in hundreds of millions of dollars in a matter of years.
“What are they building here—an apartment block?” he asked Josef.
The construction crew continued above them, hammering, sawing and cementing high walls. The premises belonged to the Yazov Bratva, and it was where Roman had been given a small shack as his own office. The construction sounds alone would have been enough to annoy the fuck out of anyone else. Roman had an ability to drown everything else out, barely even noticing the sounds around him.
Josef shrugged in response, muttering low, “Maybe apartments, maybe offices. It’s none of your concern.”
The reply was curt, but not unfriendly. It still reminded Roman that he needed to color inside the lines here—with everyone.
Roman shrugged, too, flicking his cigarette butt to the ground before he stepped down with his shoe and pressed it into the muddy gravel. “No, it fucking isn’t.”
Josef, pleased with that response if the tight smile he gave was any indication, gestured to the shack. They started walking in the direction of the room where Roman worked. At the moment, his hours revolved around making the right phone calls, gathering lists and contacts, and having his ear to the ground. He had to first formulate the team of people he trusted the most, so that when he was ready and had the opportunity for their first serious theft run, he would have a team that was capable, too. One he wouldn’t need to worry about fucking up because they were too green to the business.
“Is the new project going well?” his mother had asked him on the phone two days ago. She wouldn’t outright ask about his work, making it sound like it was a new corporate job because that was easier to swallow, he imagined.
“Fine, Ma.”
“Aren’t you going to ask about him?”
Roman had hesitated. They both knew she had meant his father. He asked instead, “Does he ask about me?”
“Don’t be like that. He misses you, baby.”
Roman had nearly cackled. “Did he use those words?”
Though he hadn’t been looking at his mother’s face—he knew she had to be smiling. Demyan Avdonin, usually emotionless on his best days, wasn’t going to talk about his son in that way. Certainly not now when Roman was a grown ass man.
“So, maybe not,” his mother had added at the end of their conversation with a laugh, “but I know he does, Roman. He’s missed you for a long time—longer than you realize. But how is he supposed to tell you that when you can’t even stand to hear me say it to you?”
He’d needed to get her off the phone after that.
“Don’t worry, you’ll like it here.”
Josef’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. Roman wasn’t paying attention, and hadn’t realized the man was still talking.
“The only issue with that is I’m not sure I like it anywhere.”
Josef lifted a brow indifferently. “It’s not like there’s a rulebook that says you have to fit in, no?”
At the door of Roman’s new office, he stopped at the threshold and gave his new companion a twisted grin. Josef would remain at the door for as long as Roman stayed inside.
“No, I don’t really care to fit in,” Roman noted, giving the work around him one last look, “but nobody said anything about me not having a little fun.”
Josef raised his brows in surprise. “Depends on your brand of fun, Prince.”
Roman almost scoffed.
Almost.
“I’m sure you can find something for me to do, and keep me in line—it’s far worse when I have to go and find it for myself.”
Josef groaned, his cheeks working like he was chewing over his thoughts with every clench of his beefy jaws. Technically, it wasn’t an outlandish request. Even the boss would agree that a man of Roman’s age needed a bit of legroom to move and breathe if they wanted to avoid burning him out. Maxim had never specifically mentioned not being allowed to find other channels of entertainment.