Page 38 of Claimed By the Bratva Brothers

Smith and Bowman have kicked things up a notch.

12

Lyric

On the less busy days at the library, I get to whip out my personal laptop and add more lines of code into my algorithm. It’s a lengthy and tedious process. I often end up working for hours just to tweak a single parameter interpretation within the entire program—yet that small change can make a world of difference from one prediction to another.

If I’m to hand a version of this over to a company someday, I can’t risk any errors, not even by a fraction. I’m insanely proud of how far I’ve come with this already, and it drives me to keep pushing.

It's also the only thing that seems to keep me focused in the middle of the shitstorm that has somehow become my life. I tell myself that maybe it was meant to happen this way, but I still feel guilty. I’m scared. I want this baby, and I intend to see everything through to the end.

I just don’t know if I’ll do it alone or with Max, Ivan, and Artur by my side. It’s such a weird situation and it makes my brain hurt just thinking about it, let alone trying to make sense of it.

I take a break from coding and go into one of my news apps to check recent events. I need to stay on top of what’s happening in order to further calibrate the algorithm; I’ve already started running a few possible scenarios regarding Chicago and its mob families.

I take a few minutes to go through several recent videos. The violent crime rate has dropped since the city council implemented some of the new measures they had voted on earlier last year. An Italian-American lieutenant of the Camorra family was found dead in his pool last night. A Sokolov…

“What in the ever-living fu—” I swallow that last word as I watch Ivan being arrested on camera, dragged out of a shipping company’s loading bay infested with federal agents. I catch a glimpse of Max in the background on the phone, eyes wide as he spots the camera filming him. I see the smirks on some of the Feds’ faces.

The news chyron makes it unclear as to what they were raiding that location for in the first place, but there’s an article link for me to follow.

My blood runs cold as I realize that the motive expressed by the Bureau to the press sounds shoddy, at best. “Suspicion of illegal activity, are you kidding me?” I blurt out, anger quick to set in. “This is ridiculous!”

I need deep breaths for the fire in my veins to settle. I grab my phone and call Artur. He doesn’t pick up. I try Max next. Still, no luck. I get anxious, restless in my seat as I immediately go into my “focus on the solution, not the problem” mode, which has me digging deep into my list of contacts.

Since my father is a politician and a darling of the media, I’ve had my share of interactions with reporters and journalists from pretty much every outlet in the Greater Chicago area and beyond. I saved many of their numbers over the years, thinking they might come in handy someday.

And here we are.

“Hi, Lindsey. Sorry to disturb and call you out of the blue like this. It’s Lyric Phelps,” I say then pause, waiting for her to remember me. “That’s right. Listen, I’m wondering… I saw something on the news about Ivan Sokolov being arrested. Ahh, yes. Did you or one of your colleagues run that story?” I take a deep breath as she tells me all about it. “Okay. So, you were there. Okay. Do you have any idea where they took him?”

She doesn’t, but she sends me the number of someone who followed the Feds’ van across the city after Ivan was picked up. Ten minutes and five calls later, I’m finally on the phone with the guy.

“They haven’t released him yet?” I croak upon hearing the news. “Boy, it sounds like they’re really sinking their claws into him, huh? Why do I want to know?” I need a decent, reasonable lie for this. “I’m a reporter for a small, independent online newspaper. Just trying to break into the game, ya know?”

Finally, after another ten minutes, I get a location.

At about the same time, Max calls me back, and my heart practically jumps out of my chest as I answer. “Are you guys okay? I just saw the news.”

“Yeah, for the most part. The Feds have done quite the number on us,” he says.

“I saw. What happened?”

“I’m sorry, Lyric, I can’t talk about this over the phone. Right now, I’m dealing with another issue because I can’t get Ivan out of jail. Not today anyway.”

My stomach drops. It can be so easy to upset the balance of an otherwise sturdy ecosystem if you know which buttons to push. The Feds were pretty smart and organized with this particular stunt.

With trembling fingers, I enter new data into one of the algorithm’s ongoing processes, listening as Max tells me about how stuck he and Artur are, for the time being.

“So, until we figure something out, Ivan has no choice but to spend the night in jail,” he says.

“That’s just insane. What about the other families?” I ask.

“None of them will touch this. As soon as the incident hit the news, they all went radio silent. I can’t exactly fault them. The Feds expect a reaction from us, which is precisely what we’re not giving them. It’s messed up, but I know Ivan understands. I just don’t like the idea of him sitting in jail, not even for another minute.”

“They are doing this on purpose, aren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

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