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I wished it could only be that simple all the time.
4
MAXIM
The morning after the wedding that felt like a drag, I found my brothers in the kitchen with my father. We all had our own places, but we often ended up here at the building my father owned. Each of us claimed a floor as our apartments, but the main levels my father considered his residence were where we met up for meetings and other gatherings.
Seeing them here didn’t necessarily mean something was up. We had our duties but always worked as a team. When my grandmother showed up, though, I furrowed my brow and wondered what she wanted now.
While Damon, Nik, Saul, and I had our respective crews and priorities, Grandmother didn’t really have an overarching role to fill.
The sight of the folders in her hands suggested she’d at least done some research on something, though.
“What’s all that?” I asked as I poured my coffee.
“In a minute,” my father said as he set his coffee cup down. Resting his hands on the edge of the granite island, he looked at each of us one by one. “Before you all take off, I want to address this matter of attacks and threats that have occurred over the course of the last week.”
I sighed, bracing myself for another rundown of the incidents that had popped up. This wasn’t the first time we’d be discussing it, but it seemed that my father had talked to my brothers at different times. We would be speaking about it collectively now, and I hated the annoyance of this feeling I couldn’t shake. That this was the calm before the storm. Life was a constant storm among Mafia families, but unlike anything else we’d faced, I couldn’t tell who was causing this storm.
Without anything to add, I stood back and listened as the others spoke. When my father had a direct plan for me to act on, he would tell me what it was and I wouldn’t waste time to start on it.
“And what the fuck were you talking to Katerina last night for?” Father demanded, eying Nik sternly.
I looked at him, unsurprised that he seemed unruffled to be put on the spot like that. No one was as cool and chill as my brother. His mask was enviable, but I was curious what he’d say.
“Just talking,” he replied with a shrug.
“No. You weren’tjusttalking,” Father snapped.
Again, Nik shrugged. “We were.”
“About what?” Father demanded.
“Nothing much. Stupid little shit that women care about.” He smiled at our grandmother, who didn’t seem impressed.
“Stupid little shit?” Father shook his head. “No. There is no ‘stupid little shit’ to discuss with our potential enemies. No one can confirm who’s trying to mess with us, whether it’s the Kozlovs or the Romanos,” he said, referencing the former Bratva family we used to get along with and the Italian Mafia family we’d never seen eye to eye with.
“Perhaps it’s better to stay away from Katerina until we can determine whether Anton’s the one behind this trouble,” I advised. I wasn’t in charge. Our father called the shots, but he held just as much dislike as I did for Anton Kozlov, Katerina’s uncle and the current head of their family.
Nik huffed. “Relax.” Once more, he shrugged.
“Relax?” Damon asked with a quirk of his brow. “Why are you so defensive of her?”
“Defensive of Katerina?” Nik smiled at him, mocking him. “I’m not. There’s nothing going on between us. We were merely speaking at the wedding because we know each other. She was whining about something I supposedly said to her years ago. It’s nothing.”
Nothing?No, I wasn’t buying that line. He was telling us to drop it too many times for me to believe him. He was trying too hard to shut down this topic for it to benothing.
“Were you bullshitting with her to get her to lower her guard?” I guessed. He was calculating like that, and it was how he operated as a spy so well.
“What?” He scowled at me.
“Are you keeping your attention on Katerina as a way to spy on the Kozlovs?” I asked.
Father smiled, nodding, as if that would appease him.
Nik lowered his head and sighed as he shook it. “Maxim,relax.”
“That’s not an answer,” I replied.