Page 126 of Twisted Pact

“You want to kill him.”

I slice my hand through the air and growl. “I want him gone, whether that’s dead, in prison, or exiled to Siberia. This needs to be over before Mila has this baby.”

My brother smirks as he squints at me. “You’ve changed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“A year ago, you would have already made the move. You wouldn’t have consulted anyone, just acted. Fatherhood is making you soft.”

“Fatherhood is making me smart,” I retort, tapping my skull before I push off the wall and drop into the chair across from him. “I have more to lose now. That doesn’t make me soft, it makes me careful.”

Dmitri pokes out his bottom lip and nods. “Careful is good, but we still need to be decisive when the moment comes.”

“I know that. Why do you think I’m in here planning instead of out there executing?”

Dmitri slides a folder across the table. “These are our assets. People who owe us favors. Organizations that would benefit from Novikov’s removal. Law enforcement contacts who might look the other way if the timing is right.”

I flip through the pages and recognize most of the names. Some are reliable; others are question marks. A few are outright liabilities.

“This is what we’re working with?”

“This is what we have that won’t get us killed or arrested. The pool of trustworthy allies shrinks considerably when you’re talking about taking out someone like Novikov.”

“What about the St. Petersburg Bratva? Yevgeny’s been sniffing around since the wedding.”

“Yevgeny Lebedev called yesterday. Wanted to know if we needed additional resources.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“That we’d consider it and get back to him.” Dmitri drums his fingers on the table. “Lebedev doesn’t offer help without strings. If we accept his assistance, we owe him, and that debt could be worse than the current situation.”

He’s right. Yevgeny controls most of St. Petersburg’s underworld and has tried to expand his influence in Moscow for years.Owing him would give him the foothold he’s been looking for, but having him as an enemy would be even worse.

“Put him on the ‘maybe’ list. What about law enforcement?”

“That’s where things get tricky.” Dmitri pulls up something on his tablet and turns it to face me. “According to Katya’s contacts, FSB has been asking questions. Not directly, but through channels. They want to know what we know about Novikov’s operations since Novikov began dealing with foreign intelligence services. He’s been selling information to the highest bidder. Military secrets. Government contracts. Things that cross into national security.”

I lean forward. “How solid is this intel?”

“Solid enough that three sources confirmed it independently. Novikov’s no longer just a crime boss. He’s a traitor.”

The implications hit me hard. If the government wants him eliminated for national security reasons, we might have cover for the operation. But it also means we’re playing in much deeper waters than I anticipated.

“This is bigger than I thought.”

“Much bigger,” Dmitri confirms with a curt nod. “Some of our contacts think we should coordinate with the FSB. Let them handle the heavy lifting while we clean up the criminal side.”

“What do you think?”

Dmitri closes the case around his tablet. “I think the moment we involve government agencies, we lose control of the narrative. They’ll want to know how we know what we know, and a guarantee that we’re not also selling secrets.”

“We’re not.”

“But can we prove it? Can we prove that every operation we’ve run for the past five years has been domestic? That none of our foreign contacts have ties to intelligence services?”

He’s asking the right questions. The ones I’ve been avoiding because I don’t like the answers.

“No. We can’t prove that.”