Page 80 of The Bratva’s Monster

Alex looks at his watch. “That’s long enough,” he says. “Let’s go say hello to Gedeon’s old friend.”

We get out and start our walk on the way across the street. In the meantime, I’m looking around, checking for our guys. I immediately spot them nearby. On the corner, across the street, a couple are still in their cars…

We walk through the doors of the little cafe and to our surprise, it’s empty. There are no baristas at the counter, no customers at any of the tables or at the counter. There’s only one table in the back and Stefan’s sitting at it, talking to Josef.

For just a second, I think that we’re fucked. Then, as Stefan looks up at me, his eyes flickering with surprise, I realize that he actually was not expecting us.

Alex smiles. “Afternoon, gentlemen. Kind of slow in here today.”

Josef doesn’t move. He doesn’t even bother to acknowledge us. He just sits with his back to us, maybe too scared to move. Stefan sighs and says, “Alex and Rikki Molotov,” he says. “So we finally meet in person. Your reputations proceed you.”

“Same,” Alex says. “Mind if we have a chat?”

Stefan smiles, his eyes sparkling like jewels. If I didn’t know that he was just as much of a stone-cold killer as the rest of us, I’d think he was completely harmless.

“I think there’s some cold brew in the kitchen,” he says to Josef. “Make yourself useful and get it for me.”

Josef doesn’t say a word and he doesn’t look up at any of us. He just gets up and walks across the room to the double doors leading to the kitchen. Stefan motions for us to sit in his place.

Alex takes the chair Josef was sitting in. I continue to stand.

“My father owned this cafe,” Stefan says. “Ran it for years without ever taking a dime from me. Even after I was Slavik’s top brigadier. All he ever asked was that I keep my business out of here. He didn’t really approve of the life, you know.”

Alex scoffs. “Apparently, you decided otherwise.”

Stefan shrugs as he drinks from his cup of coffee. “He was an asshole. And now he’s dead. He was foolish enough to still leave the store to me. Now I can do whatever I please with it.”

“True,” Alex says. “You could even make it into something else if you wanted. A shoe store. One of those cigar humidor places. Manhattan doesn’t have enough of those.”

“Might be good to start a new business,” I add.

His eyes dart up to me, almost as if he’d forgotten for a second that I was there. He then takes another sip of his coffee. “So, Josef tells me that you’re looking to work out some kind of truce. I can’t say I’m surprised. I heard that the Rostov gang is having some inventory issues.”

I can feel the heat of rage radiating off my brother. “Is that what you’ve heard? Word on the street is pretty powerful.”

“Well, it’s all I have to rely on at the moment,” he says. “Slavik’s spies have proven to be… inadequate for my needs. It’s made me come to rely on less conventional methods of finding out information.”

“Ah. Like using bugs, maybe?”

Stefan’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t respond.

“Or how about using an old rumor to try and tear us apart?” Alex goes on, and now Stefan is glaring, a cold blue rage behind his eyes. “Oh, I guess you didn’t realize I’d catch onto that. I was born into this life and I’ve got to say, the lengths that a man’s ambition will go never cease to amaze me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do know. Gedeon. Your brother in arms. His dirty little secret that he was keeping from my brotherhood. We found your communications over the years. And interestingly enough, Gedeon managed to remain loyal to his true brotherhood by never telling you our plans. But then after he was killed, we discovered your little meeting with him. Now, my brother thinks that you were just helping him out by settling his debt. But I know better. That’s not what was really going on, was it?”

He stares, his jaw clenched as his gaze bores holes into my brother. “You have no idea what you are talking about, Molotov,” he says in a low, warning tone.

“I can take a stab at it,” Alex says, and his right hand moves under the table to the knife in his belt. He leans into him. “You were Slavik’s right hand. So you had to know about his plan to send that false message from the Devils that he sent to my father to lure him to his death. That means you had to know that we’d start looking for a rat. And who better than a dead man?”

Alex starts chuckling as he leans back, his hand on the hilt of his knife. “I’ve got to tell you, it was a good plan. We’ve been so busy trying to kill a rat that we barely noticed when your boy set up bugs in my house.”

Stefan’s eyebrows twitch. “Josef, you mean?” He’d said it like a statement.

“How do you think we got to you? You think he got those bruises walking into a door?”

For the first time since we started speaking, Stefan turns his eyes down to his coffee. “You’re right. It is a good plan. Very good. Funny how it almost worked.”