Bratva Mother

Rival Family

Mikhail had a headache dealing with everything going on in Russia. It looks like some family is trying to usurp the Sokolov family from the Bravta throne. He has been going from hot spot to hot spot where this family hit, looking for clues or traitors. Three warehouses were targeted, politsiya tried to raid a few of his properties, there was a hit on his sister and someone was cutting s**t into the drugs.

To say he was pissed was an understatement. He is just glad he was able to get a shipment of stuff on James cargo before all this went down. Now he had to figure out who was leaking information and who was trustworthy. Then he has to figure out safe places for all his merchandise to be stored until the next shipment goes out. He had to put trusted people on it to keep it safe until he knew who was behind the whole mess.

Mikhail is currently in one of his hidden warehouses interrogating people. He had to pull his sister from the school until everything was under wraps. Which pissed him off more. His sister wasn’t a part of the things going down in the business. She is innocent, she is going to school to be a writer. She wont inherit the bull s**t he and Demitri deal with.

He looked at the sorry mess of a man in front of him. They put him through the ringer with their play. A few broken bones, waterboarded, a few broken bones and they were getting ready to mess with his vision. They found out that he was at two of the warehouses that were hit and was in talking terms with the head of the politsiya. They can’t prove he knew anything about the drugs being cut with s**t.

However Mikhail was determined to get him to talk. “Andrei, you have been in this family for years. Why would you betray the Bratva family? Weren’t we good to you?” His tone was bored.

The man whimpered, he couldn’t lift his head from his chest.

Mikhail looked at the guy assisting him and nodded. The guy turned to the table and started to prepare the instruments for boiling his eyes. Mikhail then turned to Andrei and spoke. “Andrei, you will die either way. You could talk and make it less painful or you can go down screaming. However, I will get answers before you take your last breath. Denis over there, he is preparing the mini torch. We will hold an eye open and see how long it will take for your eye to boil up. You can take it and speak, or you can talk now and we will put a bullet in your head after. Your choice.”

Andrei now looked scared. He has been tortured for the last two days for information. If Mikhail is now getting dirty and using gruesome means, he is getting impatient. He swallowed as best as he could, looked to Denis who was indeed holding a little torch, about to light it. Then he looked back to Mikhail and you can see the defeat in his posture now.

“Boss, will my family be safe? M-my screw up won't affect them, right?” He looked a little desperate. But he had to make sure his wife and kids wouldn’t be affected by his choices.

“So long as they aren’t in on the plan to f**k everything up, they will be safe and under the Sokolov protection still. So long as you kept them in the dark about your plans, they will be safe.” Mikhail replied. He will keep that word too. So long as they aren’t traitors, they will be safe and in the dark about what happened to Andrei.

Andrei began to talk then. Knowing that Mikhail will keep his word about his family being safe. He may have wanted better and more, but his wife and kids didn’t know anything about it. He made sure to tell them nothing, they knew nothing.

“A woman approached me a few months ago. Said she was going to take over the Bratva name. She needed intel and for me to cause you trouble with the government and customers. She told me who to talk to and how to mess with your shipments. She paid me well for the things she wanted done. She said that I had to spy on everyone to find weaknesses. All I was paid to do was mess with a few shipments, give intel to the politsiya, and inform her of a few warehouses.”

Mikhail was now angry. A woman was messing with his business and threatening his family? Why? No family would take her seriously as the new head of the Bratva. She would need serious balls and resources to make the Russian families fall in line, let alone be accepted into the fold of the other mafia families. What he said matched with most of the things going wrong, all but one.

“What about the hit on my sister? Did you give her intel about her and where she was?” He held Andrei’s hair up to make him look at him.

“No! The intel of the family that I gave was about you and Demitri! I swear boss! Women and children are innocent! I would never put Elana in harm's way! I swear boss!”

Mikhail let go of Andrei’s hair and looked to Denis. If what Andrei was saying was true, someone else told this woman about Elana and where she could have been found. They would have to interrogate Elana’s security people, maybe one of them turned traitor. Heads would roll if anything happened to sweet Elana. Denis put the torch down without lighting it. Mikhail picked up the gun resting on the table. Me made sure the gun was loaded and looked back at Andrei.

“I have one final question before we put you out of your misery. Who is this woman who made you turn your back on the Sokolov’s? Give me her name.” He held the gun to Andrei’s temple and waited.

Andrei knew he was going to die, by Mikhail’s hands or the woman's hands. At this point he double crossed both of them. He swallowed hard again, but replied, “I don’t know if what she said is true, last I heard the family died out years ago. She said the Ivanof family will remember me when they are in power. She didn’t give me HER name, just the family name. Please, protect my family. I don’t know if she follows the Bratva code. If she put a hit out for Elana, more than likely not. Please make sure they don’t face my f**k-ups. They are innocent.”

