Page 121 of For a Price

His blood decorates the walls as I introduce him to my fists… and other instruments of pain.

He holds out as long as he can before he’s crying out in pain. He’s yelling at me in Russian, claiming I have the wrong man.

“Ya ne prinimayu resheniya!?*” he howls.

I grin, slamming my brass-knuckled fist into him again and savoring the cracking noise from his jaw. “No ty yvpolnyayesh’ ch’i-to prikazy. Rasskazhi mne, chto ty znayesh?*.”

In the end, Borys spills what he knows. He tells me all about how the owner of the Midnight Society, a Russian billionaire named Dmitri Androski Raskova, was murdered by his son, Kaden. The secret club of elites has been rudderless ever since.

…until the pakhan began showing more of an interest in the society.

In the absence of real leadership, he’s been signaling to other high-ranking members that he may purchase the club and become the new owner.

The bratva has always trafficked people. It’s been a part of our business that I’ve done my best to stay away from, but it is a harsh reality of the lifestyle. Most of the women Ivanka manages are borrowed by men in our family.

Owning an entity like the Midnight Society would allow the pakhan to increase his profits in the flesh trade exponentially.

It still poses the question: how the fuck did the pakhan know to target Katerina? Did one of the men present at my father’s dinner weeks ago spot her in the collar by my side and spread word to him? Or did Leonid tell him about how I disfigured him that fateful night?

Borys fills in some blanks about the pakhan’smovements, but that’s no reason for his life to be spared. He played a role in what happened to my kitty cat, so I kill him once he’s outlived hisuse. Once he’s given all the info he has, dripping blood and one eyeball hanging from its socket thanks to how badly I’ve battered him, I bash his skull in with a metal baseball bat.

By the time I’m through with him, what was once his head resembles a smashed watermelon on the ground.

“Clean this up,” I grunt at some of my men. “We need to keep this room ready for when we catch JC.”

In the meantime, I have another move to make. While we seek out the rat that seems to be on the pakhan’spayroll, me and a handful of my crew head out to seek an unlikely ally.

I’m not a man who trusts easily. I’ve made it as far as I have because I’ve trusted so few people. Katerina and a select number of my men are the only people on this earth who I still trust.

But when going up against the might of the pakhan, I’ll need others. I’ll need to extend myself and learn to take a chance that there are others out there who may be willing to form an alliance.

Another use Borys’s information provided me was in the history lesson about the Midnight Society. He told me all about how the club had a sister society that once existed in Northam called the Neptune Society.

This society, in many ways, was even more powerful than the Midnight Society. It was so deeply entrenched in Northam’s inner workings as a city that the mayor and police commissioner were involved.

The former head of the Five Families, Lucius Mancino, was the owner of the Society.

An interesting piece of info for several reasons.

The first being the clear similarity between Lucius and the pakhan now wanting to dominate the Midnight Society. With Lucius gone, the Neptune Society dismantled completely, and the tensions between the bratva and the others in the Five Families, it could give the pakhan another tool to exert power.

Men like Lucius Mancino, the pakhan,and even my father don’t become powerful overnight. They build empires over time, then they take full control.

But the other reason Borys’s lesson on the Midnight Society and Neptune Society interests me is because of who else was deeply involved in the destruction of the latter club.

Salvatore Mancino, the new Don of the Mancino family and the head of the Five Families, played a pivotal role in dismantling the Neptune Society.

This was before my time in Northam. Back when I was still a fresh brigadier working directly under the sovietnikin Russia. I had heard rumblings about a brief alliance Salvatore Mancino made with the bratva and yakuza in order to take out his father.

He succeeded, ascending to the top of the hierarchy in not only the Mancino family, but forging a new way forward with the Five Families.

Salvatore sits waiting for me when I turn up to his club, Nirvana.

He’s got a righthand with wire-framed glasses who stands at his side with his arms crossed. The man’s not intimidating in the slightest, tall with a knobby throat, yet something tells me he’s valuable if Salvatore’s given him such a high position.

I nod upon entering the room, the three men I’ve brought with me serving as my shadow.

Salvatore is impossible to read. A great quality for a don of a mafia family. His expression is cold and composed, his gaze intense meeting mine.

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