1.
“Putain—mighty scar, that.”
Vaslav only arched a brow at the comment from the Frenchman sitting across from him in the black SUV. He much preferred to drive himself, and often used to when he spent most of his year in Moscow, but business always called for a driver. Not to mention, the privacy afforded by the blacked-out windows of the Mercedes limo.
“A knife?” the man asked. “Looks like a knife scar to me.”
A sigh answered that question.
He could have had this quick meeting without the conversation but considering his driver had not yet found a suitable place to park, Monsieur Pierre Aubert proved himself to be one of those people. The type that needed to fill the silence with anything just because.
Vaslav hated those kinds of people.
At the same time, he peered out the darkly tinted windows, the SUV pulled off the road and rocked roughly as the limo slipped down a dirt path that ended at the edge of the Moscow Canal. He rarely came this close to Dubna during the week if he was doing business. Otherwise, he preferred to hide away behind the walls of his private estate as much as his duty would allow.
“Are we—”
“A razor blade, no?” Vaslav said, drawing the attention of the Frenchman to him instead of the way the limo parked alongside the canal. Already midday, one couldn’t tell considering how dimly lit the rear of the limo remained. Just the way he liked it. “My bunkmate in detention thought I’d look better with a wider smile.”
At that, Vaslav grinned.
He knew what it did to his face, and so did Pierre considering the color drained from the man’s cheeks instantly. Stretching out the grisly scar on the right side of his mouth with a smile showed that despite the injury happening when he was sixteen in a juvenile colony meant to house him until he moved into an adult prison at eighteen—well, here he was thirty years later, and it was still as puckered, red, and angry as it had ever been. Jagged straight through his thick, neatly trimmed beard.
The fix had been shoddy. Two subsequent fights ripped the scar open again. Thankfully, he’d been able to fight off a later attempt by the leader of a rival gang to match up the uninjured side after a disagreement over territory lines in the prison yard.
Not that it mattered. Six months after the yard incident, shortly before his twenty-eighth birthday, he’d been freed.
Sort of.
If a man wanted to call his kind of life freedom.
At least, the scar didn’t hurt anymore. One of the only things that no longer caused Vaslav pain. Everything else was still up in the air.
“What do you think, comrade? I was told it gives me a little ... something. Da?”
The Frenchman was quick to clear his throat and put on a friendly smile. If only it didn’t twitch at the edges. “I-I’m sorry—pardon me, Mr. Pashkov. I don’t mean to offend.”
Vaslav let out a hard breath and gestured with one heavily tattooed hand, the inked rings on his fingers and upturned spider on his hand covered decades’ worth of scars from fights, hard labor, and life. All the man across from him likely saw was the tattooed hand of a criminal, adorned with gold and glittering diamonds, cutting fast between them to signal his remaining, fleeting patience. “Curiosity killed more than just a cat—where is the coke?”
Right to the point.
He was all talked out, now.
Pierre slumped back into his seat, not bothering to hide his displeasure in the form of a scowl while he patted the pockets of his navy-blue suit blazer. As he pulled out a small, black balloon tied at the end, the man muttered, “Dix mille à cet tête de noeud—Christ. Here.”
Arching one thick, dark brow high, Vaslav took the balloon of what should be pure, prime cocaine smuggled straight from the mountains of Italy where the production and trafficking of the drug were at an all-time high thanks to a mafia-like cartel based out of Palermo.
Not that he intended to visit—he only wanted a new supplier.
“Ten thousand, yeah, that’s what you said?”
Pierre’s gaze widened, lifting to meet the man’s across from him, and he didn’t hide the fear Vaslav found staring back. Maybe he couldn’t. “I didn’t realize you speak—”
“Do you know the kinds of people I have sat down with over the decades? All kinds,” he told his counterpart, his expression never flickering from his calm, cold demeanor. “You pick up on the little things. Don’t look too far into it.”
God knew Vaslav had absorbed too much.
“What was the bet?” Vaslav asked.
Rolling his eyes as Vaslav produced a small, gold pocketknife from his pocket, the Frenchman admitted, “That you couldn’t be as bad as they said; even a beast can laugh.”
Well, he earned a chuff, at least.
For that.
Piercing the balloon with the tip of the small blade, Vaslav dropped Pierre’s gaze but only to see the perfectly milled, white powder that came out on the blade. As fast as the cocaine was there, it disappeared on his tongue when he lifted the knife and licked the substance away.
Instantly, his tongue went numb. He rolled it around his gums to get the same effect in seconds. It was pure, but he figured ...
“Someone went through the trouble of making sure it was extra fine for me,” he noted.
“Well—”
“Tell Mario we will begin a conversation about importing his product for my distribution. I will want it coming in as close to Moscow as possible, hmm? No fucking around—he’s to make the call to me before the end of the month. He should have heard by now, I’m all about the details, yes?”
Pierre dragged in a heavy breath and took the balloon back when Vaslav offered it between the leather seats. The cocaine disappeared into his pocket once more, only a bit of spilled powder remained on the carpeted floor. “They say you don’t like working with Italians.”
Vaslav’s lips pursed into a fleeting grimace. “What good Russian does?”
“Oui,” Pierre replied quickly, “I’m happy to make a split being the go-between. Everybody likes peace.”
That time, Vaslav chuckled. The prick almost earned himself the laugh he’d bet he could win. Fortunately for the Frenchman, because when Vaslav laughed ... horrible things almost always followed.
“No, everybody likes money,” Vaslav eventually said, shrugging under the lightweight of his red silk dress shirt. “Peace is sometimes the necessary evil we resort to in order to get what we want.”
Pierre didn’t have a chance to respond before the passenger door on the left side of the limo was wrenched open without warning. Midday light spilled into the rear of the vehicle, illuminating a sliver of yellow color across the black carpet and the leather shoes of both men.
It seemed his counterpart hadn’t heard the front passenger side door open or close, never mind the figure of a man rounding the vehicle.
“What in the hell—”
“Get out,” Igor uttered, his shadow blocking the light as he came to stand in the open door. Despite being shorter than Vaslav by only two inches, the leader of the obshchak side of his bratva’s organization was still an impressive sight standing at his full six-foot-six height. With shoulders as wide as a barrel, he easily filled the space leaning inside the vehicle, and one couldn’t miss Igor when he came strolling down the street. Pierre stilled, clearly unsure what he should do. “Out, I said. The meeting is over. You can walk back.”