Mikhail put a bullet in Andrei’s head without looking at him. His eyes were on Denis, wide with shock. It can’t be true. This woman must have given a false name. His dad and James’s grandfather annihilated the whole family years ago.

“We have work to do, Denis; test and verify if my sister's security are true men of this family. I’ll call my brother to see how true Andrei’s confession is.” Mikhail was quiet and controlled. He didn’t let Denis see how startled he was to hearing that long dead name.

He walked out of the interrogation room and nodded to the men outside. These men wore rubber aprons like butchers use and thick rubber gloves. They went into the room to clean and remove the body. He continued on outside to the awaiting car. There he called Demirti.

“Brother, there was at least one traitor. That isn’t why I am calling. A team is taking care of Elana’s security, we have a name to track down.” Being Bratva and communicating on devices, one had to be careful how they worded things. Never knew if the government was tapping into the phones or not.

Demitri was honestly bored but glad he wasn’t on spy detail. The men on his sister’s security has been with the family for years, one he grew up with. It will be hard to hear if any of them were double crossing them. “What is the name, brother?”

Mikhail isn’t sure he should tell his brother over the phone what Andrei confessed. However, he needed Demitri working on this with their hacker quickly. The more time they get the better results. “Ivanof, a woman with an Ivanof name.”

This made Demitri stop moving. There was no way Ivanof was behind the trouble behind their misfortunes. Sokolov’s and George Robington’s father got rid of them all… Right?

However, something clicked in his mind and he ran to their tech room. Without another word to Mikhail, he started researching. He got their hacker to start looking to. Mikhail was right, he can’t be thinking of traitors or lost products, if the Ivanof’s were behind everything. They had at least twenty years in hiding perfecting their revenge plan.

When Mikhail made it back to the manion the family turned into a fortress, he checked in with his sister to see how she was coping with the lockdown. She was bored but being a Bratva woman, knew what was expected of her. So she didn’t complain about it, just wanted to know when it was safe to go back to normal. To which Mikhail wasn’t sure about. He did tell her to be patient and as soon as they knew her security was safe, and the danger minimal; she could return to her university.

Then he joined his brother in the tech room to see the progress the hacker and him made on if the name was true or a false lead. He had mixed beliefs about it. He hoped it wasn’t true and it was a different family that was pulling the strings. On the other hand, he wouldn’t put it past an Ivanof to wait for revenge.

“What's the progress on research so far?” he leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest; watching the screens shift from bank statements, video feed, to legal papers.

Demitri looked up with a far away look in his eyes. He blinked then hardened them. “I don’t know how this was overlooked or missed. Either that or Issac did a better job of hiding his offspring than dad thought.” He wiped a hand down his face looking pensive. He looked back to Mikhail then continued.

“Issac had TWO boys and a girl. Dad knew of one boy and a girl. Both we knew joined the family ranks doing something for the family. One boy they had to send to St, Andrews Psychiatric under a new name for intense care. Boris, was his name, tried to kill his siblings. He didn’t want to compete with them for a spot in the family.”

Mikhail can only imagine how Boris was going to do that. If he ended up disowned and sent to St. Andrews, then it wasn’t going to be pretty. He didn’t say a word just kept listening. Demitri being on a roll with information still continued with more.

“Boris was told through his doctors about a gas fire that killed his family. That he was the last of the Ivanof name. Looks like he got what he wanted all along. So it calmed him. Knowing he didn’t have to compete for the title head of the family. He wasn’t happy with the label ‘gas fire’ though and kept digging. Him having that focus, he started to think rationally and act normal. He built a rapport with the staff and the government officials. He never told anyone his true name. Doctors were given great money to keep his true name hidden. One day, they deemed him ‘safe’ and ‘humane’ to be among the citizens again.

He had a trust fund of sorts to keep him housed and feed while locked away. Now that he was the sole heir to the Ivanof fortune, he transferred everything over to his new name ‘Volkov’ so he can stay hidden and continue to hide. He made a family of his own, and told his wife a false story. However, he told his two kids their true identity after a certain time. He continued to research the ‘gas fire’ believing it to be false. He found someone who told the truth.

He died a few years ago to an aneurysm, but his kids knew of his research, what he found and the truth of the ‘mission’ grandfather helped with. Boris did right by them however, I can’t find a trace of them anywhere. It's like they only exist on paper. Their names are Vladimir and Kira Volkov.”

Mikhail had to give it to Boris, being homicidal and delusional. He still managed to be under the radar. He also has to admit he did a decent job picking names. If he planned to overthrow the family, the renowned prince and leader of the people fit well for the Bratva people. Not how most people would view such names. However they are Bratva, strong names help people take you seriously.