Page 51 of Nothing More

“Probably.”

“I have feelings, man. Okay.” He stepped off the curb so a harried-looking man in a trench coat could pass between them, yelling into his phone about stock prices, and then jumped back up. “Serious question time. How are you gonna ‘dig’ into what your old crew’s up to if they all have orders to shoot you on sight?”

It was a complication that Toly was still trying to figure out. In Moscow, Andrei would occasionally hang a photo up on the wall of his study, the face of a man who’d gone turncoat. He’d forced them all to study it, learn it, seek it out on the street. Disloyalty wasn’t tolerated…which meant all his old New York haunts were off limits. There could be no sidling up to an old contact at a bar and trading a roll of cash for information.

He was well and truly fucked.

When he didn’t answer, Pongo said, “It’s your lucky day, then, becauseI’vegot an idea.”

Toly glanced sideways and found him grinning like an idiot.

God, he’d sunk low. With a sigh, he said, “What?”

~*~

Thirty minutes later, they were at Hauser’s pub, sliding into a booth across from Katsuya Rydell.

Pongo offered a fist bump that was met with a scathing look, and Toly didn’t exactly feel hopeful, but less cynical than he had when they first walked in.

“You’re gonna return that one day,” Pongo said, settling in the outer seat. Toly had slid in first so as not to be recognized; he even had his hood pulled up over his head. “You’re gonna give in to my charms.”

Kat took a long sip from a mug of what smelled like coffee, pointedly didn’t respond, and turned to Toly. “You were Kozlov, yeah?” His gaze, razor-sharp under the bill of his ballcap, and his almost-cautious tone said he knew exactly what being Kozlov meant.

“Yeah.”

Kat nodded, once, and his gaze skated out across the dim pub, its dark wall-paneling and Tiffany lamps. “They don’t come in here.” Which meant he was relatively safe…for now. It didn’t mean there weren’t eager ears around the corners. “I have a man in the booth just up there,” Kat said, lifting his chin to point. “He’ll text if something looks off.”

“See?” Pongo said. “He’s good, this guy. Aren’t you glad we came to him?”

“Hm,” Toly hummed, and sipped the drink he’d gotten at the bar before they walked over. “We’ll see.”

“My bro here,” Pongo said, jerking a thumb his direction, “is what you might call a super-skeptic.”

Again, Kat ignored him. He reached into the inner pocket of his leather jacket and came out with an iPad. A few taps, and he spun it around and slid it across the table. On the screen was a map of the city, certain locations circled in red. Seven of them, to be precise, and one – when he zoomed in with two fingers – that he recognized with an internal lurch: the laundromat that had been Oleg’s one, failed attempt at building his own New York empire of the Kozlov bratva.

Kat said, “These are all the properties that my organization has confirmed belong to the American branch of the bratva.”

“That many?” Toly asked, and heard the wooden quality of his voice. A low hum had started up in the back of his mind, a bristle of warning. “They couldn’t have managed that when I was still with them.”

“No,” Kat agreed. “But a new leader came into power last year. Apparently, he’s had some trouble cleaning house – the rot ran deep – but the arrests made during the whole Abacus collapse helped. He acquired three of these properties” – he pointed them out – “in the past two weeks alone.”

“Shit,” Pongo murmured. “Who is it? This new leader?” he asked, and snatched the question from Toly’s mouth.

“According to our sources, he’s not a Kozlov by blood. Mikhail Morozov.”

Despite the hum of premonition still thrumming in his ears, the sound of that name was still a shock. “Misha,” Toly said, before he could catch himself.

Two sets of eyes snapped to his face, and he wanted to kick himself.

“You know him?” Kat asked.

“Well, duh, he was in the bratva,” Pongo said.

But Kat’s shrewd gaze said that wasn’t what he’d meant, and Toly knew it. Because he wasn’t thinking of “Mikhail Morozov,” whose name meantfrost, cold, and efficient, bodyguard and headsman both for his boss. Instead thought of the large, gentle hands that had pressed a towel full of ice to his face the first time Andrei backhanded him. Of the quiet, firm instructions the day he’d learned to use a gun for the first time. The voice of reason when Andrei flew into a drunken rage. The stolen sweets passed covertly into the hand of a boy who’d been forced to become a man far too soon. Fatherless his whole life, owned by a Pakhan given to whims of sadism, Misha had been something of a big brother figure. Toly hadn’t allowed himself affection for anyone…but it had blossomed in the cold cavity of his chest regardless of intent.

“I know him,” he said, finally, because he’d been silent too long. “He’s far more capable than Oleg Kozlov was.”

“Which is probably why the old man put him in charge,” Kat said, taking his iPad back. “They lost ten men to sex trafficking arrests a couple months ago, but the Kozlov bratva isgainingstrength, rather than losing it.” He looked between the two of them. “What would they want with one of your women?”