Seriozhenka Levkov was a man of broad stature and a powerful amount of self-control. For instance, he never drank, never smoked, nor allowed anyone to rile him up. He could stand in the middle of a barroom brawl and never move an inch despite whatever was thrown at him, object or person.

He was well-respected in Russia for his unflappable, stern visage and just as feared for his profession. And though the latter had been cause many times over for him to be charged with murder – his hits notorious given the calling card left behind – Russian officials had rarely ever managed to make the charges stick. The times they did... Well, the witnesses tended to disappear, either by Maksim's wish or by Maksim's money in the form of lucrative bribes.

In short, Levkov, best known as Angel, believed himself both invincible and powerful. The world he considered important looked up to him and he'd always gotten away scott-free for the actions he never thought of as wrong. He was doing the work of a living God and he was the right hand of the Devil, together as one.

So it was immensely hard for him to swallow his failure to capture Luka and Stepan. That frustration had manifested in an attempt on Luka's life, more out of a want for the stubborn boy to pay attention than the wish for him to die outright (he could easily have ended his nephew's life were that the case), but he'd failed at that as well and Angel was beginning to despair.

The influence of his father undoubtedly carried over to the US – it had to – but he was sure that walking into the LVPD Crime Lab would result in a restriction of his freedom, something he did not take well given how little he was constrained by laws and regulations. He could not simply walk in and demand Luka and Stepan handed to him, no matter what weapon or threat he used.

Not to mention, he didn't know if Luka would even agree to come with him and Angel was truly not in the mood to kill the boy outright.

Still, he'd been ordered to get the two boys home; Maksim's unreported failing health had made the man nostalgic and whatever words he wanted to have with them needed to occur soon, before age and cancer felled him.

He sighed and leaned back against the opulent headboard the Bellagio had adorned his guest suite with. Given the declining state of his father's wellbeing, Angel had been given this mission as his final before he would take over the Family though how long he would carry the title was unknown – he himself was not terribly young nor was he as fit as he'd once been – and had been gifted with a stay at the renown hotel and casino.

"You can only run from what you are for so long, boy," he told the empty room, though even Angel couldn't say whether he was talking about himself or Luka.

It mattered little, he decided, as his fate had been sealed long ago; being the eldest and most obedient of the mafia don's sons had preordained the life he'd lead was something Levkov had always believed. His life was bound to death and blood money and if he could ever sit the boys down, he'd tell them how proud he was that they were on the other side of the fence.

But that was about as likely as hell freezing over, he knew. Luka had been there the night his parents had been murdered by Angel's hand. He had seen the gun and heard the words, and when Luka had come at Angel with only his fists to fight with, the assassin had laughed at his nephew. He had gone so far as to mock the boy as he'd shoved at the elder man.

"The things we do to chase away the ones we wish to protect," he muttered and lifted his half-filled glass of vodka to his lips. Knocking back most of the remaining liquid, Angel let his mind wander and twist, trying to determine how precisely he could get a chance to at least look at Luka and Stepan, face to face.

He swallowed the last of his drink, got to his feet, and snatched up his black leather walking coat. He pulled it on roughly, feeling the weight of his favorite nine-millimeter handgun pressed lightly into his shoulder by the weight of the garment. In the interior pocket, unable to be seen by the naked eye, was the silencer barrel he'd smuggled into America despite the many hoops he'd had to jump through simply to get past customs.

With a final glance in the mirror, Angel pocketed the key to the room and grabbed the keys to the rental car, but his cellphone started to buzz incessantly at his back; he crossed back to the annoying device, plugged in to charge by the bed.

Unknown caller, it read.

He flipped the phone open, sliding it up to his ear, before saying, "Это ангел." This is Angel, his most oft-used greeting – only members of the family had this particular number and he had no reason to assume otherwise.

At least until he heard the reply and his heart beat faster in his chest for it was as if the Devil himself had risen from below, offering a deal that would skirt the line between morality and deviance. The words spoken were laden in arrogance, and the voice so smug even he was disgusted.

"Когда1?" He pressed, his mind absorbing everything he was told faster than normal. Adrenaline was kicking in as he caught the words of promise; his body was singing with the hope of a mission completed yet careful to trust the man whom had neither shared his name nor how he had come to possess the concealed phone number.

But he could tell by the accent, the pattern of speech that it was a man not born on Russian soil. His tone was too forced, the pace of it nowhere near that of a native speaker. This was a person whom, perhaps, was after money or the favor of his father, but certainly had no ties to their family.

Another quandary for Angel to ponder and he hung up with the innate gut feeling that while the information he'd been given was not a trap, he had acquired a person too dangerous to remain out of the family's control. The unknown man would either have to be neutralized or brought into the fold and the latter was not nearly as likely as the first.

Still, he had a chance at seeing the nephews he had been sent for. That, above all else, was far more imperative than removing a possible threat.

This time, when he turned away from the phone to head out into Las Vegas' brown-black night, Angel had a plan.

;;

Blood drops. A slick trail from the living room to the foyer.

Two bodies, hands clasped together as tightly as their weak fingers could manage, lay on the floor at his sixteen-year-old feet.

His mother's breath stops.

His father's heart beats one last time.

And he is alone.

Greg's eyes snapped open in the grim, florescent light of the trace lab and sighed. Oh, but so many years had passed since he'd last had that nightmare; a dream steeped in memories that he hated with every fiber of his being and he called it a nightmare to ignore the implications of what he'd seen that night.

A moment passed and then, with some effort, he pushed himself upright in the chair he'd fallen asleep in, head perched on the lab bench Hodges had been using which was now abandoned in favor of the table on the other side of the room.

