With the help of my brothers, I’ve taken the prints of Irina’s son and planted them in the dead girl’s apartment from our fix in Chicago. I’ve also switched out Whitfield’s prints for the son’s in the Chicago PD’s evidence database, and made the son look like a passenger on a flight to Chicago a day before the murder.
With a little help from Joseph, we hope that the department will avoid an investigation into their “fingerprint mistake” as long as there are some prints in the system that are linked to the case. It was completely wiping all prints from the case that was the problem. Hopefully, I’ve fixed that with the plant.
Heads will roll in the department and someone will lose their job for arresting the wrong person, but the bottom line is that they must allow our client to return to Miami and we would have done our job and get paid by Kat.
“So you see, Irina, I’ve arranged it so that there is a very long digital trail linking your son to a young girl’s murder in Chicago. There will be no doubt that your son was there at the time and place of the killing, and he will go to prison for a very long time.”
“What do you want from me?” she asks, looking like she’s aged several years after hearing my revelation.
“This could have been a lot easier if you had pursued this whole matter with some civility. Do you just go around kidnapping people you don’t know all the time?”
“I didn’t know who Mr. Masterson was at the time.”
“But you know now?”
“I’m starting to understand, yes.”
“Then let me explain even further. You’ve made such a huge mistake that Ivan is not even coming for you. No family within two-hundred square miles of this place is going to help you.”
Ivan is the head of the largest Bratva family in Philadelphia. He and Joseph have a long-standing relationship that dates back at least twenty years. Ivan owes the old man a favor and has agreed to turn a blind eye to this matter since it’s personal and not Bratva business.
“You talked to Ivan?”
She swallows thickly and starts to look a tinge green. She’s worried because I know who Ivan is and seems to be truly starting to feel the weight of her miscalculation which gives me a feeling of satisfaction although I can’t probably say the same for Roman. I’m not the one who got shot twice and kicked in the ribs.
“Do you want to know what he said?”
“How do I know that you truly spoke to him?”
“He said you’d say that, so I’m supposed to remind you of Paris in 2005.”
Her face drops.
I do not understand what that date or place means to her, but it seems to satisfy her need for validation and she suddenly becomes more cooperative.
“What do you need me to do so that my son doesn’t go down for these bogus charges?”
“Your son will not go free.”
“What?”
“Your son terrified a young woman who means something to a friend of mine. He has to pay for that.”
“If he goes to jail, then why must I negotiate with you?”
“Well, first, you should negotiate for your own self-preservation and second, I could arrange it so that your son never leaves prison for the rest of his miserable life. It’s easier to do than you think. His appeals will get lost, his parole will get pushed back, and then next thing you know, nobody cares anymore and he’s forgotten.”
“What do you want, mudak?”
“First, I’d prefer it if you’d avoid calling me a Russian asshole or bitch or whatever the hell you just said.”
“You keep a woman like me in a disgusting basement then you’re a mudak.”
“I fed you a nice chicken dinner.”
“In a basement and it was cold.”
Whatever.
“Next, we want a piece of your business as payment for the pain and suffering you’ve inflicted on my partner. He will have to spend some time recuperating, which is time away from our business.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five percent.”
“I cannot give you twenty-five percent of Bratva business!”
“Twenty-five percent of your profits not Bratva. No one will ever know that you’re giving a quarter of your money to us unless you tell them.”
“Thieves.” She spits close to my feet.
“Partners.”
“I’m not giving a quarter of my business to you mutts.”
I ignore her tirade. She will do exactly as she’s told or she’ll find herself six feet under.
“Finally, you will put these two lowlifes out of their misery. They’re not important enough for me to have their blood on my hands, but they’ve got to go.”
Her two enforcers start speaking rapidly in their native tongue. Probably begging for their lives. One of them even puts his hands in a prayer formation, but the woman shakes her head.
“I’ll let you three say your goodbyes. The weapon is taped behind the pipe of that sink.”
She raises an eyebrow, probably surprised that I’m allowing her access to a firearm but there’s a method to my madness. I know what I’m doing. I return to my office upstairs where we watch the three of them from the camera monitors we had installed about a year ago.
“There’s no way she’s going to do it, Camden,” Stone says. “I don’t think the old woman is a cold-blooded killer of her own people.”
“You better hope she doesn’t do it,” Cutter says. “Roman wanted to deal with them himself and I’ve got to agree that he has every right after what they did.”
“Roman almost died from that slug to his gut. He will not be on his feet for a while and we can’t keep them down here indefinitely,” I tell them.
“Did you ask Joseph about it?”
“I did.”
“Okkkkay then,” Cutter replies unconvinced of the soundness of this plan. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
While Irina’s two enforcers’ hands and feet are bound in front of them, we’ve allowed her to have some freedom around the basement. She searches for the weapon and says something to them in Russian once she locates it. They both frantically shake their heads no until she raises her voice at them.
My assumption is that they are begging for their lives, but that isn’t it the case. She hands the one on Roman’s shit list—Sergei—the weapon and sits on the bed. After smoothing her hair and placing her hands in her lap, she gives the directive.
“What the hell are they doing?” I wonder.
Sergei points and aims the gun at point-blank range to Irina’s head.
“Oh, fuck!” Cutter exclaims.
I’m pretty stunned myself. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
“Maybe that wasn’t a good idea,” Stone says to me. “Now their boss is dead and those two maniacs have a gun. How are we going to go back down there without getting our heads blown off?”
“Let’s just watch,” I assure my brothers, but I’m not truly sure of anything.
The two men have another heated conversation in Russian. They argue with each other over Irina’s dead body until the arguing abruptly stops. Sergei shoots the other man, whose name I could never find, in the head.