Page 78 of The Brigadier
I also had zero doubt that would be used against us.
Sometimes, I hated this life.
CHAPTER 23
“Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.”
—Rabindranath Tagore
Nikolay
I’d been considered fearless my entire life, even as a small child. While I understood the meeting with Bernardi wasn’t supposed to be contentious, when dealing with other syndicates, a lot depended on a man’s mood. Especially when we were supposed to be enemies. I hadn’t seen the man since Aleksander had proposed to Raphaella, the engagement party something special for social media.
Even if that hadn’t been allowed.
Luciano had been cordial, albeit still uncertain of the alliance Vadim had already suggested.
“Anything unusual?” I asked as I headed to the sidewalk, glancing up and down the street. The restaurant wasn’t in thebest area of town but often the places with the best food were shitholes. Especially in New York.
It was funny being back in the Big Apple, where the vibrancy had once been a rush every time. Right now, between the traffic and noise, the volume of people was annoying. It would seem the quiet life better suited me.
Vadim shook his head. “Nothing. We’ll wait and see what Luciano has. I ran down the Armenians and from what our sources and informants can tell, there’s no real activity. It’s some Armenian holiday or something. Huge celebrations planned in the street.”
I found that interesting but not necessarily surprising. The one thing I knew about the brutal regime, other than they were pigs, was that they often used other nationalities to do the dirty work.
As if they were too good to be sullied by tawdry tasks.
Right now, not much was going to be solved. I was hopeful that meeting would help but not certain.
“Are we secure?” Aleksander asked.
“We are,” Vadim stated. “We’re just a group of friends having lunch. Let’s go in.”
Secure.
It was a funny thing about security. You could easily think you’d been secretive about a meeting or even a personal dinner out but nowadays, people were always watching.
Videos.
Pictures.
Especially tourists wanted to make their claim to celebrity fame. Not that I’d placed myself in that category, but I’d seen tourists take picture after picture after a horrific accident. And we were notorious crime bosses.
There was no shame.
I glanced at my phone prior to trailing behind them. Nothing yet from Tanner, which didn’t necessarily mean anything. He knew the timing of the meeting. However, I was antsier to get back to the beach house.
More than I thought I would be.
“Nothing on the assassins?” I asked quietly as we walked in through the festively decorated front door. The music was loud and not unpleasant, but I wasn’t certain how well an intense conversation would go.
“No, except I checked with sources I have throughout various military organizations,” Vadim mused. “Believe it or not, their actions were more like the Armenian army than any other organization.”
He seemed amused.
I was pissed off and glanced at Aleksander. Maybe he’d expected Italian or American special forces, but Armenian? You make a couple of assassination attempts then plan huge celebrations?
“Keep in mind,” Aleksander said as we searched the small restaurant, finding the private room easily. “Training is key and anyone can be taught anything with enough time.”