Dragusha Revenge ✓Completed✓

Aleksio

The adoption agency smells like new carpet and Lysol. There are two rows of cubicles surrounded by meeting rooms and a shitload of file drawers and computers. The guys are flinging open drawers and pulling the lids off file boxes, packing up everything that could lead to Kiro. Kiro is vulnerable as hell right now.

He probably has no idea of his true identity. He could be a guy working in a suburban carwash or college kid sitting in Accounting 101. No idea what's coming at him. And if anybody figures out what we're up to, there are some heavy hitters coming for him. It's a miracle Aldo Nikolla and Lazarus didn't kill him or Viktor that bloody night, considering the prophecy. My guess is that Nikolla didn't have the balls to kill two tiny kids.

He thought he could lose them. Thought they'd stay lost. And we thought we had time. Tito and the rest of my crew knew I'd found Viktor. We tried to keep it a secret, but we recently found out the whole of the Russian mafiya has been gossiping about how I came from America to find Viktor. How I embraced him and told him he is my brother. How I asked him to help get vengeance and find Kiro.

Fucking gangster grapevine. The guys are taking every file and every shred of paper related to the year our family ended. A few of them are downloading the computer files. We'll take the laptops, too. I help stack the boxes at the door. I get updates from the guys watching across the street. So far, so good.

Worland is a charity that has a pregnancy counseling and adoption arm-I vetted it on the way over. It's the kind of place people bring babies they don't want, no questions asked-that's one of the things on their home page. And apparently it's also the kind of place a guy sends a baby he wants lost.

It really is possible Aldo Nikolla doesn't know anything beyond the agency name. The agency could've set those terms to protect itself. The files are building up. I have some guys check the basement, and I get others started on bringing the shit out to the van. It's amazing to think the key to finding our baby brother could be hidden in all this paper. Kiro..

My mom let me hold him when she brought him home from the hospital, so tiny and squirmy. Just so tiny. And he looked up at me with those big brown eyes, and instantly I loved him. Viktor wanted to hold Kiro, too, but Mom said he was too little, but more like too reckless. Viktor was a one-boy wrecking crew. So he laid a careful hand on Kiro's little belly. Kiro needs you to be a good big brother to him, my mom said to me. Kiro needs his brother to protect him.

My heart nearly pounded out of my chest-that's how proud I felt when she said it. I promised that I would. I hold that promise like a blaze in my heart. The slaughter happened soon after. Did Mom sense trouble was coming? It hurts to remember her, but somewhere maybe she can see I'm fighting for Kiro. She needs to see I won't let him down. Little Kiro. He could be in the army for all we know, though I doubt it. Marching in formation is not in the Dragusha DNA.

Viktor had no idea of his roots, but he grew up from nothing to become a key assassin in the Bratva-the Russian mafiya-in Moscow. Meanwhile I ran my own gang just under the Nikolla radar, developing my clan. It was like Viktor and I were living parallel criminal lives on either side of the world without knowing it. Viktor comes up, and I clap him on the shoulder. Kiro. Alive. Maybe. "A lot of paper to go through," he says. I grumble. It's a lot, but we'll go through it all the same, because they may not have computerized the older files. A low-rent place like this. Half-illegal.

"Good thing we have guys." Viktor checks a text. "Old man's still out cold." Viktor's Bratva guys are holding Aldo Nikolla in the basement of a chop shop. He shakes his head. He doesn't like it. We were hoping for a quick address, and this is so roundabout. And Mira's father is not a man you can hold on to long. It's like kidnapping the president of the United States-even if you manage to pull it off, you know you're not keeping him long. Too much heat.