“Address.”
He takes out his phone.
“Easy. Show me.”
He looks it up and lets me read it. Archie Vega. Contact info. I pocket his phone and text Viktor the details. Viktor will be on him in ten minutes.
The waitress brings raki for him, and a vodka for me.
“You couldn’t have told me that in the first place? What’s wrong with you?”
The old man sips his drink. All the old generation, they drink raki—a licorice-y cross between grappa and ouzo.
“I’ll sit here for a while and make sure you don’t warn Vega.” I down the rest of my drink, then I turn the glass around and around on the table.
Something feels wrong. This is all going too easy.
Chapter Thirteen
Viktor
Here is a secret about the orphanage that nobody will ever tell you: When you’re in one, you always hope that you were not wanted. An accidental pregnancy.
Because the alternative is that you are a product of violence, torture, horror. That you are ugly and hated from birth. That’s what you always believe, though.
When the families pass you over, you think they see your ugly heart. It’s worse when they take you home only to return you. Moving into the Bratva, I became an overachiever in violence. It was a way to get at least somebody to want me.
Now with that talent I help my brothers.
We find Archie Vega is alone in his house, on his Exercycle watching the eleven o’clock news. The TV and the Exercycle keep him from hearing us, and when he sees us, it keeps him from running. He nearly falls off it, trying to get away. I pull him off.
Yuri and Mischa hold him at gunpoint while I ask about Kiro. He tells us he knows nothing. I see in his eyes that this is a lie.
“You want to tell us,” I say simply.
He shakes his head. Ta quift bota nanen.
Tito translates: “May the world fuck your mother.”
“Okay then.” We tie him to a weightlifting bench. It’s metal. Good and strong. “I will fuck you up then.” I cut his clothes off him. He needs to feel vulnerable. I need the information fast. To get Aleksio out of that restaurant.
The day Aleksio arrived changed my world. A blood brother.
I belonged. I wanted to drop to my knees and weep there in the garage when Aleksio told me I had a family that actually wanted me. He was so angry with me for what I did to Mira. I didn’t think he’d be so angry. It fucked me up, as Aleksio would say. But I will earn back his love.
I wish I could have walked in there with him. Of course it would be madness for us both to go in there. If it gets bloody, the other must remain for Kiro. Still, I hate it. If Aleksio dies, I want to be by his side, dying with him. It would be a privilege to die with Aleksio.
I press the knife to Vega’s belly. I feel the clock ticking, but I smile and laugh. You never let them know you’re in a hurry. It gives them power.
Easy things first. What he ate for dinner. Make him visualize the inside of his belly, and what I will do. Pirogi, he tells me. With white fefferoni. I send Mischa to check his dinner dishes.
Now he begins to freak. Why is this so important? Why do we want to check his dinner dishes? I wait, as though bored. Scaring a man is in the crazy fucking details.
Mischa comes back and confirms it all—in Russian—and I smile. “Okay, then.”
Just like that he calls his maid. An old woman with a head scarf. She was hiding. She leads Mischa to a box of paper files. She says Lazarus got jpeg images of these files. These are the originals.
I find the file about Kiro. A Worland file, like the ones we stole, except nothing is blacked out. An address.
I text Aleksio. I have the address. But so does Lazarus.
Yuri drives like hell back while I go through the box. There are other files, too. Lots of secrets here.
Chapter Fourteen
Aleksio
Aldo Nikolla has finished his raki, and a new one arrives without him having to ask for it. He lowers his head, voice gravelly. “You want to kill me so bad it hurts,” he says. “You could, you know. You have everything I have on Kiro. You might get out alive. I’m guessing you have guys in here, right?” he looks around and then back at me with curiosity. “Why don’t you go ahead and try it?”
Because I promised Mira. Not like I’ll say that. I turn my tumbler of vodka on the napkin. Something feels off.
“Is it Lazarus? You don’t want Lazarus in charge?” He picks up his newly arrived raki, cloudy liquid in a slim glass. “A lot of men are scared of Lazarus running the show. But you’re not scared, are you? You don’t scare. Konstantin would’ve beat that right out of you.”
“Say his name again and I’ll take one of your fingers.”
“There it is. Loyalty. Sentimentality. Just like your father.”
I know what he’s doing—trying to unbalance me. We’re in a standoff, here in this booth. Neither of us can move on the other. I give him a cool stare. “You don’t know shit about me, old man.”
A kid comes by with a tray of cigarettes, and Nikolla takes one. Chicago has laws about smoking indoors, but Agronika is another world.
“You have a CEO strategy, but inside you’re volatile and emotional, just like him. He played the hard guy, but emotions made him a puppet. Emotions made him my puppet.” He lights up.
My face burns. “You’re calling my father sentimental for trusting his supposed best friend and partner? You are I pa besa, old man.” Without loyalty, without honor.
It’s the worst thing you can say to a man like Aldo. And in his case, it’s true.
He gives no sign of caring. He barely seems to have heard. Suspicious movement to my side. I don’t like it.
“Your father never saw me coming. Never imagined. That’s how I got the drop on him. He didn’t think strategy; he ruled by his heart. He let his emotions cloud his mind.”
Stay cool, don’t take the bait, I think through the surge of heat that moves through me. I could make him mad, too. I could tell him how Mira’s lips felt, wrapped around my cock. But, sentimental fucker that I am, I don’t. I protect her. The motherfucker’s right.
He looks up, cold dark eyes under bushy brows. “You really think you will find Kiro alive?”
My heart pounds. I feel him. I know he’s still alive.
“The foolishness of you moving on me before you have Kiro. The three brothers together would have given you credibility. I have a little saying: ‘You only have to shoot when your threats don’t work.’ With Kiro, your threats would have been enough. But you couldn’t wait. Had to ride out to find your brother. Konstantin wouldn’t have allowed it, but he’s old now, isn’t he? You’re running the show now.”
“I will be.”
“Pah. You Dragushas. You’re easy. Your father was easy. Your mom was even easier.”
I power through the surge of rage.
“She lay there after with her mouth open. Eyes open. Nobody to close them—that’s what she was worth.”
“I closed them,” I say.
This surprises him.
“You didn’t know? I was there the whole time. Konstantin pulled me into a nook by the window. We saw what you and Lazarus did. We waited until the house was clear. You were searching the grounds for us. So stupid of you not to take a little extra time. I went to her, and I closed her eyes and her mouth. And my father’s. And I vowed to destroy you. You’re already gone, old man.”