Page 49 of Ruthless Rustanovs

Years later, Nikolai could still remember the call as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. It came in the early hours of the morning, startling him from a deep sleep.

“I am sorry to wake you,” his cousin had said in careful Russian. “But I must throw a party for your father.”

Code for kill. His cousin had given him a courtesy call to tell him he planned to have Sergei executed. Later he would find out the very good reason Alexei decided to do this, but at the time, it wouldn’t have been wise to ask over an insecure line.

“I understand,” he’d said, not really needing to know the reasons why.

“I have a man ready to host a party for Uncle Sergei, but our way is to let the son host, so I am calling you…”

One of the stranger Rustanov traditions. Every once in a while it became necessary to kill a member of your own family. But in a morbid bid to honor, the option of killing the family member was always given to the killee’s son.

Sergei had described this time-honored tradition to Nikolai with pride.

“If it ever happens to me, I want you to do it,” he’d told his only son. “I am Rustanov until end.”

The tradition and the conversation about it had been incredibly surreal and Nikolai had quickly put it out of his head. Especially after Alexei made the Rustanov family a legitimate business. Yet here was his cousin now, putting out a hit on his uncle, Nikolai’s father.

Sergei would still want his son to do the deed, Nikolai knew. To fly all the way to Russia to put a bullet in his own father’s head. Sergei would actually consider that an honorable way to go.

So, of course, Nikolai had said, “Thank you, but I do not wish to host this party. I trust your man to do a good job.”

And the next time Nikolai had seen Sergei, he’d been dead on a slab. Just like Fedya was lying dead in front him right now, his face a bluish gray, with a bullet wound between his open eyes.

“If anything ever happens to me. If your father ever does as he threatens, you must take care of your brother. He is weak. Not strong like you. You are your father’s son, and he is his. You must protect him. Take care of him.”

His mother’s words rang in his ears as he stared into his brother’s lifeless eyes.

“That him?” a voice asked from somewhere behind him. Probably the detective who’d escorted him in.

Nikolai nodded, unable to look away from his dead brother’s face.

“Sorry, but we need a spoken yes. You gotta say it out loud. Sorry, Mount Nik,” the voice said.

A hockey fan, Nikolai noted with a grim disinterest. During his decade plus in Indiana, he’d found that fans of America’s fourth favorite professional sport were everywhere.

If Fedya were alive, he would have been thrilled at the recognition.

During the years when he and Nikolai had still been talking, Fedya had often taken in Nikolai the pride he couldn’t take for himself.

“You showed your father good,” he once said to Nikolai. “You escaped. You did not let him ruin you like he ruined our mother. Like he ruined me.”

On the table, Fedya’s body morphed into a slightly shorter and more muscular one, grey of hair, but still radiating danger even in his death.

The body was now Sergei’s, lying on the same kind of slab as Fedya, but in a Russian coroner’s office.

Also, unlike Fedya, his father had been killed in the old way, the one named after the Rustanovs and popularized by Sergei himself.

One last show of respect from Alexei who’d ordered the hit, but could not get Sergei’s son to make it honorable.

It had taken Nikolai three days to get to Russia and deal with the body, just as it had taken three days for the police to track him down.

As it turned out, Fedya had moved since the last time Isaac had bailed him out of jail, and “hockey star brother” wasn’t the kind of note kept in the non-existent file of a criminal who had been arrested several times but had never garnered an official record, thanks to Nikolai’s connections.

If one of the police officers in the precinct hadn’t been a hockey fan and put two and two together after an internet search, they might never have made the connection, since he and Fedya had different last names.

But there had been no denying it when the white sheet had been pulled from Fedya’s head. And now, as the body on the slab morphed back into his brother, he confirmed it out loud.

“Yes, that’s him,” he said, his voice grim.

“If you want more time to say your goodbyes, we can give you that.”

“No, that is not necessary,” Nikolai answered, placing another layer of ice over his heart. He’d said his goodbye to Fedya a long time ago when he cut him off. He known then that there was no way his brother would live past his forties. Known and forced himself to accept the inevitable bad end.

