Page 24 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

But Ludmil is different. He takes an almost monastic view of truth when it comes to the Bratva and family. The man even has trouble lying to his four-year-old about the tooth fairy.

“He’s staying away,” I say. “Good.”

“Good,” Ludmil apes hollowly.

Neither of us says what both of us are thinking: that, for most people, no news would be good news.

But Osip isn’t most people. Osip is a stick-it-to-the-man, go out with a bang, go big or go home, don’t take anything lying down, first-class psycho. Before his exile, that was to our benefit. The Vaknin brothers’ infamous wrath was largely due to Osip’s personal brand of insanity. Now, though…

If my brother is staying quiet, lying low—that doesn’t bode well. The Osip I know isn’t one to have sudden epiphanies, to turn over a new leaf. No, his silence is a warning. Of something he has planned. Something big.

Or perhaps I’m overestimating his means, underestimating his adaptability.

I hope I’m wrong.

I rise again and make for the door. But now Ludmil is the one not moving. “It’s okay, you know. Missing him.”

“Ludmil,” I warn him. He is treading in dangerous territory. We don’t discuss feelings—ever.

“Hear me out, Gavril.” I can feel his insistent eyes digging into my back, unknotting the thread of what I never should have started. “He was one of us, the best of us. Do you remember that time he got us those decommissioned WWII tanks and we raced in the desert? That L.A. forest party where he showed up on the back of a fucking moose?”

He could go on—easily, he could. The time Osip broke into the US embassy in Ottawa, nearly got our heads shot off, only to say hello to some redhead guard chick he had the hots for. The time we hired a whole brigade of street kids for new Bratva recruits, just to give them a chance we’d never gotten. We turned a bunch of unruly snot-nosed punks into worthy fighters, many of them still some of our best. He was the one who came up with the idea for the Bratva Syndicate, the one who linked us to the Dubrovskys and the Morozovs.

But I don’t want Ludmil to go on.

Already, his words are worming into me. Finding the cracks in my certainty and swelling them. Taking the fissures and feeding them.

“Ludmil.”

“He was your brother. Our brother.”

I head for the door. “He was. And now he is nothing.”

I walk out of the room. The busy beehive of campaign activity is a welcome distraction. Even if they’re trying to salvage what they can’t salvage. I am the only one who can right this course.

Ludmil should know better than to talk like that. There’s enough for me to deal with without distractions.

But I still need a plan. A real plan, not some fake wife bullshit.

He catches up to me by the time I’ve left the building. “Rudy may be an idiot, but give what he said some thought.”

I eye him incredulously. “Not you, too?”

He chuckles. “Not the Kardashian part.” Then shrugs. “The wife part—I mean, if that’s what it takes …”

Whatever it takes.

I turn away so he won’t see the change on my face. I’ve been a fool.

Who am I to rule out ideas on the basis of their inconvenience? This whole damn campaign has been an inconvenience. A risk.

Better a wife and a win, than neither.

I start down the stairs as Ludmil keeps talking. “… As I said, he’s talking out of his ass about models and actresses. A better option would be someone normal. Someone real, who people can relate to. Someone moldable—a blank slate.”

My car has pulled up.

Someone moldable.

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