Ruthless Prince (Dark Syndicate 1)

I open the envelope straightaway and pull out a picture. My hands tense up when I see who’s on it.

It’s a man called Vlad Kuznetsov. He’s a Brava assassin who belongs to a group of assassins called the Circle of Shadows. More importantly, he’s supposed to be dead. I should know. I helped killed him, or so I thought.

“Where did you get this?” I ask.

Tristan pulls up a chair and sits. I expect the ashen look on his face. It was him who pulled the trigger. One lone bullet to the heart that should have killed the bastard who murdered his wife. Why am I looking at a picture of this man? A very recent photo, given the fucking date.

“Dominic,” Tristan says, running a hand over his beard.

The one-word answer is enough because Dominic can find shit you don’t even know is happening. Like this.

Tristan sighs and straightens up. “Our guys found Pierbo’s stuff in a dumpster near the docks. Some burned some not. A camera was amongst them. Smashed and burnt to a fucking crisp. Dominic was able to get the image from the chip. Massimo, look at the date when the picture was taken.”

I do again. My eyes snap wide when I realize it was Saturday. The date Pierbo supposedly killed himself.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Vlad and his band of assassins are known enemies to anyone in the Italian Mafia and those in the Bratva who don’t fall part of his circle. Those of the Bratva who link up with them are few and far between.

“If he’s here, someone hired him,” I point out.

“Don’t I fucking know it. Fucking hell, Massimo. This knocked me for six. I thought I got this guy. I thought I killed his ass, yet here he is. I already felt like shit because he was the hand that dealt the blow to my Alyssa. But I never got the man who ordered the hit on her.”

I feel his pain as he speaks. Five years have passed, but I know he still feels the pain. Alyssa’s head was delivered to him in a box.

Mortimer Viggo is the elusive leader of the Shadows. None of us have ever seen him, and nobody knows how to find him. If Vlad is here, alive and well, Mortimer sent him. Just like he did when he sent him to kill Alyssa.

They took her the night of his wedding and sent her head in a box to Tristan, giftwrapped, the very next day. We then found her body in parts, scattered all over LA. That’s not something you get over. Tristan and Alyssa had been together since high school.

“Tristan. You know as well as I do that Mortimer Viggo is not an easy man to find.” I sound like a pussy for saying that. It’s the truth though. We must have searched all four corners of the globe for two years looking for that piece of shit and never found him.

I know it crushed Tristan to no end when it became clear that we had to give up the search. But now Vlad is back from the dead. His presence here in LA could only be happening if Mortimer Viggo ordered it.

“Fuck, Massimo.” He balls his fists and seethes. “I can’t tell you how screwed I feel right now.”

I get up and walk around to him and rest my hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. Please do not do anything until we have more information.” I want to tell him not to do anything stupid but think better of it.

I can’t say that to him. Whatever he chose to do would not be stupid in regard to retaliation and making sure the dead stay dead. I know him though. He’s a man like me. Vengeance is his when he decides. He hates feeling helpless or being in the dark about anything.

“I know if you were me, you’d do something about it,” Tristan points out.

“I am going to do something about it.” I just don’t want to lose my brother. Rest assured, that is exactly what would happen. I’d lose him. “Tristan. This guy has been a ghost for the last five years and suddenly resurfaces. Clearly, some plot of shit is happening.”

“Right under our noses,” he intones. I press my lips together. “Massimo, clearly, Pierbo died because he saw him. Vlad wouldn’t have wanted our guy to find out he was alive and back in our city.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” I agree. “I can’t allow him to do whatever it is he’s doing though.” The last five years were his get-out-of-jail card.

“You’d be rocking the nest, Massimo,” Tristan points out. Worry filling his eyes.

“I know.” Of course, I know. Rocking the fucking nest would stir trouble. I’m boss, and if Pa were boss, he would say the same as me. “We look into it, get our best men out there, and try to find him no matter where he is. We kill his ass and make sure we cut off his fucking head this time. For Alyssa.”

He releases a sharp breath and nods. “Thank you, brother. It’s a hard thing for a man to accept he was useless to the one person who needed him the most. Vlad and his band of fuckers stole her from me, and I never knew until it was too late. I keep remembering how it happened. I took her home. We were supposed to be leaving for our honeymoon the next day. I went into the kitchen to get the champagne, and when I came out, she was gone. That was it. The one thing I had to hold on to was killing him, but he’s not dead.”

“Tristan, let’s stay focused and get this guy. He declared war by coming back here.”

Before I got home, I went to the scene, the place where it all played out five years ago.