Page 37 of Ivory Ashes

“Anatoly,” Raoul complains with a sigh, “he was talking.”

“It was boring. Besides, I should be the one to deliver the news.” Anatoly shakes out his fist and walks closer. He meets my eyes and, for the first time in a long time, there is no joke. “Trofim is dead.”

I thought Trofim might be plotting something. I half-expected to find him strapped to a chair in the dungeon.

But… dead?

“How?” I ask.

Anatoly hitches a thumb over his shoulder to the bleeding man. “Long story short, I overheard this asshole running his mouth at a rival bar. He was talking about cremating the son of the Novikov Bratva in Moscow. I figured he was full of shit and just trying to get some clout with the bartender for free drinks, but… he had a lot of information.”

“Description, tattoos, and where Trofim was staying,” Raoul lists off. “It seems legit.”

Trofim is dead. It’s not so hard to wrap my head around. I haven’t seen him since that night in the bridal suite. In a lot of ways, he’s been dead to me since the moment I exiled him.

“That’s not all.” Anatoly spins around, kicking the man’s chair again. The coroner is slumped down, but he blinks back to full awareness as we all stare at him. “Tell him the rest.”

“I got the call to take care of Trofim Novikov’s body in the middle of the night. Usually, these kinds of things can wait until morning, but there was a rush. Someone with more power than I have wanted the body cremated immediately. But when I got there, I noticed?—”

“He was murdered,” Anatoly blurts. After a few seconds, he waves his hand at the coroner. “Go on. Keep going.”

The man sighs and carries on. “Someone suggested it was suicide, but it wasn’t like any suicide I’ve ever seen. There were cuts and bruises all over his body. Most people don’t brutalize themselves like that before they pull the trigger. It didn’t make sense.”

“That’s because you didn’t know him,” Anatoly drawls. “To know Trofim was to want to kill him. I’m not surprised it happened; I’m just surprised we’re only finding out about it now.”

“Did you hear anything about this, Raoul?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. Trofim was staying in some tiny little town outside of Dzerzhinsk. I had eyes in the surrounding areas in case he ventured out, but he never did.”

Because he was dead.

I counted it a luxury that my older brother at least knew when to call it quits. I exiled him and he didn’t fight back. He took his defeat on the chin.

Or, maybe not.

Maybe someone killed him before he could scrabble together a comeback attempt.

“Is that all the information we have?” I ask.

“So far,” Anatoly confirms. “I’d like a few more minutes with our witness here, though. He doesn’t like to cough it all up in one go.”

The man whimpers, rightfully so, and Raoul and I head back upstairs to my office.

Unlike Anatoly, Raoul knows when to give me space. He stands quietly against the wall as I pace the room back and forth, repeating these new facts in my head.

Viviana is back.

Dante is my son.

And Trofim is dead.

I don’t believe in coincidences. Especially not when I’m this fucking close to controlling the vast majority of shipping ports on the East Coast.

I’m still pacing when Anatoly shoves through my office door. He drops into the leather chair across from my desk, panting and sticky with sweat. “The guy didn’t know anything else.”

“It could be a distraction,” Raoul suggests now that the silence has been broken. “Someone wants to pull your mind away from finalizing the deal with the Greeks.”

“Trofim is dead. That’s nothing but good news in my books.” Anatoly shrugs. “The son of a bitch got what he deserved. The only thing that’s sad about it is that I wasn’t there to witness it.”

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