Anatoly Medlov (9 page)

“Can’t be worse than mine.”

“Yes, they are,” she confirmed.

“I’ve never seen your family. They don’t come up to Memphis to visit you.”

“Well, we might fix that one of these days. Then you’ll see that you’re not alone. My drunk uncle, my crazy granny and my Vietnam daddy make a hell of a combination.”

It was odd, but Anatoly was calmed by Renee’s voice. She was so simple and so normal – two things that were far from his reach. Just knowing that she had thought enough to call and check on him made him feel better. His tough exterior was nearly broken until he realized how her charms were working on him. He quickly clamed up.

“Well, I have to go,” he said, hearing the men in the other room. “But thanks for calling. I’ll check in on you tomorrow.” He stuttered. “And don’t worry about Agosto. Like I said, I’m sure that it’s nothing.”

“
Okay
,” Renee did not believe him but chose not to push it. “Bye.”

He hung up without any more pleasantries. Lighting another cigarette, he digested their moment like food for his soul. Whether she knew it or not, he needed that. He needed to know that there was normalcy in at least one place in his life, and he didn’t have to fake who he was to get it, like his father was forced to do at the onset of his relationship with Royal.

Then, there it was again.
The thought of a relationship with Renee.
He shook it off. Now was not the time to analyze himself or whatever was going on between him and his shop girl. It was almost time for his meeting with his father and Gabriel.

Chapter Five

Gabriel and his men stood in the elevator patiently awaiting its arrival to the penthouse of the hotel and staring blankly into the reflection of themselves in the mirrors of the d panel. It had taken a near act of God to find out where the Medlov’s were staying and even a greater act of God to get through security downstairs.

Upon arrival, they were stripped of their guns, checked for weapons, bugs, poison and razors out in the rain behind the hotel by a large group of armed bodyguards. Then, they were ushered inside of the building after their pat downs and made to wait in the kitchen hallway among crates and boxes in the dimly lit corner as plates clanged and servers moved about quickly with meals and beverages. In silence, they waited and were watched, feeling as though at any moment they would be lined up and executed if one thing did not check out.

After many minutes passed, they were sent up, and although they all were frustrated by the ordeal, they were all happy that they had survived. One would have thought that they were meeting with a national dignitary not a crime boss, but as many knew, to meet a Medlov was the closest any of them would ever get to meeting pseudo-royalty.

As the elevator buzzed, the doors opened to another large group of well-dressed, heavily armed men. Gabriel shook his head and gave a leisurely smile before he opened his jacket to let them search him again.

“It’s amazing that you all ever get anything done with all the searching that you do,” he said as a man patted down his leg. “Easy,” he jerked away. “That’s
not
a gun.”

The man looked over at door and nodded for Gabriel to gain access to the boss. He was escorted inside, but his men were not allowed to proceed. Instead, they were ordered to wait, and he alone was led to a sitting room that gave a beautiful view of downtown Moscow.

In a different world than the one outside, Dmitry and Anatoly were sitting across from each other talking and having a drink in the calm of a very luxurious room decorated in fine linens and upholstery, bejeweled with priceless art and classic lamps.

The men looked over at Gabriel with curious eyes, accessing him, watching him, making him feel like he was the elephant in the room.

He cracked a smile, pushed past the discomfort and pulled his balled up fists from his pockets.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Gabriel said as the butler walked up and took his jacket.

“Good evening,” Dmitry said, placing his glass carefully on the end table. With his legs crossed and his back towards the view of windows, he extended his large arm and pointed at the seat near Anatoly. “Have a seat,” he ordered in a deep, menacing voice. His eyes watched Gabriel as he made his way across the room.

Anatoly did not bother to speak. Instead, he finished his drink in one gulp and stood up, wanting to be as far as possible from the man who claimed to be his cousin. He made his way over to the window and leaned against the table with a sneer on his remarkably young face.

“You’re on time,” Dmitry noted, looking at his watcheak

“I was forewarned,” Gabriel replied, taking his seat.

He looked around, tried to make sure no one was behind him. Suddenly, he was acutely aware of his mortality now that he was in the room with two of the world’s most ruthless killers.

“We don’t like small talk. What do you want from us?” Anatoly asked, rolling his eyes.

Gabriel could see that the only thing keeping the young man civil was his father’s hidden grip. He could feel the repression from across the room. It was as if Dmitry was standing behind his son with hands on his shoulders cooling his hot heels, but in fact, the man controlled the environment from afar. Dmitry sat relaxed in his chair, dressed in a new suit and visibly intrigued by Gabriel’s presence.

“I’ve made a name for myself now. And I felt like it was time to introduce myself. I’ve been waiting in the wings long enough, gentlemen. Imagine growing up your whole life knowing that you had a family that you had been kept from
just because
,” Gabriel said, looking at Anatoly.

“Now with sob stories...”Anatoly gaffed.

“We are only recently accustomed to sympathy, my boy. Your story might be lost on us,”
Dmitry said, wanting the man to skip the theatrics.

“My father was a methodical man,” Gabriel explained. “I’m sure he had some reason for keeping me away. Whatever reason it was, it wasn’t my fault or my choice.”

“Your father was a raving lunatic,” Anatoly interrupted. “He had to be put down like mad dog.”