Nikolai took charge of the situation, turning to face the officers. “Tomorrow my assistant will come here, handle body. Is there anything else or can I go now?”

“We’ll get the paperwork together for you upstairs,” the older detective who’d brought him in answered.

His face was creased with weary lines that spoke to how often he’d watch this same scenario unfold.

“Now that you’ve given us a positive ID, we should probably ask you a few questions, seeing as how foul play was obviously involved.

And there’s also the matter of your nephew… ”

Nikolai went thunderously still. “My what?” he asked.

His nephew. He had a nephew.

Nikolai was still having trouble believing what he’d been told, even as the police officer whose desk he was currently sitting at wrote down an address for him.

“Normally, I wouldn’t do this,” the officer, who’s desk plate read “Marco J. Gutierrez”, said.

“But I’m a big fan. Plus, I want to see you reunited with your nephew.

You know, it was me who connected the dots.

Since he’s half black, nobody was putting it together, even though he’s got a Russian name.

But he was over at my girl’s house watching hockey and I remembered reading something about you having a half brother who used to play hockey, too.

Did an internet search the next day and put it all together. Lucky break, huh?”

Lucky indeed, though Nikolai still wasn’t clear on a few things. “Why is my nephew in custody of your girl? She is not his relation. I am.”

“Yeah, try telling her that,” Marco answered with a wry half-smile.

“That’s why I’m giving you her address, so you can go over there.

You should have seen the hoops she wanted me to jump through just to find him a foster home.

My girl is sweet—real cute, too, but she can be like a rabid dog when it comes to the women and kids she takes in.

And she’s taken a real shining to your nephew.

The truth is, she might take some convincing before she hands him over to you. ”

The prospect of having to convince some police officer’s girlfriend to give him the custody that should be his by familial right didn’t sit well with Nikolai. Not well at all.

Marco mistook his frown of irritation as one of worry.

“Maybe lay on the uncle stuff real thick. Make sure she knows you had no idea this kid was in the picture, or you would have helped out.”

“I would have done more than ‘helped out,’” Nikolai informed the police officer.

According to the police reports, the child’s mother had died of an overdose about two years ago—right around the same time Nikolai cut his brother off.

Nikolai had no idea how close Fedya had been to the boy’s mother, but obviously he’d taken over his custody without telling Nikolai.

Maybe because he’d thought Nikolai would have judged him for having a bi-racial son.

Sergei, like many in Russians in his generation, had been a vehement racist and maybe Fedya thought Nikolai would react badly to the prospect of a half-black nephew.

But more likely, he decided Fedya hadn’t told him because he knew what would have happened if Nikolai had known his addict brother had full custody of a child.

Nikolai not only would have taken the boy away from his brother, but he also would have made sure his brother didn’t see the child again until he got clean.

So of course Fedya decided to keep the boy’s existence from him rather than risk losing his son.

But still, for a man-child like Fedya to insist on raising his son on his own?

Stupid, Nikolai thought to himself. Stupid and unbelievably selfish.

But of course, being stupid and unbelievably selfish was something his brother had excelled at, along with an uncanny ability to make the exact wrong decision at every one of his short life’s turns.

“Here you go, man.” The officer handed Nikolai a piece of paper with the name “Samantha McKinley” on it and an address.

“And thanks. Not that I don’t appreciate her commitment.

I know it will come in handy if we end up having kids of our own.

But it’s kind of hard for us to spend quality time together when there’s a kid in the background taking up all her attention. Know what I mean?”

No, Nikolai didn’t know what he meant, and it sounded to him like the police officer’s girlfriend would have more than one child on her hands, demanding all her attention, if she decided to marry him.

But Nikolai took the piece of paper, forcing himself to set his irritation aside.

As bad as the situation was, it was something that could be corrected.

Right now. He’d go get the boy from the policeman’s girlfriend and by tonight, his nephew would be exactly where he should have been from the beginning: under Nikolai’s roof.