Chapter 11 #2
The warehouse on Loomis is the one we use for conversations. It’s isolated. The walls are thick. The floor is concrete with a drain in the center. The nearest occupied building is over four hundred yards away.
Grigori Laskin is in the chair when I arrive.
He looks younger than I expected, with a soft face and wide eyes. He’s been roughed up — nothing serious, a split lip and a swollen eye, Alexei’s standard introduction — but the real damage is in his posture. He’s slumped. Deflated.
I walk in, remove my jacket, fold it, and place it on the table by the wall. Then I roll up my sleeves.
The chair faces me. Laskin’s eyes track my movements the way a cornered animal tracks a predator, not looking for escape, not yet, but for information. Trying to read what’s coming from the way I fold my cuffs, the way I stand, the way I breathe.
There’s a table between us. On it: a glass of water, untouched. A file folder. A pair of pliers. And a hammer.
“Grigori,” I say.
“Pakhan, please, I can explain?—”
“You can. That’s what we’re doing here.”
I sit across from him and fold my hands on the table.
Tonight I feel a restlessness in my hands that has been building since the kitchen, since the shower, since the hours of staring at camera feeds and forcing myself to close them. The frustration has nowhere to go.
Laskin will give it direction.
“Four hundred thousand dollars,” I say. “Over approximately two weeks from the South Side collections. You took between eight and twelve percent off the top, deposited the difference into a personal account at Chase, and used it to purchase a vehicle, an apartment, and the attention of a woman named” — I glance at the file — “Natalie.”
The color drains from his face .
“I, I was going to pay it back. I swear. I just needed?—”
“You needed a BMW.” I open the file and spread the pages in front of him.
Bank statements, receipts, photographs. The car.
The apartment. Screenshots of Natalie in a restaurant that charges four hundred dollars for a steak.
“You needed an apartment with a view. You needed a woman who costs more than your salary.”
“Rolan — Pakhan — please?—”
“Do you know what you actually needed, Grigori?” I lean forward, my voice dropping.
“You only needed to be invisible. You needed to take the money, hide it, and live the same life and wait. Five years, maybe ten. Then retire quietly with a nest egg no one would question. That’s what a smart man would have done. ”
I reach for the hammer and pick it up, turning it over slowly in my hand, feeling the weight, the balance. The metal catches the fluorescent light and throws a small, bright reflection across Laskin’s face.
“But you’re not a smart man,” I say. “You’re a man who bought a BMW with my money and posted photographs of it online.”
“I’ll give it all back. Every cent. I’ll sell the car. I’ll?—”
“Yes. You will.” I set the hammer down gently. The tremor it makes on the metal table is precise. “But first we need to have a conversation about trust.”
I stand and walk around the table, stopping behind his chair. He can feel me but can’t see me, and I let that work — let the silence and the proximity do what they’re designed to do.
“Give me your right hand.”
“What?”
“Your right hand. The one that took my money. Put it on the table.”
He’s crying now. The same kind of crying Viktor did, wet, heaving, undignified. But unlike Viktor, Laskin doesn’t have a family to protect. He doesn’t have a noble motive or a sympathetic circumstance.
“Rolan — please — I’ll do anything?—”
“I know,” I say. “Put your hand on the table.”
He obeys, resting shaky hands on the metal surface, fingers splayed. His nails are manicured. Of course they are. He paid for that with my money, too.
I pick up the hammer.
“This is what happens,” I say, and my voice is calm. “One finger for each day you stole from me. One week, seven fingers. For two weeks, we’ll have to settle for a few toes to make up the difference.”
The scream starts before the hammer falls. The anticipation is always louder than the impact, the body’s reaction to the certainty of pain, the animal brain overriding everything else.
I raise the hammer again.
The second finger.
The crack is the same, but the scream is different. It’s higher, thinner, breaking at the edges.
I set the hammer on the table and step back, rolling my sleeves down. My hands are steady. There’s blood, but not much. The hammer crushes rather than cuts, and the mess is contained.
“Alexei will finish up with you,” I say.
I pick up my jacket, put it on, and walk toward the door.
“And, Grigori?”
He’s cradling his hand against his chest, hunched forward, his face streaked with tears and snot. His eyes find mine.
“The BMW,” I say. “It doesn’t suit you. I’m keeping it.”
I’m not into cars the way my dad used to be, but the BMW seems nice. I walk out. The warehouse door closes behind me.
In the car, I press my hands flat on my thighs. They’re clean. No blood, no marks. The distance between intention and execution was a hammer and two fingers. The silence did more work than the violence itself.
I feel better. Not good, but better. The voltage that’s been building since the kitchen has discharged partially, just enough to breathe.
Dmitri drives me back. I close my eyes and do not think about hazel eyes or cartoon pajamas.
Sunday is Elizabeth’s day off.
I intended to spend the morning with Anya, to sit with her and ask about the new tutor. I wanted to bring her breakfast, the way I used to on Sundays, before work consumed everything, before I looked up one morning and realized my daughter had stopped expecting me to be there.
Instead, I find myself in my office again, staring at the security feed.
Camera six: empty. Camera twelve: empty.
Where is she?
“You look distracted,” Mikhail says from the doorway. He has a habit of entering without knocking.
“I’m not distracted.”
“You asked me to arrange a formal introduction with Miss Calloway. Shall I still?—”
“That won’t be necessary. We’ve already met.”
Both eyebrows rise. “I wasn’t aware.”
“Friday night, in the kitchen.”
“The private kitchen?”
“She didn’t know it was private. No one told her.”
“Oh.” He processes this. I see him filing it. “And the introduction went... well?”
“She was making hot chocolate for Anya.”
There’s a shift in his expression. “I see. ”
“We spoke briefly. She seems competent.”
Competent. The word has the taste of coal in my mouth. She’s competent the way a hurricane is breezy.
“Well,” Mikhail says, “I’m relieved she didn’t run out the door. The last one nearly did.”
“Noted.”
He lingers. He reads my expression and leaves only after parsing its meaning.
Alexei arrives thirty minutes later with a different problem.
“Dushku agreed to meet,” he says. “Face to face. He’s framing the construction situation as a ‘misunderstanding.’”
“It wasn’t a misunderstanding.”
“No. It was a declaration. But he wants diplomacy.”
“Where?”
“That’s the issue. His ground or yours. No neutral territory.”
Going to Dushku’s territory means limited security, an unfamiliar environment, and restricted exits. Coming here means he sees the estate’s layout, rotations, and entry points. Both options have costs.
But one puts me on familiar ground with full infrastructure, and if Dushku is who I think he is — patient, strategic, playing a game that extends beyond a construction bid — he won’t make a move inside my house. Not yet. Not when the board is still being set.
“Here,” I say. “A maximum of four of his men. No weapons past the gate. I’ll guarantee his safety under my roof.”
“He’ll want more than four.”
“He can want whatever he likes. Four. Non-negotiable.”
Alexei nods. “Timeline?”
“Wednesday. Make sure to double the security team. All hands on deck. I don’t expect Dushku to try anything, but I want him to see what he’s up against. Let him count the guns and do the math.”
“The Calloway woman,” Alexei says. “She’ll need to be out of sight during the meeting. Dushku is observant. A new face in the household will interest him.”
“Agreed. Keep her and Anya in the residential wing. No exceptions.”
“She’ll have questions.”
“Tell her it’s a business meeting that requires privacy. She doesn’t need more than that.”
Alexei nods and stands, then pauses at the door.
“The soldier, Laskin, is at the hospital. He’ll lose mobility in the index and middle fingers permanently.”
“Good. He’ll remember every time he touches something that isn’t his.”