What was the big deal?
Well, he knew.
Three bratvas—New York, Jersey, and Chicago—coming together to discuss business was enough to put an entire city on edge given the right circumstances. Usually bloody ones. This wasn’t supposed to be like that, though. Their business had managed to exist independent of each other for decades other than the mutual work between the Avdonin Bratva in New York, and the Vasin organization in Jersey—proximity sometimes worked to their benefit. A marriage between the two families helped that shit out, as well.
Chicago wasn’t quite the same. They minded their own business, and rarely ever stepped on the toes of anyone outside of Illinois. However, for the first time in more years than he could remember, the Yazovs wanted to meet with them.
New York, specifically. Then they had to go and ask for the Vasin Bratva to get in on the chat, too. That was when Roman’s father started to get serious about how he wanted to ensure safety while their visitors were in town—especially since the Yazov organization made it clear they weren’t discussing anything unless it was face to face.
Nothing good came from demands.
Men like them were also careful by nature.
So to speak.
The sound of his father calling his name—short and low—snapped Roman out of his thoughts. The phone call with his grandfather had come to an end it seemed.
“You could stop ...” Demyan trailed off, glancing him over before adding, “Well, the twitchiness. Add that to the way your pupils look, and it’s a dead giveaway.”
Roman dragged the back of his hand over his upper lip. How did his father figure it out? He suddenly noticed the way he was furiously tapping the floor with his feet; his fingers had been drumming a constant beat to the leather-wrapped armrest. Cocaine tingled with an electric pulse through his veins. He could feel it at the back of his head—a throbbing burst of heat. That, and an inexplicable urge to grab someone and thrash them against the floor of the vehicle until they couldn’t breathe, and he finally could.
He didn’t reply to his father, but apparently, he didn’t have to.
“Don’t look so surprised, son, you left the baggie sitting on top of the damn trash can. In the kitchen.”
Right.
Fuck.
Sometimes, he didn’t think shit through. At the same time, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.
Demyan continued despite Roman’s silence in the row behind him, saying, “Your mother would have seen it if I didn’t find it first.”
Shame.
“She would have survived the horror.”
His twisted smirk only earned a shake of Demyan’s head, and nothing more. Cellophane. That’s what he was to his papa. Transparent to a fault.
Roman often wondered how Demyan did it—how he unravelled his son with barely any effort at all no matter how tightly he wore this suit of chaos.
Even as a child, Roman was aware of the significance of his position; the unique relationship he shared with his father that few could understand. They couldn’t be only father and son when they were also a pakhan and a vor. He didn’t know if it was equally strange for Demyan to not only train and punish his son, but to also have to love him because he was his own blood.
But it had certainly shaped the way Roman perceived the world around him, and the relationships he chose to have inside of it.
Demyan clicked his tongue, his gaze darting back to the windows like he was over the moment of unsurprising disappointment, and already moving on. “You’re losing your touch, Roman. The least you can do for your mother’s sake is clean up the evidence.”
“Maybe you don’t know her as well as you think you do. She sees everything, she knows everything,” Roman replied.
His father breathed in deeply and nodded. “Trust me, son, I know that very well.” Then, Demyan grinned indulgently—like a vision of his wife had filled his brain, and he was blown away somewhere else. It didn’t last long before the sharp, unapproving stare flicked back his way. “Back to you, though.”
Roman’s jaw clenched. His father tended to stay out of his habits, so why was he mentioning it now? Besides, it wasn’t like the drug-use was an actual problem for him. Certainly not something he couldn’t keep under control. Sometimes, he would end up going weeks without touching it. Then, something would pull him in again—usually boredom.
Shocker.
The Prince of Brighton Beach had very little else to do when he wasn’t boosting cars. How many secret raves could he go to? He started when he was barely sixteen. It had been over eleven years by now that he was living this life he made, stacking his own money. His nickname—dubbed by the reporters who had the balls to put his name to paper—of Little Odessa’s Devil hadn’t come out of nowhere.
He had never needed his father or the bratva to pay for his indulgences, he made his name in the streets before they could do it for him, so what gave Demyan the authority to call him out on anything?
Most importantly, and the one fact his father should have cared most about—Roman never got in the kind of shit he couldn’t get out of. It was the only rule he made an attempt to follow. He had all the cops he needed under his belt. Nobody was going to point a finger at his dad; their corrupt control of New York had spanned decades.
The Avdonins hadn’t been built overnight.
So, what was the fucking problem?
“You’re stewing in your own rage, Roman,” Demyan murmured, his tone softening just enough to remind him that more often than not, this man was his father before anything else. “There has to be a reason why. Is there something you want to tell me?”
There he went.
Again.
Reading his mind like an open book.
“We usually keep out of each other’s shit, don’t we?” Roman asked, determined to keep his tone calm even though the cocaine made that really hard.
“I need you fully present today, son.”
“What do you think I’m doing here, then?”
Demyan shook his head again, and nothing else. Christ, that aggravated Roman even more, and he wasn't entirely sure why. Not that it mattered. The conversation was over because they were already pulling up to the side of the road.
The Avdonins had selected the meeting spot. An eatery run by them, so it would be an environment they could control. As Roman shifted in his seat to ready for when his father chose to exit, more cars pulled up around them. A half a dozen, and then more soon after, with the same opaque windows as theirs.
Everyone had arrived, it seemed.
Right on time.
Roman wanted to say more to his father, but the boss was already stepping out of the car. Cool, calm, collected, and ready to handle his business. He wished he could say the same.
It had never served him well to leave anything unfinished—especially not with Demyan—and the conversation had left him with a bitter taste in the mouth.
Or shit ...
Maybe that was still the cocaine.
TWO
Roman’s eyes fixed on Anastasia’s long legs as she sat beside him, her perfectly slender thighs crossed over each other. The smoke from his cigarette curled and swirled around his fingers when he gestured her way, and she passed him a smile. A smile that told him many things—one, that she was bored of this scene, and two, that she enjoyed the way he looked at her.