Synopsis

Kings of Brighton Beach Series 

In Brighton Beach, the largest Russian immigrant community in America, criminals and spies live among hardworking immigrants. The mafia rules with an invisible hand that reaches from beyond the former Iron Curtain. Ruthless men vie to reign as kings over their profitable corners of Little Odessa, and no one can be trusted. Not even family. 

Part 1: Gangsters with Guns

At fourteen Vlad escaped his violent father and the criminal soup of Brighton Beach. Now, twenty years later, he will reclaim his father’s place in the Russian mafia if he can survive.

Episode #1

Vlad plans to ingratiate himself with his father’s former partner, Artur, learn the “business,” and commit a hostile takeover. But Vlad isn’t the only one interested in claiming Artur’s slice of Little Odessa. Vlad’s rivals have no code of honor, and Artur’s daughter, Inna, is discovered in her brother’s own nightclub, raped and drugged, with a gun in her hand and a dead mobster sprawled on top of her. The dead man’s comrades want retribution, blood for blood, but Vlad is convinced Artur's mafia princess is innocent and that the real killer has ambitions to start a war in Brighton Beach.

Excerpt

The door slammed open and Detective Saul Hersh stalked in. “I don’t fucking believe it,” Vlad blurted as one of the few men who could blow all of his plans to hell strutted into the room.

“Believe it,” Saul said. He was short and on the slight side for a cop, but his threat wasn’t in his physical strength. The man was clever, sneaky. He used to have a reputation as a hardcore interrogator, the kind who always got his answers. Sharp was only the warm up. The real deal had just arrived.

Another test, Vlad thought, as dangerous as the others. Artur had eyes and ears on the police force.

Saul placed scarred hands on his narrow hips, and the circular marks drew Vlad’s eyes, just as they had the first time he had met Saul. Ivan’s abuse hadn’t left visible scars on Vlad, other than the cleft in his eyebrow from where his head had hit the corner of a coffee table. Saul had told him his own father used to burn cigarettes on his hands. “I had a choice,” Saul had said, “to be like him, or go another way. You have that choice too. What will you choose?”

“Never thought I’d see you here again. On that side of the table,” Saul said now. “Thought I’d scared some religion into you. Guess I was wrong ’cause here you are. Playing your father’s favorite role—gangster with guns.”

“Stuff it, Hershey. We both know you’re the one who tried to play my father’s role,” Vlad said. “You thought if you saved Nadia from Ivan she’d shower you with … gratitude.”

“Does your mother know you’re here? That you’re gunslinging for Koslovsky—just like your old man?”

“I don’t talk to Nadia. The worthless whore,” Vlad said. He made a spitting sound for extra effect.

Saul got up in his face, grabbed him by the collar. “Don’t talk about your mother that way.”

“You’re defending her?” Vlad couldn’t hold back a mirthless laugh. The poor fucking sap, sucker punched by love for a woman who would never love him back, who would never love anyone save Ivan, even her own son. Ivan had beaten Nadia so hard she couldn’t stand and then turned his rage on Vlad,