Crooks & Kings: A Wild Bunch Novel Read online

  “Is the finger thing true?” Winter asked, launching onto another question, demonstrating what she meant by making a crude impression of someone getting their fingers cut off.

  He was ready to answer the question himself—and then tell her to get a fucking move on—but Mariya didn’t seem bothered by the inquiry and merely shrugged.

  “Occasionally.”

  “Wicked.” Winter looked over at him and actually frowned. “All right, Fang, what do you need from me?”

  She actually sounded annoyed. “Anything you can find on Feliks Sokovich.”

  “What’d he do to piss you off?”

  Christophe shook his head. “I don’t see the relevance.”

  “Are you always like this?” she asked with a cock of her brow. “I thought you’d be cooler.”

  Just out of her view, Tăcut shifted on his feet.

  It was a subtle move, one others might not have noticed if they didn’t know him, but Christophe did—he also knew what that shift meant.

  Tăcut didn’t like the way he was talking to her—he’d hardly said ten words to the girl—and he would make that fact known if Christophe kept going.

  He didn’t know whether to laugh because this sylph of a girl had captured Tăcut’s attention as no one else had or shake his head because the man would be in for a world of trouble.

  “He’s my husband,” Mariya cut in, shooting a look in his direction.

  “Ex,” Christophe made sure to add when she didn’t. “You’ll be a widow soon enough.”

  Mariya rolled her eyes, but he thought he saw a touch of a smile before it was gone.

  “Oh,” Winter said oddly, her eyes narrowed as she looked back and forth between them before her eyes widened again. “Oh. Now, I get it.”

  Before she could entertain whatever thought had popped into her head, he gestured back to her laptop. “Feliks Sokovich, please.”

  “Right. On it.”

  Cracking her knuckles, Winter wiggled her fingers before she was touching the keys, typing so fast her hands were a blur.

  He figured she was good—Nix had used her expertise when they had to find Aidra—but he didn’t realize just how good she was until she stopped typing long enough to look up at Tăcut. “I’m going to need a bigger setup for this presentation.”

  He inclined his head in the direction he wanted her to follow him, leaving them all to trail behind.

  “What the hell is this?” Christophe muttered to Invictus on their way.

  He actually smiled and shrugged. “They’ve been hanging out.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “But it’s … complicated.”

  No shit, it was complicated. While the two sides they were on might intersect on occasion—their working for Nix, and her working for The Kingmaker—they didn’t make it a point to mix.

  Often, alliances could interfere.

  Once they had her laptop configured to the monitors hanging from the wall in the computer room, she finally began breaking down everything she’d found.

  “Feliks Sokovich—thirty-four, about six-foot, two hundred and something pounds, etcetera, etcetera. A rumored enforcer for the Kuznetsov Bratva based out of Chicago. He’s married to a Mariya Kuznet—oh shit, that’s you. Kuznetsov Bratva? So does that make you like mafiya royalty or something?”

  “Or something,” Mariya said.

  For as long as he’d known her, and arguably it hadn’t been that long, she didn’t play the role of a Bratva printsessa much—or at least, not like the few he’d met on the job.

  Some enjoyed the luxuries their family’s money could afford them, others were just as power hungry as the men, but Mariya didn’t seem to care about either.

  “I would say cool, but considering you’re here and not there, it’s probably not all that cool. Anywho, I found a few bank accounts, and if you give me another fifteen, I can probably find every offshore account he has.” She turned to Mariya. “I won’t even charge you my regular fee—consider it a divorce present.”

  “What does Russia have on him?” Christophe asked. He might not have had a record in the States, but someone had something on him.

  “Your usual bad guy resumé—assault and battery, theft, theft by receiving, murder. Jesus, when has this guy not been in trouble.”

  “I also need to know any property he owns and all transactions he’s made over the last fourteen months, but before you do that, look at this for me.” He pulled the USB Mariya had given him the night before and handed it over. “Everything you can get off it.”

  Mariya walked forward now, her nerves showing as she twisted her hands.

  Nodding, Winter plucked it from his hands before pushing it into the drive. She typed for a few seconds before saying, “Shit, what was supposed to be on this?”

  “What do you mean?” Mariya asked. “There’s supposed to be a file on it.”

  Fuck.

  This wasn’t good.

  Winter removed the USB again, this time bringing up to peer at the metal end of it. “It might be fucked.”

  “That’s not possible,” Mariya said with a harsh shake of her head, disbelieving. “It has to work.”

  “It could have gotten corrupted,” Winter said gently. “They’re not as durable as most people think. If you were in a rush when you put whatever you put on this and snatched it from the drive the second it was done, that could mess with the wiring, and yeah, you didn’t ask me all that,” she finished on a mutter. Clearing her throat, she said, “I can see if I can extract something from it, but I can’t make any promises. I’ll get the rest in a sec, Fang.”

  Christophe nodded absently, but his focus was on Mariya and the utter defeat displayed on her face.

