Page 43 of Romi

“Siri said the Broxy’s had an informant inside the Bratva who found out the location of your lab. Ivor, he called him. Apparently, he followed one of you guys there one night,” Juana said in a rush.

Aw fuck!

So not only were there traitors in Glowacki’s Brotherhood, but there was a traitor in ours.

I watched Ash closely as we both processed this information.

We’d taken Ivor into our Brotherhood after he’d had an affair with someone’s wife and had to flee Russia just over a year ago. And this was how he repaid us? Well, he would be dealt with, and I would make sure that it was me who did the honours.

Ivor was my responsibility, after all. He wasn’t one of our most trusted men, but he was part of our inner circle, one of the personal bodyguards for the family, living and working under my watch. I felt guilty as fuck over the fact that he had discovered the location of our lab and told Siri, and now there was a plan to hit it this Friday when our next shipment of coke was due. The Broxy’s planned on hitting the Estate while the Malia Boys hit the lab in a two-prong attack on us.

As I listened to the rest of what Juana and Sean had to tell us, my failure hit me like a punch to the gut, and I tasted bile. I was pissed that I hadn’t been aware of his traitorous ways. If I hadn’t been so distracted thinking about Sonia and constantly checking up on her with Rolan and Armen, then I would have noticed what the bastard was up to. I should have. His betrayal was partly down to me. I’d dropped the ball, and I would do everything in my power to make him pay and ensure my family and our business remained safe.

“I thought they had wanted to frame the Albanians and then get Glowacki and us fighting each other as a distraction. What happened to that?” I asked.

“They will be doing more about that starting tonight. They have a couple of Broxy’s who are dressed up as Albanians, sporting fake tattoos, and they are going to be going around your dealers, making as much trouble as possible. They also have another couple of Glowacki’s men onside who will be with them so that it looks like the Albanians and Glowacki are working together,” she said.

We knew that Glowacki had traitors in his ranks again, but to find out that we did, too, was a definite problem. Glowacki was already fuming about the traitors he knew about, but to find there was even more was going to really make him pissed. Glowacki needed to clean house, but it seemed we did too because I had no doubt that Ivor wouldn’t be our only one. Miki was going to blow a bloody fuse when he found out.

To learn that Siri, Petrov’s lawyer, and his unknown boss were somehow involved in Krissa’s murder and were behind the current problems facing us was a huge problem.

This boss guy was obviously our enemy, one we never even knew we had. To make things worse, he had obviously been working against us for at least a couple of years now. We needed to find him and find out why. Then, we needed to put a stop to him. If he really was involved in Krissa’s murder in any way, then he had already signed his death warrant. He was a dead man. It was only a matter of time.

When Sean and Juana left, we headed back to our car. I was really surprised that Ash had managed to hold it together throughout our exchange with Juana and Sean. Still, as he called Miki and updated him on the situation, I could tell he was literally hanging on by a thread. I frowned. This wasn’t good. I needed to get him back under some sort of control soon, or he was likely to do something really stupid, like storming over to Siri’s to attack him. Siri was an egotistical idiot, but he was a paranoid one too, and so the security around his home almost rivalled our own. Going there without any backup would be a suicide mission.

As soon as he hung up, his breathing became erratic, his body tensed, his fists opened and closed, and he looked like he desperately wanted to punch something or someone.

“Fuck!” he shouted, slamming his fist into the dashboard.

“Shit. We’re taking a detour to the office so you can beat the shit out of something other than my car,” I said, yanking the wheel sharply to the left and turning towards our office in the city instead of home.

Glowacki was coming to the Estate to meet with us so we could fill him in on everything we knew and plans needed to be made as soon as possible. Still, it would take him time to get there, so we had time to kill, and allowing Ash to beat the heck out of one of our heavy-duty punchbags at the office gym would calm him before we had to discuss all of this stuff again.

If I was honest, I needed to blow off some steam myself.

A few minutes later, we pulled into the carpark for our office in the centre of London’s financial district. This was where we conducted our legitimate business and where most of Marko’s legitimate IT staff were based. There was also a fully equipped gym, which was much bigger and even better than the one we had at home. This one had a boxing ring, targets, and bags—just what we both needed.

The second we got inside, Ash went straight to his locker, pulled on some workout gear, stuffed his earphones into his ears, and started punching a bag to heavy metal music. I left him to it and jumped on the treadmill. Whenever I needed to think clearly, I ran. Running was a great way for me to clear my head and work through my thoughts and feelings.

As I ran, I went over everything I knew about Ivor, looking for the clues I had obviously missed that pointed to him being a traitorous bastard. I had never liked him, but I had to admit, the guy had covered his tracks well because, try as I did, I couldn’t think of anything that he had done that was in any way suspicious. I also wracked my brain to think about who else might have betrayed us. The only other person I thought might be working with him and Siri against us was Ivan. He was another fairly recent arrival from Russia. He’d joined us not long after Ivor and was a friend of his. The guy wasn’t one of our personal bodyguards, but he did work in security at the Estate.

Apart from him, I couldn’t think of anyone else but one again, though I was distracted. My thoughts kept turning to Sonia and what I was going to do to ensure that we could be together. I couldn’t seem to focus on either issue for long without the other problem making itself known.

Closing my eyes, I pushed all thoughts of Sonia aside. I would seek her out tomorrow and talk with her, and then I would call Uncle Maxim. For tonight, though, I would concentrate on the safety of my family. We couldn’t be together if our family was in jeopardy, so I would look at dealing with that problem first.

We’d been here long enough. By the time I managed to drag Ash away from the punchbags, his knuckles were raw despite the boxing gloves and strapping on his hands, and he looked like shit, but at least he was calmer.

We arrived back just in time to meet Glowacki and his son Dariusz, who was now his second in charge. Dariusz was a good guy. He would one day succeed his dad in place of his older brother, who was murdered by the Albanians at the same time my aunt and uncle were. We all headed into Miki’s office, where he and Marko were waiting.

Ash and I told them everything Sean and Juana had told us. As expected, Glowacki fumed when he heard that he had at least two other traitors in his organisation.

We were all bloody angry that we had traitors, and even though our first thought was to route them out and end them as soon as possible, we eventually came to an agreement that we would wait. We would find out who they were and use them in our plan to take down the rest of our enemies.

Glowacki also agreed we had to snatch Petrov and kill the bastard before he got a chance to enter witness protection, but naturally, he wanted in on the action. Since Petrov had been one of his men and had planned to overthrow him, it was his right after all.

By the time we had relayed all the information, everyone could see that Ash was beginning to spiral again. I thought it would be a good idea to take him to the home gym and let him work out his aggression again, maybe even on me when he got up to leave.

Marko and I started to follow him out, but we sat back down when he said he was going to find Gracie. We nodded to each other as he closed the door behind him. Ash had begun to spiral but was nowhere near his usual state. Gracie seemed to have a calming effect on him, and we both knew he would never hurt her, so going to her was probably the best thing for him right now. We had plans to make, but we would inform Ash of them tomorrow once he was in a better frame of mind.

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