He wondered if he should apologize for laying in the middle of the man's work; after all, getting this particular bench had always been a struggle for all the lab rats who seemed incapable of sharing some days, fighting for the space. It wasn't like it was special; there was nothing different about it than any of the others – it as the view. In a steel and glass workplace, it was always enjoyable to have the space that faced the boss' office to best know when to look like one was actually working instead of trying to get five minutes to relax.

Then Hodges turned and told him, "That kid's been looking for you," and Greg remembered why the two of them could work together yet never be polite about it. David was an arrogant kiss-ass despite being an incredibly good scientist.

Greg restrained himself from making an answering comment, because, really, Konstantin most certainly saw him on the young man's search – it wasn't like Sanders was purposely hiding from him. Instead, he slowly got to his feet, stretched, and went to the most logical place for his cousin to be: with Nick and Warrick in the break room.

He cracked his fingers as he walked, rubbing the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes in an attempt to not look as exhausted as he felt. It bothered him how bogged down he was feeling; he had spent most of the last few days sleeping or doing what very little work Grissom would allow him, all of it paperwork. His hands had not touched evidence in more than a week, so why was he so tired?

Because you're emotionally drained, he thought to himself. You've been running on empty for weeks.

Greg sighed as he reached the break room, where, as he suspected, Nick and Warrick were playing video games with his cousin. However, he was decidedly surprised to find a young redheaded teenage girl sitting quietly to the side, watching the games with a smile on her face and a glint in her eye that spoke of sadness.

Aoife Brianne McKie, the youngest member of the McKie Family. Her mother had been the late Grace Elizabeth McKie, the daughter of Patrick and Moira; the family had been involved in shipping and antiquities for nearly seventy years. They'd recently begun branching out into electronics, developing some of the equipment Greg had lusted over during his tenure as a Lab Technician.

As for the girl's father, no one had ever known who the man could be though it was assumed from Aoife's vibrantly colored hair that her father was an Irishman given the fact that her mother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents were either brunettes or blonds. She also stood at a diminutive 5'3" where the rest of the family was taller, 5'6" and above. She had remarked to Greg once, when he had visited Konstantin at school, that were she ever to take part in the family photo (a yearly event that she'd never been a part of) that she'd be the sore thumb, literally.

"Aoife," he said, sounding more like himself than he had in weeks. "What are you doing here?" he asked after he crossed over to her chair and pulled her up into a hug.

The sweet irish lilt, a constant reminder of the dual citizenship that allowed the girl to spend her school year in the states and her school breaks on the other side of the ocean, soothed him; she replied, "Konstantin took off without telling us anything. Arse." The last word was playful, though Greg could hear some of her annoyance as she continued, "So I figured now would be a good time to visit Vegas."

"Shit's hitting the fan at home, isn't it?"

"Unfortunately," she admitted. "My grandfather is verging on a stroke if he doesn't get a handle on it, so rather than be there for what will probably be a spectacular fight between he and Uncle Jason, I got the hell of out dodge." She gave him a sad little smile before adding, "But really, it's because you two need me more."

He simply pulled her into another hug, glad to see her and still terrified. Angel had leverage against Konstantin with her; he had leverage against Greg with her, which did not sit well with the man because the last thing he wanted was an innocent in the middle of his problems.

As if hearing his thoughts, she murmured, "You're my family, Greg, and this is where I need to be." She then pulled back and asked, "Where's a good place to eat around here?"

"Considering the take-out I've been living on the past few days, that's just about any place with a booth," he answered, noting the smirk on Warrick's face that spoke of how grateful he too would be for a meal not out of a plastic, tin, or cardboard container. "There's a great buffet on the strip. Like ten bucks to get in, all you can eat, and it's got all kinds of food."

"Sounds good," she said. "The wardens going to let you have a bit of parole from here or shall it just be my lonely soul going there?"

Greg's face hardened. There was no way in hell he was leaving a young woman to wander the streets of Las Vegas in the dark; he'd seen enough assault vics to know she'd be easy pickings for a perp, New York City native or not. "Oh, they'll let me out. Shannon's not stupid enough to think I'll let you go out by yourself."

"Shannon is not stupid enough to think that, no, but she does think you're stupid if you're even entertaining the thought of going outside these walls," the aforementioned woman said from the doorway. "Or do I need to remind you that your uncle's whereabouts are unknown beyond the fact that he's in Vegas."

"Shannon..." he warned, but at her raised eyebrow, he told the federal agent, "You know just as well as I do that they could have found me at any time. The government made it difficult to find me and Konstantin – not impossible – and I spent my time since getting to this country refusing to be scared of that possibility. If he's going to kill me, it's going to happen whether or not people want to accept it."

"It's not about wanting to accept it, Greg! It's the fact that you seem to think it's an unavoidable fact!" She shot back, still horrified by her friend's adamant statements that his death was the likely outcome of this situation.

As he thought over how best to explain to Killian that unless she expected him to live in the lab, there was no way to keep him from being found by Angel and even then, the assassin would find a way in if he had to, Grissom arrived with Brass a step behind.

Both looked grim.

"Greg," Gil started, feeling sick to his stomach as he thought of the message he had for his subordinate. God, but he'd always hated this; the helpless feeling that came with the news everyone dreaded, "The San Gabriel Police called me a few minutes ago."

Aoife took Konstantin's hand. Greg took in a breath.

"They needed to ensure that you were here since there'd been no activity on your credit cards and none of your neighbors had seen you," Grissom went on, knowing he didn't need to explain, but needing the moment to build up to the news. "They're gone. I'm sorry, Greg. Your father died at the house and your mother died on the way to the hospital."

1When?