Page 5 of Vasily the Hammer

Bro.In his own weird way, he took that spot the night Artyom died, the night I massacred the Flagstaff IRA, taking over asavtoritetand attracting the attention of thepakhan. And I’ll never tell a soul, but I saw Janson take a life that night. I saw an FBI agent take a life in cold blood, a life he didn’t have to, a life that if he’d spared, his cover wouldn’t have been blown.

We stare each other down. These demons we share. That hell of our own personal design. When he doesn’t back down, just continues to glare with those dark gray eyes of his, haunted to their very core in a way that validates that shaved head and those shit tattoos, I exhale and sink back in my chair. “We can send someone. Where the fuck is Dima these days?”

“Baltimore.”

“The fuck is in Baltimore?”

Janson shrugs. “You know Dima.”

Not anymore. He was my best friend once upon a time, and I guess I never realized he wanted out of the Bratva as much as I did. The moment I told him I needed him mobile, he used it as an excuse to fuck off to the East Coast. Talking was never our thing, but now I’m wishing we’d had a relationship that didn’t require sitting silently next to each other for hours on end.

“This isn’t a job for Dima,” Janson tells me. “You need to go to Flagstaff.”

“You know what yesterday was.”

His Adam’s apple bobs heavily in his throat, his tone softening to the man who was straight As in high school, an Eagle Scout who went to church every single week and had dreams of saving the world. “Artyom was a good man. He didn’t deserve that death. And I know you’re going to hate me saying this, but he lovedFlagstaff. He was King of Flagstaff. Don’t let it fall to those assholes.”

I nod.

But then I say, “I’ll send Dima. He missed that night.”

“You need to go.”

“Or I’ll send no one,” I scoff. “Let Flagstaff fall. The new print is set to go in Santa Clarita. I’m going out there Tuesday to check it while Benedetti’s on that trip to El Paso.” An ultra-lightweight auto-loader that’s under a centimeter thick, constructed from a polymer that hasn’t been detected on any of the scanners we’ve attempted it on. Definitely the sort of thing the ATF can’t know about. Sorry, Benedetti.

Janson snaps out, “Grow a pair. Fuck, if nothing else, you’ve got a niece you’ve never seen. Go to Flagstaff. See Kseniya. See her baby. Spray some IRA blood. You know you want to.”

“Or Kseniya can move here and—” I start before getting cut off by my phone vibrating insistently from where it landed on the floor when Benedetti knocked everything off my desk. I’m impressed it’s vibrating at all. Not just because it gets thrown so much either. My right-hand man, Kostya, put some new security app on it last week, and the settings had it rejecting everything. He fixed them, but it’s been frustrating.

Janson scoops it up and even looks at the screen before handing it to me, but whatever name is there has him shaking his head in confusion.

I feel the same way once I look at it.

Sasha.

That’s a blast from the past. An old friend, but never a close one. Just a kid who emigrated from Russia in the same purge I got caught up in, another son of a Bratva man who chose a wife froma foreign land— he looked south, though, to Kenya— before the Russian organization had a regime change and went all in on eugenics. His family ended up in the Vegas Bratva, but he dipped when he finished high school, enlisting and taking a couple tours in Afghanistan, honing his sharpshooting skills before going mercenary. Last time I talked to him, his base of operations was in Orlando, and he was thanking me for the wedding gift of a crate of ghost guns while also politely turning down a proposed business contract.

I get it. His little band of mercenaries try to be good guys. I’m the villain, albeit a useful one for them to parlay with.

“You’re on speakerphone,” I greet him with after getting a look from Janson that tells me he’s going to be a bitch if I answer in Russian.

Sasha pauses at that before saying, “I have someone I think belongs to you.”

There’s the hint of laugh in his voice, or at least amusement. I’m in no mood for games. “Who?” I growl, already planning on telling Sasha he can keep Dima if that’s who it is.

“Well now, that’s the question of the hour. No one knows.”

“I cannot stress enough that I’m not in the mood for whatever shit you’re pulling. Save it for your husband.”

Seriously, if I ever have to spend more than ten minutes with Gio, I’ll kill the guy myself and save Sasha the inner demon he’ll get from killing his own husband. It’ll be a mercy killing.

“No, believe me, Gigi has nothing to do with th—oh, you were the one who rescued her?” he says, his voice distant, telling me Gio is in the room with him andisinvolved. All stupidity with Sasha leads right back to Gio, so it makes sense. “Anyway, I’m sending you a picture. Let meknow if she’s yours.”

“She?” I don’t typically keep women on my team, Benedetti being a notable exception because she forced her way onto it with all the tenacity and nearsightedness of an undercover ATF agent.

“Yeah, poor thing got snagged by a sex trafficking ring. She hit her head pretty good, doesn’t know who she is, but she has your mark on her.”

“My mark? I don’t put my mark on—”

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