Kala takes a deep breath. Her gaze shifts from the kitchen to the windows to the hallway leading to her bedroom.
She sent Wolfgang on his way hours ago, immediately busying herself with mundane chores: emptying her suitcase and putting a load of laundry in the wash; doing the few dishes still left in the kitchen sink. She went to the grocer down the street and picked up ingredients for tonight's dinner. She had just finished putting away some groceries when the washing machine buzzed the end of its cycle.
Kala frowns thoughtfully as she hangs the last few items of clothes on the drying rack. She felt she needed to busy herself to avoid thinking about the last time she was in her flat, alone. She thought she might need the distraction.
It turns out she does not.
Kala gives a faint huff, brows creasing in mild surprise. While she wouldn't say she lied to Wolfgang earlier about not being afraid to return to her flat, she was certainly exaggerating her confidence. After all, she had left her apartment deeply shaken; frightened enough to run away without any real thought beyond the need to escape. That blinding fear was truly gone, but being here, alone again…
Kala deliberately recalls that night. She remembers finding the note on her bed. She remembers the shock and the panic, believing she wasn't alone.
She thinks for a moment, trying to gauge an honest emotion before she settles, ironically, on indifferent. Despite everything, her flat feels mostly normal. She isn't nervous to be back here, alone; she isn't worried that Lila – or anyone else – is watching her in the shadows, waiting to frighten her. Or worse.
Kala gives a mental shake. After everything that's happened, it seems almost counter-intuitive that she feels so calm. But there is comfort in knowing that Lila only tricked the landlord into letting her inside, just as there is comfort in knowing that Lila's actions are motivated by ambition, rather than any romantic feelings for Wolfgang.
Kala grimaces. Wolfgang and Felix's vague explanations about Lila had made it seem as if Lila was a crazy ex-girlfriend: controlling, unpredictable, jealous. There is definitely some comfort knowing that a broken heart isn't why Lila is so intent on breaking up Wolfgang's relationship.
As if a burning ambition to run a criminal organization in Berlin is a more rational excuse.
Kala gives a huff, drying her damp hands on her jeans.
Wolfgang walked away from a life where he would have been a mob boss. Like his uncle. Like his grandfather.
She picks up her empty laundry basket, walking absently back to her room to return it to the space between her desk and the wardrobe.
Her gaze lands on the crumpled paper on top of her keyboard, just where it was thrown.
She smooths the note flat, studying the neat writing: How well do you think you know Wolfgang?
She wrinkles her nose at the flourished initials, at the boldly written stroke of each letter and the telephone number written beneath. She had been more terrified to find the note than she had been of the message it contained.
Kala sits down at her desk, the ghost of her image reflected on her monitor.
Lila said Wolfgang is a dangerous man; that Lukas, for all his wealth, is afraid of him for a reason. Lila had very casually mentioned the gruesome murder of Wolfgang's father, and deliberately danced around Wolfgang's secret, alluding to his dangerous past, confident that Kala's curiosity would lead her to look at the contacts in Wolfgang's phone.
Instead, Wolfgang confessed everything himself. Kala wonders how much he held back.
People looking for power will come and go until they forget I exist , he'd said. Why? How much power did his family have?
Kala frowns.
She had wanted to learn about Bratva and the Kings of Berlin. She had wanted to understand the world Wolfgang left behind.
She sets aside Lila's note and reaches for the mouse. She wonders why she is suddenly nervous, but corrects herself almost immediately: She knows exactly why. She understands that organized crime is responsible for many terrible things. But so long as the Kings and Bratva are just concepts - words she grasps but can't define - they won't feel real. Wolfgang's involvement won't feel real. She needs to learn what they are and what they do. She needs to understand.
Kala pauses and begins a tentative search.
