Chapter 26 Payback #2
“Amy Small involved her own son in a crew of bad guys, which ended with his ass in prison. Then she found Duane, set him up, played with his emotions and put him in a spot where some big player might disappear him. Dex was in on that. Dex picked Duane because he knows there’s a chance Duane isn’t going to make it out, and he wants Duane to go down, not one of his guys.
So he knows there’s a chance Duane might pay the ultimate price simply for caring about somebody.
Also, Dex knows he might lose that money.
And he’s going to lose that money. So my vote is, he learns his lesson the hard way, if he has a job to do, he has to have the balls to do it himself. ”
Joey, new to our crew, after this speech, got a full visual assessment from the veterans (and Titus).
It was all-around positive (obviously, that was a kickass speech!).
“That’s my vote too,” Gemma chimed in.
“Me too,” Harlow (who had decided to come to get her mind off Javi’s meeting tomorrow) agreed.
“Don’t look at me,” Jessie said when we all looked at her for her vote. “This Dex guy can go fuck himself.”
“For sure,” I said.
“I think we’re in,” Luna said.
“Right,” Titus said. “Time to introduce you to Dimitri.”
Dimitri?
Oh boy.
* * *
The restaurant we went to was one I’d never been to.
It was also one I’d never again go to.
Not because it was gross or anything. I didn’t see it. We went in the back off a shadowy alley.
It was just that it was obviously a front for the Russian mob. I’d never tried borsht, even though I wanted to give it a go, but I was going to steer clear.
We went through the kitchen, and the writing was on the wall when not anyone in that busy kitchen even glanced at a row of eight women and Titus being led through by a henchman.
The henchman knocked once on a door, nothing was heard inside, but he opened it anyway and jerked up his chin to Titus.
I took a deep breath as Titus led us in.
I thought it would be an office. Or a storeroom with easy-clean cement floors where mobsters could get up to all sorts of shenanigans and not have to worry about stain removal afterward.
It wasn’t either.
It was nearly as cool as Titus’s man cave, what with its red-topped, eight player poker table in the center, the plethora of couches and armchairs arranged around tables for maximum lounging-while-chatting-or-plotting-your-next-felony potential, a full wet bar and a wall packed with books that gave it a library air.
There was no dais nor killer portraits of the man in charge, certainly no fabulous, restored, gold, vintage Camaro (the showpiece of the man cave), and there was a little too much red, gold and ostentation for my preferences.
But the hot blond guy sitting at the poker table sure made up for the fall down on décor.
His hair was short at the sides, messy up top. His eyes were brown. His brows were thick and darker than his hair. His jaw was strong. His cheekbones were high, so that made the hollows underneath them mouthwatering.
Ivan Drago was so hot, he stood the test of time to retain his hotness even when he was the villain, and his movie came out decades ago.
This dude was hotter.
By, like…a lot.
And when he stood, we found he was tall, broad shouldered, narrow hipped, and lean. Not skinny in the slightest, but he was no physical powerhouse.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t lethal.
Even with his wide, white, welcoming smile in his tanned, handsome face, he terrified me.
This was the first really bad guy the Angels had come into direct contact with (except for the pedophile Raye stun gunned, but that was before my Angel time), and as attractive as he was, I wasn’t sure this was a good thing.
“Titus,” he said, his accent apparent even on Titus’s name.
Titus went to him, dropped the bag on the poker table, and they did that man-hug, pounding-backs, arm-wrestling thing.
When they broke, Titus stepped aside, and Dimitri looked to us, his face got soft, his eyes got shrewd, and he said, “So these are the Angels.”
While Titus did introductions (with our street names), I realized he’d smoothed our way with Dimitri because his henchman didn’t wait for a call to come in. He was completely unsurprised Titus showed, and he knew the Angels, not some member of Dex’s gang, were coming.
“All the generations of the Angels,” Dimitri noted when Titus was done (and yeah, we’d taken street names from the TV show and movies, and if you knew enough Charlie’s Angels lore, you’d know who were the veterans and who were the new recruits by what names we had).
“Good to meet you, Dimitri,” Raye said, and she looked and sounded a lot calmer than I felt.
“You as well, kroska,” Dimitri murmured, watching her closely.
“We don’t want to take a lot of your time. We just wanted you to have that.” Raye dipped her head to the bag. “And get our friend free of this situation.”
“Spasibo,” he replied. “Bonus, never had such attractive bagmen.”
It was at this point, Titus put all our lives on the line by sharing, “They wanna know if they can take about ten, fifteen K so their guy can get his house painted.”
Dimitri tilted his head in a manner that was both ridiculously attractive and spine-chillingly scary before he turned to us.
