Page 2 of The Brutal Arrangement (The Ivanov Syndicate #2)

DAMON

T he first forty-eight hours after a disappearance are the most critical. After that, leads would likely be harder to find and even more difficult to follow.

The first day that my twin brother, Nik, was taken, it was all hands on deck. I was in the car pulling into the parking lot when those masked men captured him. On site and in charge, it had been my mission to lead from the start.

Instead of my oldest brother, Maxim, who was standing in as the Pakhan, or boss, of our family for now, it was I who was supposed to find Nik.

I hadn’t yet.

Not the first day. Not yesterday. And now on this third day since Nik had been taken from us, I had few clues to work with.

“If it were anyone else,” Hugo, one of the loyalist Ivanov supervisors said as he entered the dining room to report in, “ then we should worry.” He glanced at me, then Maxim, directly deferring to him since he was the interim boss.

“But this is Nik.” His following shrug wasn’t a sign of disrespect.

He was one of our best. It wasn’t a hint of his lack of care.

All the Ivanov men stuck together as one.

But he had a point.

Maxim sighed, furrowing his brow as he zoned out at the table as more dishes were brought in. Next to him, Sloane held his hand and rubbed her thumb over his knuckles, showing her sympathy.

She hadn’t been in the family for long, and with Maxim kidnapping her from the strip club she’d worked at, it wasn’t like their beginning was necessarily a rosy one.

Yet, she was a strong woman, like Maxim told us.

She wasn’t ready to shy away from danger or deep issues that revolved around our dangerous Mafia lifestyle.

Hell, he’s calmer with her at his side.

Maxim wasn’t hotheaded, usually, but it seemed that embracing a woman in his life was mellowing him out. He didn’t look worried to the point of being severely stressed out that our brother was captured.

“You’re not worried.” Without looking up, Maxim shared those words with me. It should’ve been a question, but he said it like a remark. An observation. And it was an accurate one.

“Not yet,” I replied.

“It’s early yet,” Grandmother commented from the other side of the table.

While she wasn’t speaking flippantly either, she, too, wasn’t frantic with fear.

Anastasia Ivanov was no coward to the hard truths of being in the Mafia.

None of us were. This was the life we’d been born into, the world we ruled.

Violence was ordinary, not extraordinary, and this was far from the first time we’d dealt with a capture.

When Maxim, Nik, and I were no older than ten, we’d all been kidnapped. Since we’d been rescued from that incident, we were all trained extensively on how to defend, fight, and kill.

Nik was trained to keep himself alive, and he had encountered other tough situations. We’d all been captured or nearly taken a few times throughout our lives. While it was foolhardy to get cocky or smug about our expertise in surviving, these were facts. Nik wasn’t a weakling.

Just then, my younger brother, Saul, entered the room. “Hey,” he said in greeting to Hugo, who was a staple around this building and out of it. “Are you staying?” He gestured at the table, where he promptly took his seat for this family dinner.

It was strange to carry on like usual, having dinner like this was any other evening, when Nik was held in captivity somewhere, but there was no need to freak out—yet.

“No, no,” Hugo replied, backing up. “I only wanted to update about what I’ve found.”

“Which is?” Saul asked, scooting his chair in and glancing at Maxim.

Hugo shook his head. “Nothing.”

Saul twisted his lips in a scowl. “Same.”

“You haven’t heard anything?” Maxim asked him.

“No.” Saul faced me then, and I shook my head in reply.

“Other than the message that came in on his laptop, nothing.”

That one little line of an encrypted acronym had come in after Nik’s capture.

A guard in the security room notified us of it popping up on the system, and it was just enough to give us hope that Nik was not only alive but conscious enough to send a message.

Our firewalls and security measures were more in-depth than anything in a standard home.

Nik’s line wasn’t an SOS, but rather an abbreviation that we’d formed as brothers to indicate stand by . We seldom used it, but we all understood its meaning.

“What if someone sent that message for him?” Sloane asked.

Grandmother shook her head. “No. Only these brothers know that code. I don’t even know what it means.” Our grandmother had no reason to know what we brothers shared, and as a proper Mafia widow, she wouldn’t try to snoop and interfere to know, either.

Maxim patted Sloane’s hand and sighed. “And Nik wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Even if he was being…” Sloane winced. “Never mind.”

“Tortured?” I finished for her. “No. He wouldn’t crack like that.”

