Page 25 of Rogue

He was obviously a brigadier, or Avtoritet. A captain. This guy would live for his brotherhood and the Pakhan, his every instinct set towards climbing the Bratva political ladder.

Which explained why he was paying a visit. Some of his soldiers took a beating on the premises. Now an example had to be made. Or else his group would look weak. He would look weak.

Which meant one of us was about to have a very bad night.

“Hello,” I announced, forcing a grin as all eyes in the room suddenly locked on me. “Oh sorry, am I interrupting?”

The suit rounded on me, spitting with all the pompous fury that could only come from mother Russia. “Can’t you see we’re fucking closed? Get out of here! Boris, Boris, get your fucking ass in here!”

“Boris is taking a little nap,” I said, hoping he meant the big boy counting sheep outside. “Poor bloke. Looks like he’s been banging his head against a wall, so I told him I’d take over.”

The suit snorted, colour rushing to his face. “You’d take over? You’d take fucking over? Yobanaya suka!” Behind him, Roy and his mate left Ned on the bar to fall in. He wasn’t their problem anymore and by the look of the ugly purple swelling across his face, they hadn’t left him in much of a state to cause them any trouble. “Go! Get the fuck out, before I cut your fucking balls off and feed them to you like Pelmeni!”

“Now, that’s not very nice.” I gave them a boyish grin, like the schoolboy that knew he was getting to his schoolmaster, keeping my hands low and ready to draw my blade, careful not to make any quick movements. If Boris was packing, they would be too. I had to wait for them to get in close. I’d never had Pelmeni, and if my balls were going to be my introduction, I sure as hell wasn’t in the mood for it tonight.

Roy’s mate grinned as they moved around the tables on either side. “You hear this bitch? ‘Not very nice’, I’ll show you not very nice-”

“Hey boss, wait, that’s the guy!” Roy broke in, his eyes going wide as he came in close enough to get a better look at my face. I could see him too, and it was obvious which of us came off worse. My cheek had been throbbing with what could have been the start of a shiner, but he looked almost as bad as that sack of meat on the table. You could also hear the improvements his missing teeth had done to his voice.

The Avtoritet rounded on Roy, his face a mix of disgust and astonishment. “That’s the guy?”

“Yeah, that’s him.” Roy’s hand edged to his holstered piece, pausing just on the edge of his jacket, fingers flexing with the itch to throw down. “He’s quicker than he looks,” he snarled, his eyes burning with hate, yet didn’t take another step. He wanted to kill me. He knew he should, but he also needed to break me. I’d beaten him, humiliated him. Now he needed to redeem himself to his boss, to show he was still a man to fear, a man worthy of the brotherhood.

Or else he was out.

And the brotherhood was a lifelong commitment. There was only one way out.

He was quite literally between a rock and a hard place.

Take his swift revenge here, be regarded as a coward by his brotherhood, and face being condemned excommunicado. Or try to redeem himself and face another beating.

His mate wasn’t so cautious. “You gotta be fucking joking? This little bitch?”

“Yeah,” Roy grunted, and I could see the monkeys in his head beating each other with sticks. He wanted this guy to have a go at me as he had. Then, as I dealt with him, he would have carte blanche to put me down, ‘to protect his brother’.

“I don’t believe it,” Floppy-hair drawled, coming in close enough for spittle to rain down on my cheek as he asked, “Who are you?”

This punk had obviously been playing a bit too much Grand Theft Auto.

Young and stupid, eager to please and show off how tough he was. I knew the type well enough, and had seen more than my fair share. Every young punk who had ever joined a gang was just like this. It didn’t matter if they were Bratva or Cosa Nostra, Triad, Yakuza, Cartel Gangbanger or just wannabe gangsters, they were all the same. Fresh meat for the grinder. Most wound up dead or in jail within a year or two if they didn’t get seasoned quickly.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to put him down. He was so close, I could have drawn the blade and lodged it in his heart before he ever knew he was dead, but Roy would start shooting and I wasn’t sure I could get to him before he filled me so full of lead, they could have sharpened my head for a pencil. Instead, I forced down the urge and kept grinning. “Apparently I’m the guy.”

I tensed, ready to take the hit I expected to follow, but the guy’s grin just twisted even wider, an ugly sneer of barbed wire. He turned to the suit. “You want me to handle him for you, Brigadier?”

“Net, Dodolzksi, you couldn’t handle a wet dream. Now get back and shut the fuck up.” It obviously wasn’t the answer the youth had wanted because his grin dropped, but he obediently stepped back around the nearest table. The Brigadier, or Avtoritet, meaning one with authority, as they were sometimes known, turned to me, his expression set and unreadable behind the black predatory eyes of a weasel. “Did you do this thing?”

Of the three, this was the man to fear.

He had probably about ten years on me, old enough to have experience but not too old to have lost his edge. He stood straight but easy, ready to spring like a cat in a tree. That told me he was a fighter from the street. The sons and brothers of high ranked members of the brotherhood, who got handed positions of power, never lost the swagger that came from knowing they had friends in high places and would strut about like peacocks. This guy was a soldier. A fighter. An animal who’d learned to live by the laws of the concrete jungle, and he knew the kind when he saw it.

“What thing?” I shrugged, playing dumb, needing to piss him off some more, provoke him into becoming reckless.

Something dangerous flashed behind his eyes, but the suit had an older man’s control and buried it down. “Assaulted my boys.”

He knew my game, as I knew his. We were both old hands at this. The only question was, who would break first? “Oh, that thing.” I shrugged again and inclined my head across the opposite table to where my old mate Roy was trying to circle around behind me. “Roy over there backwashed my coke. So I gave him a lesson in manners. The others disagreed with my teaching methods. So I explained my point.”

“A lesson in manners?” The suit repeated slowly, his tone even with a deadly purpose. Yet his eye twitched.

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