Page 25 of Kings of Cruelty

If your men can’t keep themselves out of jail, that speaks to the quality of your leadership.

Petrov isn’t pleased with my interruption, but the lawyer coughs pointedly.

We might be speaking in Russian, but we can’t trust the room to be unmonitored even if, theoretically, the presence of the lawyer should mean we have complete privacy.

“I’ve been talking to the men here.” Petrov motions around the room, like that’s going to tell me who he’s been talking to. “I hear things about what’s going on outside. And so far, it’s that the Crescis are dominating the city. That there are Albanians setting up shop.”

“The Crescis aren’t—” I make a frustrated sound. “It’s still Pavone at the top. And the Albanians arrived before you were arrested. Which I told you about.”

“They were nothing before,” Petrov argues.

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Of course they took advantage of all the chaos to make inroads. And of course they are bigger now than when they first entered the black markets here.

“Why have you called me here?” I ask Petrov, because I’m tired of listening to this shit.

Petrov glances at the lawyer, then makes another disappointed sound. “You have not made contact with Andronov.”

Andronov. I grimace and shake my head. “Because it’s a bad idea. I don’t want to partner with him.”

Andronov, one of our contacts in Europe, has a knack for finding young, impressionable women who want to come to America and make it big. Of course, they end up as whores or worse. It’s a business I’ve never been fond of, but beyond that, it’d be stupid to start it here, in New Bristol.

The Pavones deal in the flesh trade, and I don’t want to encroach on Pavone territory. I’ve heard how stupid it is to piss them off.

“So instead, you twiddle your thumbs and allow all the work your father and I put into the business to crumble,” Petrov growls. “If you cannot do anything with our current assets, then take the business leads I offer and fucking do something about it. I’m tired of hearing what a joke we’ve become!”

And I’m tired of being forced to listen to an out-of-touch old man. I’ve been on his case for years about business opportunities that he refused to take.

I’m not going to let him get a rise out of me, though.

“Fine. I will talk to him. But when things go south, I’ll know who to blame.” I get up and stride to the door.

“Your father will hear of this insolence,” Petrov shouts at me. “You should respect your fucking elders, boy.”

I bark out a laugh. “When I see somebody worth respecting, I’ll let you know.”

I leave, ignoring his curses.

That did not go well.

I’m going to feel the aftermath of all this, because while it would be easy to dismiss Petrov as a powerless old man in jail, I know he still has many friends. Like the lawyer, who doubles as a spy for my father.

Half the men in the organization are waiting for Petrov to get out of prison, never mind that he’s looking at a long federal sentence unless the Russian embassy gets involved—and I doubt they want to deal with the international fallout of protecting a known criminal.

As I leave the prison, I wonder about where to go from here. As much as it rankled, Petrov was right about one thing: our organization is in shambles.

The whole issue with Don Marino didn’t make things better.

We have the most tenuous of truces with the Crescis, the Pavones can hardly be counted on as an ally, the Albanians would be more than happy to steal our business, and last I heard, there was another Russian family setting up in New Bristol.

It’s a mess.

I leave the prison without any concrete ideas, and the drive back home doesn’t help much either.

I make my way up to Sierra’s room and open the door, not bothering to knock.

She’s on the bed with the laptop on her lap. She’s so focused that it takes her a second to even acknowledge that I’m there. She starts to smile, but when she sees the look on my face, it falters.

“Oookay,” she says. “I take it you didn’t have a good day.”

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