  “Stop worrying yourself,” he said once he pulled her from the room.

  “It was all I had,” she whispered, her gaze just beyond him. “It’s the only thing I can use.”

  The look on her face wounded him. “It’s only a setback—it’s not the end.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said with a shake of her head, finally looking at him with glimmering eyes. “This was the only thing I had against him. I bet my life on it. Without this, I’m as good as dead.”

  Christophe wanted to believe her grandfather was just a shit person—that he was supposed to believe Mariya because she was his granddaughter, but the logical side of him knew men like Alexey didn’t believe in that sort of sentiment. He wouldn’t have offered her up to Feliks if he had.

  For them, a clear distinction existed between family and business, and the lines blurred when those two aspects mixed. Even if Alexey wanted to believe what Mariya told him, her word wouldn’t be enough for the organization he ran—even if he was pakhan and his rule was law.

  Which was why family and business didn’t mix.

  But a recording wasn’t the only way they could use to take out Feliks. “You said this was your insurance policy, no?” he asked, waiting for her confused nod before he went on. “If this was all the evidence that could ruin him, why do you still have it?”

  “I don’t understand,” she said with a shake of her head. “If he ever came after me, I would use it against him.”

  “It can only protect you if it can be used against him. Alexey was in a coma. Your mother was out of the way. It’s obvious he knew where you were, so why didn’t he make a move until now?”

  “You’re obviously thinking something. What is it?”

  “Feliks has an insurance policy of his own.” They just needed to figure out what it was.

  “Hey, hey,” Winter called from the other room. “I may have found something you’ll like!”

  “Trust me, yeah?”

  Once he had her nod, they went back into the room. “What’d you find?”

  “This address. I looked it up, and it’s for one of those check cashing places.”

  Mariya peered at the screen, reading the address for herself. “It’s one of my father’s old places.”

&nbs
p; “Probably money laundering,” Christophe said with a nod. “What’s so special about it?”

  “Apparently, he bought the building behind it—one of those old abandoned places that probably needs to be remodeled.”

  “He could be using it for the same money-laundering operation, but I bet he’s keeping something in that building, though,” Thanatos suggested as he rapped his knuckles against the table.

  It could be worth looking into. “Is Nix’s jet at the hangar?”

  “Wait,” Mariya said, even as Thanatos got to his feet with a cheer and said, “I’ve been going stir-crazy in here.”

  She waited until he was out of the room to say, “You understand I’ve been doing everything in my power not to go back, yes? I won’t be able to leave a second time.”

  “That was before you had me. Trust me when I say he’s not going to know what hit him.”

  Christophe was going to take everything from him, and right as he was sure he could be brought no lower, he was going to put a bullet in that Russian’s head.

  Chapter 13

  July 28, 2017

  Mariya had always thought her life would be hard for Christophe to understand, but he had managed to show her in two days how wrong she had been.

  It was clear from the moment they arrived at the hangar where a private jet had been waiting for them that she didn’t know a lot about Christophe.

  And the mysterious handler who’d arranged everything? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know a man with that much pull.

  For the first hour, she had been able to ignore everything around her by listening to Christophe strategize with his brothers, but once they had all grown quiet again, she found herself wondering about him.

  “You told me once about the Lotus Society,” she said, looking over at him as he went over some kind of blueprints Tăcut had given him.

  “And you didn’t believe me.”

  Because it hadn’t seemed likely at the time. It contradicted everything he seemed to be. “I’m listening now, though. If you’re a bank robber, then why would you have joined that organization?”

  “You asked me how I was able to shoot as well as I did—training. That’s what the Lotus Society taught me.”

  “But how—”

  “Nix, remember? He’s my handler—our handler, rather. After the orphanage, we had nowhere to go, so he offered us a deal. In exchange for agreeing to a few years’ worth of service, he would make our troubles disappear.”

  That sounded good in theory. “But you all were just children. Why would he make you a deal like that?”

  “I was fifteen at the time, and trust me, I didn’t feel like a child. By that point, I was changed, and had we not got the opportunity, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here now. The Society gave us focus. It taught us how to fight back. I needed that more than anything.”

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she whispered.

  Even she wasn’t sure which part she was sorry about—him having to survive years in the orphanage under the rule of tyrants, or because his only escape had been to be molded into a weapon.

  “Don’t be sorry. Everything happens for a reason, even if we’re blind to it for a while. We wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for that place, no?” He stroked the back of her hand. “Besides, I wouldn’t be nearly as fucking interesting if I didn’t do this shit for a living.”

  “Of course, you would,” Winter said as she walked by, but not before patting Christophe on the head.

  Mariya smothered her laugh with a cough, but Christophe glared at her anyway. “Do you have an off switch?”

  “I meant that as a compliment! Seriously. It’s not like they brainwash you and you come out like some freaky death machine. You have to put in the work, and they have to hope that whatever walks back out is going to be worth something. Since you’re here now, that means something inside you was meant for this. Whether you found the Society or not, you would have still become something more than you were.”

