Page 92 of Corruption

I check for Vaughn in his office first, and when he’s not there, I check the one place I both anticipated and hoped he might not be. The conference room where he gathers his inner circle when there’s important business to be dealt with and not even the heavily encrypted, dark web communications and information system we have is safe to discuss it. Sometimes it’s just a place to talk general business. Sometimes it’s a war room, though it hasn’t been in a long time. More often than not, it’s where we plan who needs to be murdered. When I walk in, everyone who is supposed to be there is there, which doesn’t bode well for me and makes me feel even more uneasy about this than I was when I arrived.

Even more so when they stop talking as I enter the room.

“Alik,” Vaughn says when he sees me.

“Vaughn. Looks like I’m right on time for the meeting. I must have missed the invite,” I say, eying everyone in the room. All of them meet my gaze because there’s no pretense to what’s happening.

“You weren’t invited. But this makes what needs to happen much easier.”

“You’re going to have to explain why it needs to happen,” I say, not bothering to create any pretense that I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’ve just walked into my execution. For what remains to be seen.

“You know why, brother?”

“Humor me.”

“For fucking my woman. My future wife—"

I figured he’d somehow worked that out.

“—and then getting her pregnant.”

That’s news to me and is something to deal with once I get out this mess.

“And what evidence do you have of that?”

Because it doesn’t matter whether or not I really fucked his fiancé and got her pregnant. Whether it’s true or not, what matters is if he can construe a narrative and enough evidence to—not prove it—but make everyone around this table, his inner circle, believe it. His spies. His topbrigadier. Hisderzhatel obshchaka. I haven’t been a part of the upper hierarchy of the brotherhood for years, but I had too much talent for Vaughn not to utilize me, so I was always something of a chief advisor in function. Someone to do and look into the things Vaughn didn’t want on the books. Things that were certainlyBratvabusiness but, more specifically, Vorobev business.

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I have it.”

“Even the lowliest foot soldier gets to see and confront the evidence you have against them when accused of betrayal. Are you saying that me, someone who’s done so much for the brotherhood, isn’t worthy of the same courtesy? See if your top men agree.”

It technically doesn’t matter. Vaughn always has the last say. But one thing everyone in this room lives by is that you don’t betray the brotherhood. You certainly don’t haphazardly kill a member because you want to when they haven’t made some type of misstep that would put everyone in danger or show that they would betray or put everyone in danger in the future.

It’s the reason—one of them, anyway—I’ve always hesitated about whether or not to kill Vaughn. Vaughn is bound by those same rules. For him to kill me without convincing everyone else he should would just be asking for his men to conspire against him.

“Where do you want me to start? The recordings of a conversation she had with her stepmother. The fact that she’s been under your watchful eye this whole time and the only man she could have had contact with? The pregnancy test I forced her to take before my men carried her off to kill her? Take your pick, brother.”

“What about the DNA test proving inconclusively that I’m the father?” I ask.

“Pending results in just a few minutes,” Vaughn says.

I’m fucked if Vaughn’s not bluffing. If Kiya really was—is—pregnant and he got her blood before he sent her away to be killed. Hopefully, Nadia gets to her in time. I’m going to have to trust that Nadia will get to her in time. And also trust that Kiya lives up to my nickname for her and fights like a cornered kitten if she has the chance. Stubbornly fighting for and clinging to life like I’ve seen her do this entire time.

“Well then,” I say, getting ready to back out the room. “I’ll be at home when you get the results.”

“No need to be so hasty, brother. Since you’re here, you may as well stay and wait for the results.”

Now that he’s suggested it, of course I’m going to stay. Not because he’s mypakhan, but because if I really didn’t have anything to hide, I shouldn’t be afraid to stay and wait on the DNA test to come back.

So I walk all the way into the room, close the door, and take my vacant seat, furthest from where my brother sits at the head of the table and outside the circle. Symbolizing that I’m disgraced. That I’m only on the edge of the inner circle and the hierarchy. That I operate around it but never within it.

“While we wait,” I begin, “can I have a word with you, brother? Privately.”

Vaughn nods to his captain, who walks over to me and gestures for me to stand. Then he pats me down, takes my gun, my keys, my wallet, and ensures I have no other weapons before nodding to my brother.

“Clear the room,” Vaughn instructs.

Without his men in the room, I don’t have to talk to Vaughn like he’s mypakhan. I can talk to him as he is without all the titles of the brotherhood. As my fucking little brother who was always getting into more trouble than he could handle.

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