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So, why can’t I take it back?

***

The party hat comes off the instant we’re all back inside.

Once everyone’s migrated over to the sitting room with their cake—everyone, that is, except for Trif and Val, who linger in the dining room. Cigar time, I can guess. I shut the doors behind myself, sealing the eventual smoke inside. With an amused quirk of his brows, my eldest brother settles down at the head of the table. To his right, Valentin sinks into his usual seat, already clipping the end of a nice, fat Cohiba. The table between them is a scarred beast of old wood, weathered by time and decades of Yuri meals and Yuri wars.

This table isn’t typically for meetings. It is better suited for brothers sharing a quiet smoke. And that’s why I should just let them fucking have it. Join them, even. But I won’t.

Instead, I pull up my chair on Trifon’s left for a different reason.

Trifon’s navy gaze locks onto my face, and the cigar stalls halfway to his mouth. “No,” he says flatly.

I exhale a mirthless chuckle. “I haven’t said anything yet, Trif.”

“Are you or are you not about to ruin a perfectly good cigar for me?”

Yes. But what choice do I have? “We lost the Morozov corridor tonight, Trifon. Someone must’ve fed our guys’ movements to the right people at the wrong time.”

His nostrils flare as he processes that. It’s another hit, and we’re already hemorrhaging revenue. And now a route we’ve been running jointly through the port for over a decade is gone.

The cherry flares as my Pakhan takes a slow pull of his cigar. With his exhale, every ounce of relaxation drains out of him.

I can’t fucking blame him. The past year has been hit after hit. Every time one of us turns around, there’s another hole to plug. How long’s it going to fucking be, until we’re sunk?

When we’d first begun an alliance with the Zakharovs, we’d gotten the bonus of the Harborside arrangement to launder revenue for both gangs and, last month, an audit somehow got triggered. Our lawyers are still fighting it. A containment isn’t a fix. It doesn’t help that Viktor’s also lost two shipments through the port from Boston to New York, and his Solntsevskaya partners have begun asking questions. Viktor Zakharov would rather gnaw off his goddamn arm than show weakness; he’ll never admit to the leak. But how long will they let him get away with that?

None of us needs to say it out-loud. We’re all aware that the combined losses across both families have run into eight figures over the past year. And that’s the conservative fucking estimate.

“Look, can we just call it? Anton’s experiment hasn’t worked. We’ve been trying to plant fake information to catch whichever motherfucker this is, and we still don’t know whose camp the mole’s even in. We’ve gotta switch shit up. This isn’t fucking working.”

The mention of our sister’s husband, the Zakharov Pakhan, rouses a tick in Valentin’s jaw when he looks at Trifon. Trifon looks back. I don’t take their shorthand personally. It’s a silent frequency they’ve shared since childhood, being only two years apart and eternally half a conversation ahead of the rest of us. I don’t give a shit, so long as what they’re agreeing on is having no damn time to pretend everything’s fucking hunky-dory.

I don’t care about the fistfight. Or that Valentin and Anton Zakharov have butted heads at two meetings in the past three months, the latter of which resulted in Val’s knuckles being split for the week after. I’d been in both rooms. I always am.

“I’ve sat down with every crew lead over the last eight weeks,” I share. “I’ve been cross-referencing access to compromised operations, financial records, and personal entanglements across our organization. Anastasia Zakharov’s been helping. We’ve cleared twenty-three out of twenty-seven brigadiers across both families. The remaining four aren’t suspicious, but we’re doing due diligence. And it’s not fucking good enough.”

I pause. And wait. I wait for one of them to say something.

From the other side of the wall, Zinaida shrieks with peals of laughter.

Trifon sets his cigar in the ashtray. “I hear you, Leo. But I said to table this for today. And I meant it.”

My lips press into a hard line. “Did you not hear anything I just said?”

“Leo—” Valentin starts, and Trifon cuts him off with a look.

“I heard you clearly,” he says. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow. Have some cake. Breathe. We will find this mole. And when we do, I will personally tear them limb from fucking limb. But today, I want to celebrate what this legacy we’re killing ourselves to preserve is for. It needs to be for something.”

Once upon a time, the blood and glory of it would’ve been reason enough. That isn’t how most of my siblings see it anymore.

***

I’m fucking exhausted.

The penthouse is shrouded in quiet when I return to it. After a day spent at the family estate, it’s doubly disconcerting. It isn’t just the soundproofed walls, triple-glazed windows, or the midnight-blue and charcoal palette that are responsible for the contrast. Here, it’s just me.

At least I’ve got my Dobermanns, Div and Mara. The pair of them sprawl across the foot of my bed, a tangle of sleek black limbs I pet at mindlessly. I wish I could sleep as peacefully as Div is, practically drooling in his sleep. My body begs me to switch off—but my muscles are laden, and my skull full of cotton and nails. My mind grants me no mercy. It runs, races, vaults over hurdles just to run into brick walls.