Page 8 of The Brutal Arrangement (The Ivanov Syndicate #2)

DAMON

A fter my attempt at working out—which didn’t give me a chance to vent any of my frustration in the end—I showered and headed out to do all that I could to find my brother.

Saul and Maxim knew just as well as I did that Nik should be the one to marry Katerina. Not me. He was the expert at espionage, at spying and extracting secrets. I was the one to punish those who schemed against the Ivanov Syndicate. But he had always been the one to find them.

“Where the fuck are you, Nik?” I whispered to myself as I drove to meet with John, one of the best spies I’d been relying on in this process of locating my twin.

Many soldiers and guards had been delegated to assist me, but John had more or less become my go-to man for updates.

He was a supervisor who’d been moving up steadily for years, and I could count on him.

I parked and got out of my car, hating how muddled my mind was about everything going on in my life. My father’s slow recovery. Maxim bringing a sister-in-law into the family. Nik being gone.

And this stupid marriage arrangement.

Of all my issues, that arrangement was the only thing I could fully control.

I could agree or reject it. Waiting until Nik was found seemed like the best course of action, but then I also had to wonder if this arrangement of bringing Katerina closer and into the family as a potential enemy could be a way to find Nik faster.

“Anything?” I asked John once he stood and approached me at the restaurant where we’d agreed to meet.

He shook his head. “No.”

“Fuck.” I sat with him, aggravated. “There’s a good chance that he’s staying hidden on purpose.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” John said.

“Still…” I rubbed my jaw and realized I’d been tenser than usual, grinding my teeth too much from all this stress.

“Even if he is staying hidden and not trying to get away, that doesn’t change the fact that someone took him in the first place.

” And I was impatient to find out who the hell it was.

Not necessarily the men who snatched him from that parking lot, but whoever would’ve ordered it to happen.

It had happened so quickly, too. I could remember it all like it was yesterday.

Nik drove Maxim and Sloane to their first baby appointment at the doctor’s office, and while Maxim was groveling and making up to her for their issues, that other car pulled up close.

Masked men slipped out and snuck Nik away.

Just like that, they got him away when they were distracted, which implied that they’d been watching us closely to pull that off.

Maxim had been so conflicted, wanting to chase down the men who took Nik but also needing to stay with Sloane and protect her. Fortunately, I had been there in a second car as backup. I, and the other Ivanov men, hadn’t waited to shoot at them and chase down my twin, but still, he was taken.

“We’ve gone over the security footage so many times,” John said, shaking his head. “And nothing.”

It was true. We had gotten into every bit of footage from all the businesses on the route where they’d driven away.

We’d started a high-speed chase after him that day, and we didn’t lose that SUV once.

Despite staying close, they’d brought in another SUV as a decoy, and that was how they’d slipped away.

“Because whoever hired those men knew they weren’t amateurs,” I replied darkly.

I was still pissed that when we pulled over the SUV we thought Nik was in, which was the decoy by that point in traffic, the driver killed himself to avoid being questioned.

“It’s unusual to deal with so few leads,” John said.

“It is, and that further convinces me that independent contractors took him. To transport him to our enemy.” I sighed, wishing things weren’t like this. “He’s got to be alive, though.”

“Because of those daily messages of codes he sends to his program?”

I nodded. “It means he has to have his phone.”

John scowled. “Too bad he disabled it for tracking.”

I shrugged. Of course, Nik had wanted to be untraceable. It was a critical factor when he was spying.

“And if he has his phone to send a message, he could use it to call for backup.”

John agreed with a nod. “Sounds just like him.”

If Nik had a strategy, I’d trust him with it. But in light of our family expecting me to marry Katerina Kozlov in his absence, I was more eager than before to get Nik back.

“And if one of our enemies had Nik, they’d be contacting us,” I reminded John.

He shook his head. “There hasn’t been a single hint of a message in that regard. From anyone.”

I grimaced. Someone had to have a gameplan with Nik’s capture. He wouldn’t have been taken for the hell of it. Holding Nik hostage had to serve someone a purpose, and we were banking on that to mean someone wanted to attack the Ivanov Syndicate at large.

“No one has come forward.” John shrugged.

He would’ve told me and Maxim the second correspondence happened. But so far, no one had come forward with a demand for ransom. No one had approached us with an intention to use our captive brother as leverage in a deal. No blackmail to get us to surrender something before releasing him.

And most importantly, no one had come forward to claim the glory of being the ones to kill him.

“It’s nothing but a fucking waiting game,” I muttered. And I was sick of it.

John talked with me about all the men he had placed to spy and listen for word on the street of where Nik could be held. We also discussed a little more about the second time someone had entered the Ivanov building, that night when a nurse had stopped Father from being poisoned again.

With no new information but a lot more accumulating frustration about this situation, I thanked John for the update and left.

Instead of going home with the plan to check in on Father again, I drove toward the cemetery a little distance from the city.

I wasn’t particularly sentimental about dates, but for some reason, I’d always remembered the date of my mother’s death. Beatrice Ivanov’s presence in the family had left a lingering and bitter aftertaste in all of our mouths. Her lies ruined us. Her betrayal nearly got me and my brothers killed.

Hatred and venomous dislike festered for years whenever I let thoughts of her enter my mind. And it was because of her that I—like Maxim—was so against the idea of trusting a woman.

Getting out of the car, I stuck my hands in my pockets and nodded at the guard who’d followed me here. He stood at the second car and dipped his chin in deference to stand back.

Alone, I approached the unimpressive tombstone for the woman who’d given birth to me. Father hadn’t wanted to bury her at all. Her remains were nothing but burnt ashes under the earth here, and the simple gray slab was unmarked with her name.

We didn’t need to label the spot where she remained.

We all knew.

I didn’t think anyone else ever came out here, and my stop at her grave wasn’t a visit. I wasn’t coming to reflect on her absence in my life.

All I could do was ponder what the presence of another wife in the family could mean.

Sloane was all right. I knew Maxim had chosen well with that former stripper, and I saw with my own eyes how utterly committed he was to her.

Like me, he hadn’t thought he’d ever be with a woman like that. In a forever sense. They weren’t married yet, but soon would be. According to Sloane, they’d have a wedding only when Nik was back to witness it.

And now I’ll be next?

I scowled at the blank stone, no happier about having to get married than I was the day before.

Katerina wasn’t the kind of woman I wanted.

I wasn’t sure what sort of woman would interest me for the rest of my life. I’d never given it thought.

“Because of you,” I whispered. Because of my mother, I never wanted to consider letting an outsider threaten our family again.

With that agreement, though, and with Maxim planning to use Katerina’s arrival as a way to spy on her uncle, it seemed that I no longer had any say in the matter.

I would do as my boss ordered, always. Before the poisoning, it would’ve been my father telling me to deal with this arrangement.

In his stead, Maxim was calling the shots.

And if he felt this was a good way to root out the identity of our enemy who wanted to bring us down…

“I’ll do it,” I muttered aloud to myself. “I swear to all that’s holy in heaven and hell that I’ll do right by my family. Unlike you .”

I almost wished my mother could rise from the dead just to experience my hatred all over again. What kind of a parent offered her sons to be killed just so she could maintain her affair?

Shaking my head, I let the burning embers of loathing and fury fuel me to stay alert and do the right thing.

I didn’t want to marry Katerina—or anyone else right now—but I would for the sake of spying on her family.

And if she or her uncle were trying to trick me and anyone else in my family…

I’d make damn sure they would regret it until their last breath.