The Iron Wolf
The Iron Wolf was a hole in the wall located off the south side of the Merchant District in Silvermoon. Once you walk down a flight of stairs and pass into a little shadowed alleyway, the Iron Wolf can be found after you turn the corner and avoid the trash littered around. The door was rusty and red with a little peephole. It was guarded by a big, ugly ogre named Turk-tuk the Bratvas paid to bounce.
Once inside, the Iron Wolf appeared small and dingy. The decor was overly elaborate and very dusty, with gauzy see through draperies curtaining off a small stage near the back. The gold accents, mirrored surfaces, and red cushions were heavy and out of date. The bar had the taste of a person who liked the appearance of finer things, but once examined closer, everything was fake, cracked, or falling apart.
Behind the bar was a portrait of an older woman– the family matron, Surya Bratva. This wasn’t the only painting in the Iron Wolf. Another portrait hung on the far wall. This portrait had a little shrine around it, candles and all. It was a tacky painting of a shirtless Kael'thas with a lion in mid roar on either side, showing his strength and prowess. The last decoration was from which the bar had its name, a taxidermied gray wolf head hung over the mantleplace.
Vasily Bratva sat at the bar, where he was most days, and dragged a hand through his mop of dark curls, bent cigarette hanging off his lower lip. Silver ribbons of smoke curled off the end of a long cylinder of ash which threatened to spill to the polished bar top as Vasily reached over to pour himself another shot of thick, warm vodka.
Before he could down the drink, one of many already imbibed, his eldest brother Oyah came in. He slid off the barstool and fell into step beside him as the both of them headed towards the back office to have a little chat about family business.
Vasily, the youngest Bratva, clearly knew to keep his trap shut as they walked the length of the Iron Wolf. He brushed the cigarette ashes off his button up shirt, smearing them around on the crisp, white fabric. Oyah held the office door open for him and Vasily made his way inside, already reaching for the bottle of liquor on the tea table while he waited for his brother to talk.
Oyah was a small, stern man. At first glance he looked like he could have been an everyman–his face matched a school teacher, a clerk, a carriage driver. His eyes were sharp and dark and his mouth humorless and grim. He wasn’t tall, but where he lacked in height he made up for in presence. He looked strong, too–his shoulders were broad and his hands calloused and scarred.
“Sit,” Oyah commanded. Oyah went behind the office desk and sat in his worn chair. The office was tiny, no bigger than a closet. Many of the Bratvas came in here and rustled and lost paperwork, or looked for things that were never found. Oyah used the office the most. He looked at his brother from across the desk and listened skeptically.
Vasily snuffed out his smoke in his brother’s ashtray as he sat in the chair across from his desk. He took a pull from the bottle, whiskey this time. He wrinkled his nose. “Good intel, Oyah. I swear this time,” he added hastily. “That club massacre, the fire? The Lost Angels club. Some gallery show…anyway,” Vasily said, waving this off. “I saw a familiar name in the papers. Lord Heathcliff Dracone,” he explained.
Nervously, the youngest Bratva lit another smoke, filling the tiny office with a haze. “You were talking about him, a couple months back. Something about his castle. Some information you had. Well, Lord Dracone’s in town. Now’d be a good time to pounce, eh?”
Oyah listened to his brother explain some–in his words–’good intel.’ However, Vasily’s good intel was always suspect. For one, Vasily listened for shit. Second, Vasily was a known liar. And third–Oyah was annoyed. He listened, rubbing the back of his neck and watching his brother smother out another cigarette into the overfilled ashtray on the office desk.
Oyah had his eye on the Dracones for one reason: they were a wealthy, old world family. Neither Oyah nor anyone else in the Bratva family had any dealings with the Dracones, but Oyah was always interested in anyone with deep, heavy pockets. Eventually, he wanted to slide his hand into them and make their overburdened pockets a little less heavy.
Over the years, Oyah heard a few whisperings here and there that made the Dracones even more interesting–they had some kind of “magic castle” or something or other. The most recent news involving the Dracones that hit the papers was a massive art gallery fire and massacre where people died–and the Dracone brothers were there. Wherever there was chaos and money–a wild Dracone would appear and Oyah was beginning to see the pattern.
“Yeah,” Oyah agreed, slouching back in his chair. “I wanted to meet him first, see what kind of man he is, that’s all. If he’s a man that can be reasoned with, maybe he can let me see his castle–” Oyah stopped himself and shot a glance towards Vasily. “Don’t you–you–Vasily, take any of his offers, do not go to his castle. You tell me first, yeah? I have something Heathcliff may want… but we have to do it face to face, you get me? You listening, Vasily?” Oyah snipped at his brother, his tone like pointed icicles dangling precariously over Vasily’s head.
”Yeah, yeah,” Vasily said sourly, shrugging off the demands. “I’ll get a courier out. Get him to the Iron Wolf. Then I’ll make myself fuckin’ scarce.” He paused, rinsing the bad taste out of his mouth with another pull of whiskey.
“A fucking thank you would be nice,” he grumbled. “But nah. Gonna take credit for this deal like you do all of them.”
Tension simmered in the air between the brothers, coiled tight.
“Sick of this shit, Oyah. When are you gonna let me in proper, huh? I’m not a kid anymore.”
Oyah rested his head against his index finger, looking pointedly at his brother from across the desk. He tapped the desk with his other hand, annoyed. Vasily asked this question all the time–and he wanted to tell him that he could be “let in” when he learned to stop asking. A person who was “in” knew that they were “in” and thus did not need to ask. The “in” was an amorphous, liminal place that was located inside Oyah’s good graces. Oyah had a tight circle he could trust, and usually the only ones inside were his pet dire hyenas.
“When you learn,” Oyah answered flatly, keeping his head propped on his fingertips. “Maybe after you give me Heathcliff Dracone we can talk about it, yeah?”
Heathcliff Dracone was approached by a thin, rangy man in courier attire…though something about him was a little off. He didn’t brandish any House standards, no official Silvermoon colors. Just a patch of two wolves snarling at each other on his breast.
The man handed him a sealed letter, again the stamp in the wax was of two wolves. When opened, the letter read:
Greetings Lord Dracone,
We hope this letter finds you in excellent health and spirits. We won’t waste your precious time, Doctor. We saw your name in the papers and realized we have some information we believe you’ll find most intriguing. Please come to the Iron Wolf tomorrow at 4 in the afternoon. We trust you will find us in a timely fashion.
*the letter was signed simply, Bratva and there was no address*
@wraheathcliff