Page 55 of Shattered Empire (Shattered World)

“Geesh,” Kenzi snorted. “Drama queen much? Yes, thatBratva.”

That didn’t make any sense. My father was a low-level runner, notBratvaroyalty. “You must be mistaken.”

Kenzi pursed her lips and shook her head. “Nope.” She popped theP. And here I thought that was just an annoying trait Ava had when she wanted to test my patience. “Kirill Kasyanov was an alias. He was born Kirill Malikovich Tkachenko, September of 1965, to a Yelena Morisov and—”

“Malik Tkachenko,” I snarled.

“Um, yeah…” Mark hesitated briefly, his forehead drawn up. “How did you know that?”

“Russian middle names are patronymic,” I explained. “Meaning that they are drawn from the father’s first name. My middle namewasKirillovich. Vas’s middle name is Avtonomovich. In Russia, it is common to introduce yourself or greet someone else with their first and middle name.”

“From what we could uncover,” Kenzi crept on, her lips turning up in a sneer at the mention of the Russian patriarchal traditions of introduction. Couldn’t blame her for that. Her whole life had been controlled by men. “He was illegitimate. Yelena was a maid in Malik’s household. He took a shine to her. She got pregnant, had the baby, and then mysteriously disappeared.”

“The baby was kept in the household and raised to be an enforcer,” Mark cut in. “Never legitimized.”

“Malik was a purist,” I spat distastefully. The man had been a royalty supremacist and believed in not tainting the Tkachenko bloodline. “He saw illegitimate children as cockroaches.”

Mark huffed. “Didn’t stop him from having a host of them. Most of whom died working for the mafia or were purposeful sacrifices.”

“How did Kirill end up in St. Petersburg?” I questioned. The TkachenkoBratvawas run out of Moscow, and even though there was a presence in St. Petersburg, I couldn’t remember if he worked for them or not. I blocked out much of that time in my life, refusing to dwell on what I couldn’t change. “And why under a different name?”

“There aren’t a lot of records from that time,” Mark admitted sheepishly. “We had to go old school and find the few people who were alive during Malik’s reign. Let me tell you, there weren’t a lot.”

“From what we gathered, Kirill made a lot of mistakes that cost Malik a shit ton of money.” Kenzi clicked the button in her hand. A new image appeared on the tablet. It was a younger version of the man I knew. He was eighteen when he was banished to St. Petersburg to work under a man named Vlad Morozov. Kirill went from an enforcer to a drug runner. No one could verify it for sure, but it appeared Malik forced him to use an assumed surname. One that couldn’t be traced back to him.”

“Makes sense,” Leon piped up from the back seat. “He may have let him keep the last name Tkachenko as an enforcer, but the moment shit hit the fan, he made sure no one was going to know who Kirill was and how they were related. Finding out he had an illegitimate son was one thing, but that same son being responsible for some of his failures? That would have had him in a rage.”

“So why not just kill him?” Mark wondered. “If he was such a purist, why keep him around and involve him at all? He didn’t involve any of his other offspring.”

I had a few theories, but none that I was willing to share now. The churning in my gut told me that there was more to the story than just him bedding a random maid. Malik hadn’t produced any more male heirs after his son Andrei was born. Kirill, although illegitimate, was a spare heir.

“Why did Kirill leave St. Petersburg?” Kenzi wondered aloud. “It seems a bit coincidental that your mother overdoses and then soon after that, he kicks you out on the street, never to be seen again.”

“Wasn’t there a big civil war that ended around that time, too?” Leon asked. “I remember hearing Tomas speak of it a few times. Said it was the reason he got out. Malik’s people were dying left and right. It was carnage.”

“Give me a sec.” The sound of Mark’s fingers popping over the hefty keyboard filled the car. “Bingo. There was a civil war from early 1986 to late 1996 after Andrei Tkachenko’s wife mysteriously went missing. One of the men Sasha interviewed told him that all fingers pointed at the boy’s father.”

“Why would Malik even care?”

“Because it wasn’t a marriage alliance,” Mark told us. “He fell in love with her. She was a waitress. No money. No connections. And no one ever found a body. Andrei raged war for years until he finally killed his father with a knife to the throat in 1996, ending the bloody war. More than six hundred soldiers died in that war.”

Mark hummed in surprise as he filtered through the data our informants had provided. “Funnily enough,” Mark continued. “The year he kicked you out the on streets was the same year Andrei Tkachenko legitimized Kirill.”

“What’s the significance of that?” Kenzi questioned, confused. “If he was willing to legitimize Kirill, he would have no problem with a child born out of wedlock.”

“One, Kirill already had a family and a wife that probably didn’t know about his extracurricular activities,” Mark elucidated. “And two, I don’t think he wanted the burden of another child. He was already in hot water, and his pockets were practically empty. But none of you are asking the right question.”

I sighed, running a hand through my hair, which was still damp from the rain. “And what is the right question?”

“Why assassinate a thirteen-year-old you could have just killed when he was eleven?” Mark noted.

Kenzi bit her lower lip, her eyes sinking to the bottom left. She was trying to conjure up a reason as much as anyone else. I’d asked myself that same question so many times over the years, and I’d never found an answer.

“Well, if Andrei was willing to legitimize Kirill, maybe Kirill thought he’d legitimize Matthias without asking?” There was skepticism in her voice. The scenario didn’t fit. “I mean,” she shrugged, “if he was worried about his wife finding out. That could be a reason.”

I shot her a sideways glance, one eyebrow raised, conveying just how little confidence I put in that statement.

She held up her hands. “Okay, so probably not the reason. Geesh,” she muttered petulantly. “Just trying to brainstorm here.”

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