Page 76 of Vengeful King

“Good. I expected no less.”

I watch Katrina as I talk. She’s hopeful; I can see it in her wide eyes, the way she leans in. She’s forgotten what we were doing almost completely. I can’t pretend I haven’t switched gears too.

This matters. This could be the difference between securing my family’s safety and having to look over my shoulder for months to come.

Katrina bites her lip, obviously worried. I know she wants this news as much as I do.

“Yuri’s a slick piece of shit,” Nikolai finally says, his tone grimly humorous. “But he didn’t run far enough. He’s been operating out of a scrap metal processing plant. Near the docks.”

“No respect.”

I say it to drive home a point—the docks are, after all, Russian territory. Yuri isn’t necessarily in the wrong. But he does not have Nikolai’s blessing, and his blatant attempt at having me murdered is nasty business.

If anyone else had found out about Yuri, or if he’d tried to kill someone else? Chances are they’d be far less forgiving of the Russian syndicate’s stray dog.

One rabid mutt can make a whole pack fall.

It was something my father used to say when he was alive. He had to do the dirty work of taking care of men in our own organization that overreached, men who decided they wanted more than the comfort and security they were already given.

There’s a status quo in the underworld. When you shake things up, you don’t just shake a branch or two. You shake the whole damn tree. And Yuri has shaken the biggest tree he could ever find.

This isn’t just my problem any more, or just my family’s reputation in danger. Yuri is coming dangerously close to pissing off his own people.

And if he does, he’s truly fucked.

“He has a small operation,” Nikolai continues. “But it looks like he’s planning on making a move, trying to reclaim a section of the city.”

He saysreclaimwith a sneer I can hear, an audible curl of his lip at the thought of Yuri claiming anything. Yuri was never a man in charge, after all. He was the lap dog of other families, other people. He was like a contractor to the O’Reilly family.

Until he turned around and tried to kill me.

Hearing that Yuri has big plans is laughable. He’ll never make it. But he’ll still be a pain in the ass, and that’s really what matters. The last thing I want is to deal with his foolishness as I’m managing everything else on my plate.

“This is probably why he’s targeting you,” Nikolai points out. “Foolish, but he has the right idea.”

“Foolish indeed.” I don’t comment on it being the right idea. I know Nikolai won’t go to war with my family; he’s just being objective. Not that I can say the same. “He may not live long enough to learn from this mistake.”

“Well, it would be his fault for overstepping.”

“Yes, it would.”

“And he’s branching out,” Nikolai adds. “Into territory dangerously close to the O’Reilly business.”

The more I hear, the more I’m furious. Yuri was always an underling, and a loose cannon near the end. The fact that he’s managed to return from near death and gather enough people to be a nuisance is bothersome, to say the least.

He just had to come back when everything was in chaos. Aiden and Connor are freshly married, both of their wives pregnant. The deal with Ezra is in the making. There’s so much to handle right now, and then Yuri just had to show up and blackmail a woman that it turns out I’m intensely attracted to, the first woman I’ve felt this way about in a long time.

It’s really fucking aggravating.

“I appreciate the information,” I tell Nikolai. I can hear the sharp edge in my own voice, my patience thin.

I don’t say anything else; I hang up. Nikolai knows what I’m feeling. He knows as the head of his family just how badly Yuri has fucked up. This is more than personal.

This is a matter of pride.

Katrina bites her lip before asking, hesitant, “What did he say?”

“Yuri’s holed up by the docks,” I say curtly. I take a moment to smooth my tone over before I continue speaking. “He’s trying to make a move. He’s targeting me for power.”

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