Page 40 of The Mafia King's Baby

He studies my face for a moment, then nods slowly. “You’re right. You’ve earned that right.”

He stands and walks to one of the maps on the wall, tracing routes with his finger while he talks. “My organization handles transportation and logistics for various clients. Sometimes, that means moving legitimate cargo through legitimate channels. Sometimes, it doesn’t.”

“What kind of illegitimate cargo?”

“Whatever people need moved without official scrutiny.”

“Drugs?” I ask, challenging his previous statement.

“Only once years ago, when I had to repay a favor to the man who helped Dmitri and I establish our empire here.”

I grimace but I have no reason to doubt he’s being honest. “Weapons?”

“Often.”

Through narrowed eyes, I ask, “People?” anticipating a negative if he’s being honest about what he said before.

He turns away from the map to look at me directly. “Never. That’s a line I don’t cross.”

The distinction seems important to him, a matter of personal ethics in a world where such things must be rare. I file it away as potentially significant, evidence that he’s not completely without moral boundaries. “So, you’re a smuggler?”

“Among other things.” He returns to his desk and sits back down. “Dmitri and I came to the US when we were sixteen, smuggled over in cargo containers—and the hell of that experience is one of many reasons we never hauled humans in our own endeavors. We had some money Dad had socked away and told us where to find before he died, but we had too little education and skills to get legitimate jobs.

“An old friend of my father’s helped us, first putting us to work in hisbratvabranch, and then helping us establish our own. That life comes with enemies and obligations. Enemies destroyed Dmitri, and I’ve spent the last six years trying to legitimize what I can and manage what I can’t, minimize obligations, and try to find some peace, which is hard in my world.”

“With mixed success, apparently.”

“Da, but I’ve had enough success to stay alive and keep my people safe. Until recently.”

“Tell me about Lang.”

Yefrem opens the notebook and flips through pages covered in his careful handwriting of numbers and names and dates that represent years of careful record-keeping.

“He was a good agent once. Dedicated, honest, and effective at his job.” He leans back, still meeting my gaze. “Then his wife got cancer almost eight years ago.”

Sympathy stirs in spite of the way he burst into my life and home, threatening me. “The treatment wasn’t covered?”

“Not all of it. They explored experimental procedures, specialists, and medications that weren’t FDA-approved. He mortgaged their house, sold everything they owned, and borrowed from family.” He frowns. “It wasn’t enough.”

“So he went corrupt?”

He lifts a shoulder. “Perhaps that’s too harsh of an assessment,kotik. He got desperate to save the woman he loved. He started small by taking money to delay investigations, providing advance warning about raids, and selling information that wasn’t technically classified.” He sets aside the notebook and focuses on me completely. “One compromise led to another, then another, until he was running his own operation inside the Bureau.”

“What kind of operation?”

“Brokering deals between rival organizations, playing middleman in disputes, and taking percentages from everyone while using his badge for protection. When his wife died two years ago, he seemed to lose any moral compass or ability to care about right and wrong.” Yefrem’s voice carries disgust, either for Lang’s methods or his lack of subtlety. “He got greedy and tried to expand too fast.”

“And ran into you.”

“He tried to force me into a partnership I didn’t want. He demanded access to my routes, my contacts, and my operations. When I refused, he made it personal.”

I lean forward in my chair, finally getting to the heart of what I need to understand. “What did he do?”

“He aligned himself with the Belov family—rivals of mine who’ve been trying to move into my territory for years. Together, they hit my estate outside Las Vegas.” Yefrem’s expression hardens, and for a moment, I see the dangerous man Lang underestimated. “They killed several of my people, along with a fourteen-year-old boy who was the son of the housekeeper and got caught in the crossfire, and destroyed everything I’d built there.”

“So you retaliated.”

“I cut him off. I froze him out of any deals that required my cooperation and made it clear that working with the Belovs meant working against me.” He gestures toward the notebook. “Unfortunately, he saw one of my notebooks in the raid at Vegas. I managed to get it back from him in a bloody operation, but he knows of its existence and is determined to acquire it to bring me down.”

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