She hadn’t lost her wince yet, but she nodded in acknowledgment at me. Torture was my expertise, though, and I could claim with confidence that I’d helped train my brother to never cave under the worst forms of torture.

The Ivanov Syndicate wasn’t built with weaknesses.

We were all dedicated to the family—until our last breaths.

“But you’re all just so…” Sloane glanced around at all of us. “Calm.”

“Because that’s the only way to handle something like this,” Maxim replied.

“Nik has been taught how to be a captive,” Saul said, explaining a little further.

Sloane’s arrival at our home wasn’t new, but since she and Maxim had more fully made up and committed to each other, it was a foreign experience to integrate her into how this family and organization worked.

That included feeding her bits of intel at a time, always per what Maxim wanted her to know.

With her at this dinner and next to him, she looked every bit his partner, his woman, and with that ring on her finger, his bride and future wife.

Like our grandmother, she would be privy to family intel, but within reason.

“That’s… helpful,” she replied, slightly sarcastic. I was sure her opinions about the topic of kidnapping were biased with how Maxim made her his woman, but it sure had worked out for the best. I’d never seen Maxim so complete.

As Saul loaded his plate, he shrugged one shoulder. “If anything, he’s probably going to try to stay captured as long as he can to spy on whoever took him.”

“I agree,” I said dryly. “That would be just like him.” Nik and I shared a closer bond than the other brothers.

We were fraternal twins, united as brothers even in the womb.

But we couldn’t have turned out more different.

He was charming and daring, outgoing and cocky, whereas I was quiet and reserved, dark and tempered.

Nik was more prone to taking extreme risks.

Maxim didn’t argue. “I think so too.”

Sloane furrowed her brow. “He’d let himself be captured for the sake of getting information?”

“Yes.” I glanced at her but didn’t maintain eye contact for long.

I knew how my scar on my face bothered others, particularly women who weren’t used to me.

Intimidating my brother’s fiancée wasn’t my goal.

“He would. With our need to find out who poisoned our father, he would most certainly use his captivity to his advantage in any way he could.”

Grandmother shook her head, frowning once more. “Grigory’s still not himself, either.”

“What did the doctor say?” I asked, aware that while I’d been supervising more men to hunt for clues about Nik’s whereabouts that Father had been checked again.

He was poisoned and resting in a lengthy recovery, but the prognosis seemed open to change.

Maxim seemed most anxious for Father to be back to his usual self, probably because he didn’t want to be the boss of the whole organization permanently.

With a wedding to plan and a baby to look forward to, he had his hands full.

“He’s still recovering steadily,” Grandmother replied, “but the doctor warned of mood changes and an altered personality with the damage done to his brain and nervous system.”

Maxim drew a deep breath, clearly unsettled. I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

“We’ll help you lead,” Saul said.

“And we’ll find Nik so he can help too,” I added.

We always worked as a team, a coalition of brothers who lead all the many men and soldiers under the Ivanov Family.

“I know.” Maxim sighed at Sloane. “It’s just the timing of it all. Nik’s capture has to be another strike against the family. First, they tried to take out Father. Now Nik. I don’t want to deal with an enemy trying to ruin us now when I have a future to build.”

Sloane smiled a little and rested her head on his shoulder, so obviously in love. “When we have a future to build.”

A happy sigh came from Grandmother, and I had to lower my head to avoid the pressure of watching them being so joyful about Maxim and Sloane’s baby.

Her pregnancy hadn’t started without drama, but now that she and Maxim were committed to each other, she was right.

She would be a backup support for him as he handled all these challenges the family faced.

Except Nik.

That was my duty.

As his twin, I felt an innate obligation to be the one to find him and bring him back.

Besides, it wasn’t like I’d be distracted like Maxim was, not any time soon.

Even though my role was in the basement level, in the dungeon where I was not known as Damon but as Demon.

Torture was my expertise, but with the need to locate Nik, I could diversify my efforts toward keeping the family strong.

I glanced at the couple, happy for them and excited for them to bring the first heir into the family.

Yet, deeper in a locked crevice of my heart, I experienced the pang of loneliness that came with the idea that what they had wouldn’t be mine.

There wasn’t any chance I’d be meeting a woman or starting a family.

Too many women feared me to stick around for long.

It doesn’t matter.

Having a woman wasn’t on my radar now.

Because no woman would be able to dissuade me from devoting all my attention on searching for Nik—whether he wanted to be found yet or not.