“It’s good to look out for our friends.”
Okay.
Phew.
At least he didn’t take offense to that.
He then waved his hand magnanimously over the bag. “Fifteen K works for me.”
I would guess so, since we’d just delivered a quarter of a million, and he did nothing to earn it except probably get one of his lieutenants to set up a meet and then show up at the appointed time in his ostentatious lair.
Titus nodded to us.
I went forward with Luna and opened the bag.
My God.
That was a lot of cash.
I didn’t have time to marvel at what that amount of money in cash looked like, since we had an immediate conundrum, seeing as the cash bundles were strapped like the banks held them.
This meant each bundle was a hundred one-hundred-dollar bills, so fifteen K meant we’d have to separate one, and I could tell neither Luna nor I wanted to ask if Dimitri minded if we did that.
“Take two,” Dimitri said gregariously. “I’m feeling generous tonight.”
We looked at him.
He grinned.
It was glamorous and it sent cold singing through my veins.
We took two.
Luna shoved them in her waistband.
We stepped back.
“We done?” Titus asked.
“Da,” Dimitri answered.
“We good?” Titus asked.
“Da, always T,” Dimitri answered.
Titus clapped him on the shoulder and jutted his chin toward the door.
Was that it?
“Uh, thanks for being so cool,” Joey said.
Dimitri’s brown eyes roved her top to toe, and even I felt the residual sexuality drifting from his look, even if Luna and Harlow were standing between Joey and me.
“Ne upominay ob etom,” he muttered. “Don’t mention it, Anghel.”
Boy, “angel” in Russian sounded both hard and pretty.
Just like this guy.
Titus led the way, and we all gave Dimitri nods or waves (the last were Harlow, Gemma and me, these garnered a sexy smirk from Dimitri, so we quit doing it…fast) before we followed.
No discussion, we got in our cars.
Still no discussion, we drove to where we’d agreed to rendezvous: close to, but not right at where Dex was waiting to get his delivery.
We strapped on our Tasers (Titus told us we couldn’t go in to visit Dimitri while packing), and I was thinking it might be a good idea to ask Arthur for some Kevlar vests, before we got out and met on the sidewalk.
“Duane told us they weren’t strapped,” Raye shared.
“But they’re gonna have weapons close,” Titus added. “That’s why this is happening.”
And with that, Cap, Roam, Eric, Javi, Knox, Liam, Brady, Shaw, Landon…and Gabe materialized from the shadows.
And they weren’t packing Tasers.
But they were packing.
Gabe came right to me.
And he said, “Someone means something to you, he means something to me.”
Ohmigod!
I had just the best guy in the world!
Still.
“Gabe—” I started.
“It isn’t like we don’t think you got this,” Gabe said. “It’s that this weasel needs to go to ground and stay there. And if Duane has this kind of power at his back, they are not gonna fuck with him ever again.”
Okay, sue me.
That was so sweet, I threw myself at him and gave him girlie hug.
Gabe returned a quick squeeze then set me away from him.
Okay, yes, right.
We had work to do.
This wasn’t the time for girlie hugs or, say, make-out sessions.
Even quick ones.
Alas.
“Ready?” Raye asked.
We all nodded.
“Let’s go,” Luna said.
All the men but Gabe and Cap vanished again.
“Where—?” I began.
“Shh, cupcake,” Gabe whispered.
Okay, yes, right.
We had work to do, and these guys knew how to do it.
We’d gone for our cat burglar looks again (sans the knit caps), though this time I was in my black turtleneck and black jeans, which was good in this not very well-lit neighborhood.
And Gabe, Cap and Titus didn’t take us on a direct trajectory to the front door of Dex’s evil lair (which was just a house that was halfway between the cute place where Jinx lived, and the rundown, sad place where Duane lived, whilst leaning heavily toward the Duane side).
We hugged a lot of fences, went down a couple of alleys, ducked under some windows, and just when I was lamenting the fact that it was highly unlikely, if something went awry, I could hoof it flat out all the way back to the cars, we reached our destination.
When we got to the door, Gabe stood beside it, Cap on the other side, Titus next to Cap, and Gabe didn’t knock.
He looked to us huddling behind some bushes.
“You set, Gem?” Jessie whispered.
“We’re rolling,” Gem whispered back.
I gave the high sign to Gabe.
He took out his gun, put his boot to the door, it popped open, then Cap, also with his gun, and Titus, ditto with the gun, and finally Gabe, as mentioned, with his gun, stormed in.
There was some shouting, which meant my heart was thudding.
Raye rolled in with Taser at the ready.
We all followed the same way.