Page 1 of Devil's Retribution

Chapter 1

Viktor

Twenty minutes from Hollywood Boulevard, the rain hit, spattering down from clouds that reflected the city lights with a grayish glow. Real rain, for once. Rare in LA, especially in early summer, unless one of those new, crazy storms swept up from Mexico. I welcomed it, even if every damned Californian seemed to have forgotten how to drive on wet streets.

The inside of my black Mercedes coupe was a cool, slightly mint-smelling cave lined with leather. The car slid through traffic, streetlights and neon gleaming off its hood and the wet asphalt in multicolored ripples.

I passed three fender-benders in the span of two minutes. Commuters and pleasure-seekers out shouting at each other in the rain. Fine, let them. Just as long as they didn’t block traffic between here and Club Nebesa. I had meetings to get to.

My phone buzzed. I poked the screen and put it on speaker. I could hear faint jazz music in the background, a call from the club. “Tolya! Have the men arrived?”

“Alexei just showed up,” Anatoly rumbled, sounding amused for some reason. “He looks like he swam here. Must have ridden his motorcycle back from Santa Monica. I’ll get a hot drink into him. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

“What is it?”

“It won’t just be us. Dimitri’s agreed to the meet tonight.”

I flashed a smile. “That’s good news.” Dimitri was a legend in this city—above all the different Bratva squabbles, admired and whispered about by all of us. He had stepped aside from any leadership positions, because that would have forced him to stop doing business with the other groups. Now, when he wasn’t brokering art, jewels, and antiques from all over the world for his rich clients, he was brokering information for us. And that was what I was hoping to get from him tonight.

“Break out the Maker’s Mark, Tolya, but make sure the seal is still on when you bring it out. Old habits die hard, after all.” I couldn’t help but smile even as I fought traffic. “I’ll be there as soon as I am able.”

Club Nebesa was my favorite place in the city. Ever since I was a little kid growing up in the shadows of Dimitri and my uncle, I had dreamed of owning such a club. Big, popular, with a large neon sign out front—and inside, nothing but opulence. Now I had it, it was the crown jewel among my Los Angeles properties, and also the primary location for my business meetings.

“You got it, boss. Did you eat before you left?”

I snorted. “You sound like my uncle. No. I’ll grab something when we’re done. I need to focus on whatever Dimitri has for me. See you there.” I hung up on his distressed noise.

Tolya was a forbidding giant who looked like he could tie a car bumper in a knot, but his favorite hobbies were cooking and hosting. He had been raised and fed by a grandmother who could make porridge taste like ambrosia, and now that she was gone, all his pride that did not come from his work for me, came from his ability to keep everyone fed. It was for this reason that I had given him partial control of my beloved club. He kept the business of security and hospitality flowing while I accepted my guests and made my deals.

Deals I couldn’t make nearly as smoothly with his borscht on my tie.

I checked my look in my rear-view mirror when I was stopped in traffic. Not a hair out of place. These days I caught myself checking my hair and beard for gray hairs shining against the black, but there was no sign of them yet. I still looked like I was in my thirties. I wasn’t. But I was still the youngest Pakhan that Los Angeles had ever had—and also the one who had made the greatest strides in the shortest amount of time. But that wasn’t enough to impress Dimitri or keep my men looking at me in the right way.

A man in my position had to meet certain expectations when it came to appearances. That included things like the cars I drove, the clothes I wore—even the guns I used. Older men in my organization still saw me as new and perhaps too young, despite being pledged to me. Their skepticism was tempered by playing the part they expected. That included the look and the car brand. Old Russian men and their Mercedes-Benzes. The fact that I had gotten a coupe was a bit against type, but I wasn’t ready to transition to a sedan limousine with a chauffeur like the past-sixty crowd.

As for my peers and younger followers, they loved the coupe. Most of them were still getting used to the idea of real wealth and showed it off in awkward ways. Like silly Alexei with his custom black-and-gold motorcycle with the science-fiction wheel and frame lights. It looked wicked cool, even to a guy my age, but it also stood out ridiculously in traffic.

More than my looks, mannerisms, and political choices, though, the young ones lived on my legends. Who I had fought. Who I had bested. How many of us I had saved. How many of my enemies I had buried. Where the veterans and old men and most of my peers wanted a shrewd businessman who was just hard enough to keep the wolves from our door, the boys wanted to work for a hero, and I did my best to live up to that.

I pulled into the VIP section of our lot and parked in my space, waving to the two security guys on duty as I got out. They nodded back, one still new enough to look away shyly. I tended to intimidate people I hadn’t won over yet.

I used my umbrella just to keep the rain off my suit, which was deep charcoal gray with the subtlest of black pinstripes. I wore a band-collared shirt under it, its paler, gray silk smooth and cool against my skin. I hated dress shoes, opting instead for polished black calf-length boots and matching leather gloves. The suit was cut with gussets and panels that would let me fight in it, its jacket lined with Kevlar layers that also kept it smooth over the shoulder holster I wore under it. These days, I never went anywhere unarmed.

There was a crowd gathering under the signs out front, so I took the service door, avoiding them. Some days I didn’t want to deal with the mass of civilians who we pretended were our real clientele—not until I was inside and had a drink in hand, anyway.

The clubbers who packed the first two levels of my club were there to dance, but what they were to us was living camouflage. They were extras on the stage of our nights. We treated them well and made sure they kept coming in droves, but all the real business in this club was done at my private table upstairs. So I took the back elevator up, smoothing the front of my jacket unconsciously before stepping off into the plush-carpeted hallway.

The whole place screamed opulence, just like I’d dreamed of as a young man. White columns and gilded mirrors, seats and wall hangings of gold brocade and jewel-colored velvets, stained glass mirrors, and hidden speakers. The lights stayed low on every floor. But the third-floor club was quite different from downstairs.

The third-floor club was just for us, our guests, and the most distinguished jazz performers on the planet. It was neutral territory for the Bratva, and also gave Dimitri a chance to hold court when he chose to visit—which unfortunately for us, was rarely. I sometimes wondered if his health was declining, or if he was just tired of watching each and every organization in town squabble like we had forgotten we were part of a larger whole.

I had only been handling it for three years, and I was already tired of that part of my job. Ever since my men and I had come out on top after the power struggle surrounding my uncle’s death, we had tension between ourselves and the other crews in town. One or two were becoming increasingly hostile, and I always had to keep an eye on them—or preferably, several eyes.

I walked into the third-floor club, where Anatoly was lumbering around already in his white-jacketed suit, the gel lights over the small stage gleaming off his bald head. He divided his time between instructing our discreet, darkly dressed staff and speaking with the handful of my men who had already arrived. They all turned as I walked in, handing off my umbrella to staff and raising a hand in greeting as I approached.

Alexei was indeed there, and did indeed look damp and rumpled, and as disgruntled as a freshly washed cat. He had been born in Moscow but had come here as a child and had forgotten about real weather too. He was young and blond and almost pretty and he was often mistaken for a wannabe actor fighting for his first break. Tolya thought he needed to be in a few more fistfights to ‘mature’ his face. Tolya’s own nose had been remodeled several times—not for our sake, but by his younger self’s love of bar brawls.

I loved them like brothers—even more, now that I had lost first my father, and then my uncle. They would have taken a bullet for me. As for me, I had sworn to build a Los Angeles underworld orderly and honor-bound enough that they would never have to.

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