…
She spends a good deal of time gathering information about organized crime in Berlin: Newspaper articles, government pages, Wiki sites, all seem rife with speculation mixed almost indiscriminately with facts. Illegal gambling, drugs, violent crime, human trafficking: almost all are attributed to one criminal group or another. Camorra and Bratva are among several that are active in Berlin. The fact that each of these groups fall into jurisdictional areas run by "Kings" is unbelievable when they all seem unconnected. But the research pages - and Interpol and German Intelligence Agencies like BKA and BND - seem to believe so.
The Kings control them all. And Wolfgang, if he wanted, can control the Kings.
Kala's heart beats fast; her hands feel cold.
Maybe she should stop at understanding what the Kings are. Maybe it is enough that she has a chilling idea of the life Wolfgang was born into but abandoned.
But it seems like lying to stop now, when she understands the power the Bogdanows must have held: when she understands why Lila wants him and Lukas is afraid of him.
Kala starts her search the same way she did that first time she looked for Wolfgang. But now, she looks at any link that shares his surname, hoping and fearing to learn more.
At first, only simple death notices appear: The obituary for Wolfgang's grandfather gives dates of birth and death, that Hassan Bogdanow was, ambiguously, a "successful businessman" who is survived by a son and two grandsons, none of whom are named. The obituaries for Steiner and Sergei only note their deaths but make no reference to how they died. She finds no notices for Wolfgang's parents at all.
Kala releases a huff of frustration, perplexed by the lack of information on a notorious family, particularly given the violence by which several of those members died.
She stumbles across an unexpected source almost by accident.
Kala finds a link to a short paragraph in an old, foreign newspaper - Bosnian, translated through the Internet - about Anton Bogdanow. Until that moment, she had found no mention of Wolfgang's father. The article is more of an announcement: Anton Bogdanow was caught in Berlin trying to break into a safe containing diamonds worth hundreds of thousands of Deutsche Marks. The story states that Anton is the younger son of Hassan Bogdanow, the King of the East.
Kala's eyes grow wide.
A search through the archives finds a follow-up to the story: Anton was arrested and sentenced to prison for three years; then a few lines noting his release, met by his father and brother. There is no mention of Wolfgang's mother or of Wolfgang, who would have been only six or seven at the time.
Kala frowns, searching through the rest of the Bosnian paper's archives. Between 1990 and 2000, there are multiple little stories, similar to the first, of the Bogdanows and their businesses: rumored ties to the new Russian oligarchy; whispered dealings with people and places unknown to Kala.
If she had any doubts before, she has none now. Everything Wolfgang told her is true.
Kala's heart thuds loudly in her ears.
The more she reads, the more apparent it becomes why the Bogdanows attracted the attention of a Bosnian newspaper.
Anton's attempted burglary was an anomaly. Theft isn't one of the crimes the Bogdanows were known for. Neither are drugs or prostitution or any number of other vices Kala would have expected.
What they were known for was weapons dealing.
Kala feels slightly dizzy.
The reason the Bosnian paper ran stories on the Bogdanows was because it was an open secret that during their war, the Bogdanows brokered weapons to Bosnia. Their activity was deemed news-worthy. Until suddenly, it wasn't.
Kala feels a chill in her veins, her memory replaying her conversation with Wolfgang last night.
"And Steiner?" She can hear herself ask the question, watching the weariness on Wolfgang's face. "How did Steiner die?"
The look he gave chilled her.
" Fiery car crash around Straulauer Allee. Courtesy of an RPG," he had said with a shrug. "Rocket Propelled Grenade."
Kala's breath catches in her throat.
She feels dizzy as suspicion plants itself firmly in her head, unable to be willed away.
Did Wolfgang kill Steiner?
His disdain for his cousin isn't a secret. If he had done it, surely the police would have found evidence? Polizei don't look too closely at these kinds of things, Lila had said. Wolfgang is a dangerous man.
But was he capable of doing such a thing?
Kala's answer is swift and unbidden: Yes .
She sits back against her chair, heart racing as if she had climbed a hill.
She always felt there was something dark inside of him - how could there not be when he was raised surrounded by cruelty?
