Page 34 of The Bratva Contract
“Thank you. I hope so. And I want you to be his godfather.”
“Of course.” He grins. “It’ll be an honor.”
“There’s no other man I’d choose to watch over my child.”
“We’ve had each other’s backs since we were ten years old,” Piotr reminds me.
“When are you gonna have a kid? Our kids have to grow up together, you know.”
“Is that an order?” he jokes, “I gotta tell my old lady that she needs to leave her husband and give me a kid right now?”
We crack up. Partly because Piotr has a long, checkered history of chasing women who are very much unavailable. And partly because I know Olga, his current girl—a sous-chef with a lethal swing. Anyone who tried to boss her would wake up with a cast-iron skillet imprint on his skull. The table runs with the joke, trading stories about exes and the injuries they would’ve dealt out. It’s half-drunken, competitive hilarity, each man trying to one-up the last.
I laugh along but I haven’t got much to contribute for two reasons. One: I devoted all my time to building the bratva for many years and didn’t have any long term girlfriends. And the other reason is that if we are joking about the most difficult or temperamental woman we’ve ever met, I’m married to mine. A man doesn’t talk shit about his wife the way he does about a crazy ex. It’s disrespectful, and I have chosen to honor Karina, not hold her up for ridicule among my brothers. Now, I could win some of these debates just by giving one or two examples of her attitude, but that invites my friends to judge her and joke at her expense. It makes me uncomfortable just to think of it. There’s no way in hell I’m opening up about anything like that here for the simple reason that it’s sacred. She may be a huge pain in my ass for the rest of my life, but she’s having my child and I vowed before God to protect her. And that means sidestepping this ritual of oversharing private details for entertainment.
I finish my drink and then call them to order for report. One by one, they give me names of the men in their divisions thatthey identified as suspects in the security breach. They searched phones, found messages, and discovered the low-level boys skimming product and selling it themselves at a profit, at the expense of the bratva. They stole from us, and that breaks the code we live by. The code they die by, as far as I’m concerned.
“They were kids. Assholes like we used to be,” Vlad says with a shake of his head, “I brought Iggy into the division when he was fifteen, my wife’s cousin. It about breaks my heart that he turned out to be a rat bastard thief.”
I nod, and he takes a folded note from his wallet with their names listed on it. He tosses it onto the table. They all follow suit. Before long I have around twenty names. I read them over. Some I recognize and others are too new or too far down the ranks to garner my notice. I look through them twice and give a grim nod. I pass the stack of papers to Karl.
“You do it,” I instruct. He takes the paper from me, folds it over and stares at it for a minute. I know he doesn’t want to do it, but it’s part of the life we live.
“Consider it done,” he says. Right there, he takes out his phone and calls his uncle that’s a police officer. This guy’s been on the take for twenty years and he’s about to bust the case of a lifetime with this tip. Half the guys will go to prison. The other half won’t make it that far because they’ll try and give evidence against their friends for a lighter sentence. They’ll all turn on each other and solve the problem for us.
“You wanna bet?” Piotr suggests, “Five hundred says that fourteen of them don’t make it to the sentencing. They take each other out.”
“Fourteen?” Vlad whistles, “no way. Nine.”
“Nine? You give ’em too much credit,” Piotr scoffs, “Guys like that, they don’t ’know loyalty. If you think half of them are gonna make it to trial, you’re dreaming.”
“Not that I like to bet on men’s lives,” Aleks begins. We all give a mix of laughter and groans. This guy, he’s bet on everything he could find since he was too young to drive. If there’s one man at this table that likes a gamble, it’s Aleks.
“Sure you do, man. Nobody here believes you don’t like to bet,” Ivan crows.
“Fine, fine,” he concedes, “I say seven will not make it—they get in fights or have an accident before they reach prison.”
“What about you, boss?” Piotr prompts me, “You think I’m wrong? They’re not gonna turn on each other in the end?”
“I think you’re right, but I’m not betting on this. It’s like betting which marksman in the firing squad is going to put the bullet in your forehead. It’s too grim even for me.” Frankly I’m too disgusted about being in this situation to make any kind of game out of it.
“Yeah, he’s got scruples now that he’s a dad,” Karl says wryly. “Too good to bet on the body count.” They chuckle and I join in, but I’m not changing my mind.
“Lighten up, Dima,” Piotr tells me in a low voice, “You know none of us is ever gonna let anyone get near you, hurt you and yours.”
“I know it and I’m thankful for it. I stand before you a blessed man,” I tell them, refilling my glass. “To thebratski krug.If we hang, we hang together,” I make the toast we’ve used since we were about seventeen years old.
It’s darker thanall for one and one for all, but the meaning is deeper too. Every man here would take a bullet or a blade for me and a couple of them have. I did the same for them back in the day, and I would do it again without hesitation. That’s the beauty of this lifestyle. For all the blood and violence, there is a sacred loyalty and honor that we uphold. I consider myself the luckiest of men to have such a crew on my side.
“To the gates of hell if we have to,” Piotr added and we charged our glasses and drank again.
CHAPTER 22
KARINA
The strangest thing about today isn’t even the technician’s cheerful announcement that she’s going to do my ultrasound, which she then flashes a grin that’s just a shade too wide, the kind an evil clown wears right before a birthday party turns into a bloodbath. I match her smile, determined not to let her deranged enthusiasm rattle me. The truly weird part is that Dima is here, standing against the narrow exam-room wall like my personal bodyguard. I feel exposed; he’s in a bespoke suit while I’m stuck on a cold table in a crinkly paper gown, a stranger poised to shove a sensor wand into my cervix.
I think ruefully of my treasure chest of vibrators and dildos and how this moment is the polar opposite of that kind of fun. It’s all business here and zero pleasure. I stare at the ceiling and inhale, willing the muscles that are about to protest this invasion to relax. I refuse to dwell on how clinical and humiliating this feels, how it might make my husband see me as a patient after the nurse handed me a pamphlet on pregnancy hemorrhoids. Nothing murders newlywed mystique like being told to eat morefiber so you don’t have to strain. The pinch when the tech slides the wand in and presses on my abdomen makes me hiss through my teeth.