Dmitry looked over at his chair at his son but did not admonish him. Instead, he turned and smiled at Gabriel. In a gentle manner, he lifted his long hands and put his fingers together. “As you were saying,” he urged.

“He kept me out of the way for a long time,” Gabriel continued without looking at Anatoly. He locked eyes with his uncle. “He was a good father most of the time, although very absent. He took very good care of me from a far financially. After college, I wanted to get into the business. It took a lot of persuasion and even a few hundred thousand dollars of bribe money. That’s when he started to give me a little work. It was tough, but once I proved myself, I started to pull together my own men, and he left a portion of his New York business to me when he came to Memphis.”

“That’s a lot to sum up in a few sentences,” Anatoly said unconvinced. “That still tells us nothing about you.”

“What would you like to know?” Gabriel asked, opened to the discussion and the confrontation looming between him and the young boss.

“Any kids? Wife? Other family? How
distant
was Ivan? Why? What kind of work did he throw your way? Why did he hide you? I could go on.” Anatoly ran his hand down the windowsill and lifted it to look at the dirt. “You call this a suite, papa? This place is filthy.”

Dmitry didn’t bother to respond to his son. He kept his eyes on Gabriel. His gentle manner was slowly changing. His bright blue eyes narrowed. Like a predator, he locked on to Gabriel’s every cryptic word as they fumbled out of the man’s mouth. He was looking for just one untruth, because while he and his men dealt in secrecy and guns, they did not deal in lies.

“Let’s do
one
something first,” Dmitry said, motioning at the door.

An older man with a black bag appeared from the hall. He was short and balding, dressed in a three-piece black suit and limping slightly. Slowly, he walked over to the table beside Gabriel and placed his bag down. Then reaching inside the leather satchel, he pulled out a small vial and separated it to reveal a long, slender white object.

“He’s going to swab your mouth. Open wide,” Dmitry said, uncrossing his legs. “Then you can continue with your story.”

All eyes were on the doctor as the old man approached Gabriel with a buccal swab in his shaking, glove-covered hands. Lifting his head, Gabriel opened his mouth obediently, and the man slipped his thumb inside his jaw and clenched it with his index finger to pull it away from his teeth.

Swabbing the inside of his jaw, the man looked Gabriel in his eyes with a unreadable frown then pulled the swab out and placed it inside of the container. Pulling his gloves off his hands, he dropped them inside of the garbage can beside the table and left as quietly as he had come.

“Continue,” Anatoly said with a smirk on his face. “And remember that in less than 24 hours, we’ll know if you’re lying about anything that you say.”

“No need to lie,” Gabriel said, looking over at the bottle of vodka. “Do you mind?” he asked Dmitry.

“No,” Dmitry said with a clever smile. “I don’t, if that is what you need to help you.”

Gabriel made his way over to the table and poured himself a hefty glass of vodka. Turning it up, he swallowed one large gulp then turned to the men. He touched his chest and smiled.

“I know what you think,” Gabriel said. “You think that I’m some fraud. But look at me.
Really
, look at me. I’m the real thing.” He hit his chest. “My father was a good man. I know that’s hard to believe, but he was. He had a few
issues
. My mother knew it all too well. He fell in love with her or no...he slept with her when they were both just young kids. They met in London. Both went their separate ways but kept in touch. My mother moved to New York and my father followed after. passed.

“During his marriage to his only wife, Ari, he took on a less than active but more than abs role in my life. But he was proud of me. I don’t know why. I wasn’t an alpha male or anything like that. I was a boy scout. I made good grades and played baseball. But he was there, and he did a lot for me.

“When I told him that I was going to NYU, he paid for it. When I graduated and said that I wanted to be like him, he gave me some other options. He wanted me to be better than him. When I proved myself, which mind you wasn’t easy to do, he left me his business. He said that he was going to Memphis to handle some unfinished business and wouldn’t be back. I didn’t want him to leave but he did. I thought that he was running away from me because we had gotten too close, but he claimed that he could start over there.”

“He finished
there
,” Anatoly said.

Gabriel slowed his explanation. “He was still chasing Ari even though she was dead – still chasing the memory of her. That is what sent him to his end. That is what kept him from my mother. That is what drove him from me. If anything this is all the fault of a woman whom I never even laid eyes on.”

“So, you know how he met his end?” Dmitry asked, finally standing up.

“He loved you,” Gabriel said, biting his lip to maneuver around the question. “I know that it’s hard to believe, but he did. He talked about you all the time. But he just couldn’t let
her
go.”

“And how does that make you feel?” Dmitry probed. He knew how it made him feel. Defeated.

“As about as sad as it makes you. We both lost him to her, you.” Gabriel clinched his jaw. “I wanted to reach out to you when it first happened. I wanted to share the pain with you that you must have surely felt for what you were forced to do, but my mother passed during that same week. I felt like it was a sign. I needed to prove myself first. And I think over the last few years, I’ve done that.”

Anatoly watched from a far as his father approached Gabriel. They looked more like Medlov men than he as they stood face-to-face. They both were unmistakable giants in stature, muscular in size, and most of all beautiful. Their features appeared to be carved from the most stunning stone, every careful definition of their faces perfect and startling.

These were the type of men that people wrote about, the type of people marveled over and worshipped. Anatoly hated that. It was hard enough to live up to his father, now he had this bastard here vying for his attention, begging to outdo him. He stood up from the windowsill and cleared his throat.