She thinks of Wolfgang at Lukas's party, at his office in the club, the zoo when he thought they were being watched, the car last night when she told him about her meeting with Lila: the way his expression shutters; the steel in his eyes.
Could he have killed his cousin, who had tortured him mercilessly when they were growing up? Yes . She exhales slowly. Yes .
Maybe something happened. Maybe it was self-defense. If Wolfgang killed Steiner, there was a reason why.
But the oddest part - the most unexpected discovery about this new suspicion - is that she feels no alarm, no worry that if Wolfgang is capable of such violence, he's capable of hurting her.
Kala stares at her screen, stunned by her suspicion, but, somehow, not frightened of Wolfgang.
Because just as she had sensed his darkness, she knows there is also something good inside of him. A gentleness that survived despite everything he's suffered. She had always thought so, always remarked on it; she feels it in the way he treats her. She feels it with deep certainty.
And she is fiercely protective of him because of it.
She almost laughs at the absurdity. Kala Dandekar, the sheltered child of a humble Mumbai cook, is protective of the grandson of a notorious Russian mob boss. A grandson who very likely killed his own cousin.
She covers her face for a moment, flush with an almost manic realization that she is in love with someone who is probably a murderer.
How can that matter so little to her? Because Steiner was evil? How can she feel so unconcerned that Wolfgang may have done that? What of crimes he committed in service of his grandfather? She feels almost sick with self-recrimination.
But he told her he walked away from it. He can't help who he was born to. And she told him that that was his family; it was his past.
She doesn't care. The gods help her.
Do you understand what you give up if you stay with him?
Lila's words at the coffee shop suddenly ring in Kala's ears. Everything that Lila said now pivots with crystal clarity in light of Wolfgang's confession and the information Kala now holds.
The respectable life, the club, you, are all experiments to him: a life he might think he wants, but won't know what to do with…When he is tired of trying to be something that he's not, what do you think will happen to you?
It was difficult to hear even when she knew there was no real relationship.
But now?
Kala's breath catches in her throat. Wolfgang had been vehement about not wanting to go back to his old life. He was proud of the club, of the independence it represents. She doesn't doubt his sincerity.
And he had said he wants a real relationship with her. He had meant it. He revealed his past because he meant it. Kala shuts her eyes. I can't ask you to stay with me unless you know , he'd said. She hadn't fully grasped what it meant then. But now that she understands better, now that she is faced with a horrible suspicion, she isn't sure what it means to her. Except that it somehow, impossibly, doesn't change how she feels about him at all.
The tone playing from her pocket grows more insistent. Kala blinks back her thoughts and answers her phone, just barely catching Wolfgang's call. " Hallo ?"
"You ok?"
The sound of his voice, soft and concerned, grounds her almost immediately. Kala bobs her head. "Yes," she says. She wishes he was there, that she can curl into his arms. "I'm good. Are you on your way here?"
He mumbles something to someone beside him and gives a deep sigh. "Sorry," he says. "We had some trouble last night."
"Oh." Kala swallows her disappointment: "I see. If you need to stay, don't worry about me. We can see -"
Wolfgang interrupts her before she finishes: "I'm leaving now," he says firmly. "It's nothing that can't wait until later. I need to get out of here. I need some sleep." He pauses, his voice weary. "I need to see you ," he says simply.
She releases a breath. "Ok."
"See you soon."
He hangs up before she thinks to ask him if he's hungry, if he's coming straight there or heading to his place first, or any number of little things that suddenly come to mind.
Certainly not the one, big thing that she could ask.
Kala frowns. She logs off her computer and gets up to make dinner.
A/N: Happy New Year everyone!
I didn't mean to take this long with an update, but here we are. I assure you that I absolutely intend to finish this fic, but three years in (!) and life is busy.
As always, many thanks to the patient Halcyon_Red for still being there to beta
And many thanks to all of you for still reading and sending encouraging words. TYSM!