Page 8 of His Son's Brid
"Your father was Yuri Morozov?"
"Yes, sir."
Yuri. Dead three years now, caught in a shootout with the feds. Good man. Terrible poker player. I study his son, see hints of Yuri in the jaw, the eyes.
"Your father saved my life once," I say. "Took a bullet meant for me in '09. You need anything, you come to me. Understood?"
The kid's eyes go wide. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
"Don't thank me yet. You're about to earn it." I turn back to Viktor. "Dmitri's warehouse on Fifth Street. We hit it tomorrow night. I want inventory, cash, and anyone stupid enough to be there when we arrive. Make it messy."
Viktor grins. "Like old times."
"Exactly like old times." I loosen my tie, feeling the club's heat pressing in. Seven years of stale air and concrete walls, and now I'm back in the world of noise and chaos and violence. It should feel like coming home.
Instead, I keep thinking about her.
The way she looked at me. Not afraid. Not calculating. Just... curious. Hungry. Like she saw something in me worth wanting.
When's the last time someone looked at me like that?
Before prison, sex was mechanical. A function, like eating or sleeping. I'd pick someone, use them, forget their face by morning. It wasn't about connection. It was about release, about scratching an itch so I could focus on what mattered.
The business. The family. The empire I was building.
In prison, there was nothing. Although some of the female wardens offered themselves generously, I wasn’t interested in any hide and fuck game. So I learned to live without it. Seven years of cold showers and colder nights, and I thought I'd killed that part of myself.
Thought I didn't need it anymore.
Then she looked at me, and my body woke up like someone hit me with a defibrillator.
Christ.
I thought that part of me was dead.
Turns out it was just waiting for the right fucking trigger.
"Boss?" Viktor's watching me. "You good?"
"Fine." I pull my thoughts back, force them into order. "What else?"
He hesitates. Glances at Sergei, who suddenly finds the floor very interesting.
"What?" My voice drops, and the temperature in the room drops with it.
Viktor reaches into his jacket, pulls out a manila folder. Slides it across the table like it might explode. "You're not gonna like this."
I open it.
Photos. Reports. Bank statements. My jaw tightens with every page I turn.
Leo.
My son. The boy I gave everything to, the boy I’ve tried to mold into something worthy of the Santego name.
Drunk at clubs. Fighting in the streets. Throwing money around like it's confetti. One photo shows him stumbling out of a casino at 4 AM, supported by two women who look like they charge by the hour. Another shows him screaming at one of our soldiers, face red, finger jabbed in the man's chest.
The bank statements are worse. He's bleeding money. Gambling debts. Designer clothes. Cars he’s crashed within a month of acquiring them. In the past seven years, he's burned through millions of dollars of family money like it's nothing.