  During Winter’s spiel, everyone had grown silent, too shocked to speak. She realized a moment later that all the attention was on her. “What? I had a friend who needed a bit of a pep talk once.”

  Mariya didn’t know who that friend was, but the mention of them made Tăcut frown.

  Even in the span of a day, she realized there was more to Winter than just the bubbly personality and the penchant to say whatever was on her mind. She had brief moments when she spoke and sounded wiser than her years.

  “On another note, Tăcut refuses to tell me where you guys got the name ‘Wild Bunch.’ I feel like there’s a story behind that.”

  “So not only do you have individual nicknames, but you also have a name as a collective?” Mariya asked. “How does anyone keep up with this?”

  Christophe smiled. “You get used to it. And to answer your other question, if one of us does a job, we all do the job.”

  “Always?” she asked.

  “Always,” he answered.

  “The reason behind the name?”

  “The general for the Society called us little savages when we first got there,” Thanatos said with a laugh. “Invictus wouldn’t talk. Tăcut was fucking feral and would snap at anyone who came near him. Fang picked fights.”

  “And you?” Mariya asked, not believing for a second Thanatos had been the person of reason.

  It was Invictus who answered. “He had a tendency to eat with his hands. At first, it was because we’d never been allowed to use forks and knives, but with the Society, he’d just wanted to fuck with people.”

  They laughed now so easily, as though their time at that orphanage had meant nothing. Many years had passed since then, sure, but she couldn’t imagine it was easy remembering.

  “Nix didn’t like the whole ‘savages’ bit, so he just called us wild instead.”

  “The Wild Bunch just stuck after that,” Christophe finished with a shrug.

  Mariya looked at each of them in turn. “You don’t seem all that wild to me.”

  “Yeah,” Christophe said with an absent sort of smile. “That’s what they all say.”

  “This one is more like a safe house,” Christophe explained as they rode through the gate two hours later once they’d landed and rode toward an industrial neighborhood just outside the city. “We’re not here as often.”

  At first glance, it looked nearly identical to the converted loft back in New York, but this one had more trees surrounding the property than the other.

  The inside was just as eclectic as their other except this one felt less lived in than the other.

  “You’re looking for Fang’s room, right?” Winter asked, setting her laptop on the table.

  Her answer should have been no, or ‘I don’t know,’ considering she’d stayed in a guest room before, but instead of saying what was right and what wasn’t a violation of his privacy, she said the opposite.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I’ll show you the way.”

  “You’ve been here before?” she asked as they walked.

  “Oh, no. Chicago isn’t really my scene, but Tăcut mentioned the layout was the same, so I’m going out on a limb and saying I can probably guess which room is Fang’s.”

  The door they arrived in front of was like any other, and as Winter continued down the hallway, Mariya briefly considered not walking in, but the thought was short lived.

  She entered the room and almost felt as though she was walking right into his mind. Unlike his barren apartment, this room was full of color—pictures on the wall, clothes everywhere, and random things littered everywhere.

  Even if they didn’t come here often, there was still evidence that he actually lived in this room.

  There was even what looked like a child’s stuffed bear sitting on top of a desk on the other side of the room.

  To her surprise, there was a note sitting next to it. She tried to convince herself that she was only reading it because it was there for anyone to see and not
because she was nosy, but as her brain started to fully process what she was seeing, her stomach twisted.

  I was thinking about you and that bear you told me you’d always wanted as a kid. I hope you like this surprise.

  All my love,

  Aidra.

  It was perfectly harmless, a gift passed among friends, but it felt too personal for that. Not to mention, Christophe had never mentioned anyone named Aidra to her.

  Was she a—

  “Yo.”

  She turned at the sound of his voice, trying not to look as guilty as she felt, but where his eyes had been locked on her, they dropped to what she was looking at.

  The change that came over him was swift, his expression blanking, his mouth forming a straight line rather than the crooked grin she’d grown used to.

  As he walked toward her, she tried to think of something to say, anything to relieve the tension that had clogged the room.

  “Who’s—”

  “Not now,” he said without looking at her. No, he was too focused on the bear and note there, as if this was his first time seeing them.

  He’d always spoken so freely about the people in his life, even what he did for a living, yet he seemed to close down now.

  Who was Aidra to him?

  “Chris—”

  “Don’t.”

  Whatever this was, she no longer had any doubt that it was something as innocent as a present among friends. Aidra obviously meant something to him, and if he was reacting like this, she couldn’t help but think something had happened to her.

  “I’ll go,” she said, not offering more than that as she spun and headed for the door.

  Christophe sighed roughly. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s fine. I shouldn’t have come in here.”

  Because obviously he wasn’t telling her something, and she was almost too afraid to know what it was.

  She didn’t wait for him to respond. Instead, she darted out of the room and back the way she came.

  His brothers were waiting in the living room, their expressions far easier to read than Christophe’s. They knew whatever Christophe was hiding, and though it wasn’t likely they would share it with her, she wished they would.