Take Igor for instance, he had spent his whole life buying into my father’s single-man, brotherhood bullshit until the one day a busty broad batted her Bette Davis eyes at him. All of a sudden, he was a changed bird, peacocking around proudly thanks to the pussy he was pulling. Worse yet was the fact that my father, the rejecter of romance, was supportive of his eldest son’s new status, making me wonder how dedicated good old dad really was to his belief in bachelorhood. The more I thought about it, the surer I was that Aunt Yekaterina and Uncle Grygoriy’s relationship had fucked my father up, and my mother’s death had driven the final nail in his coffin of hope. I had accepted his dumbass dogmas as truth because it was easier for me that way, but everything was shifting and somehow Taros the staunch skeptic was softening. It made me wonder if he was developing something with a dame of his own. Though December in the city was a blustering blizzard, I could already feel the heat of the questions, people wondering why I was the only Mikhailov who didn’t desire a doll. Assholes.

Since my own family was full of hypocrites, it shouldn’t have surprised me that the rest of the charlatans in Chicago were perpetually pulling antics, but their audacity astounded me nonetheless. Though Al Capone was filing appeals in an attempt to wiggle out of his conviction for tax evasion, he had somehow become the city’s latest headline hero. News of Capone’s South State Street soup kitchen emblazoned the front page of Chicago Tribune. Citizens didn’t seem concerned with his blatant play to clean up his image, not when he was filling the bellies of starving men and women who stood in lines outside the building three times a day. The most dangerous gangster in the metropolis was shaking hands and kissing babies, while Herbert Hoover hid in the White House.

And just when I thought shit could not possibly get more bizarre, it did. The streets were becoming unsafe for guys affiliated with outfits, thanks to a group of collegiate cretins who were making their clams kidnapping low-level gangsters and holding them for ransom. While nobody had been snatched from Vlad’s crew, I worried that with my luck, I would be the first one nabbed. I was one of the highest earners in the group, and guys from other gangs were getting desperate, doing more talking than they ever had years before, trying to find out who held what. So I was looking over my shoulder more than usual and keeping my pistol loaded. I had never killed anyone, but I wasn't opposed to putting a few bullets through a brainiac who was trying to get dough for my dome.