Chapter 33 #2
"There," Dimitri points to a small gap between two shelves. It's barely noticeable unless you're looking for it.
I press my ear against the wall and hear noise.
"Found you, you piece of shit," I whisper.
Dimitri examines the bookshelf, running his fingers along the spines of the books and shelves. "There's got to be a trigger mechanism or something, right?"
I join him, pulling books at random, tapping on the corners and shelves, looking for anything that might activate a release.
Nothing happens.
The noise behind the wall gets louder, more panicked.
"Fuck this," Dimitri says, stepping back. "Watch out," he says and aims his gun at the seam in the wall and fires twice.
The gunshots do the job. The bullets punch through the drywall, revealing a metal surface behind it. A panic room.
"Smart," I say and pull a knife from my boot and jam it into the seam, using it as leverage to pry at the edge. The drywall crumbles easily, revealing more of the metal door beneath.
"Give me a hand," I tell Dimitri.
Together, with some of our men, we tear away the drywall, exposing a solid steel door with no visible handle on our side. A room built to keep people like us out.
"Now what?" Dimitri asks, stepping back.
I examine the door. "There has to be a release mechanism somewhere in this office. Something that would open it from this side in case of emergency."
We tear the office apart, searching for anything that might open the door. I flip the desk, empty drawers onto the floor, pull books from shelves.
Nothing.
Then my hand brushes against something under one of the frames of a painting. A small button.
I press it.
A clicking sound comes from the wall, and part of the metal door shifts slightly.
I run over and jam my fingers into the small gap that's appeared and pull. The door is heavy, but slowly it starts to move.
"Come on out, you fucker," Dimitri says, gun pointing at the door.
The door opens and I hear a whimpering sound from inside.
The panic room is small, maybe ten feet square, with a cot, a small refrigerator, and a monitoring system that shows every room in the house. On one of the screens, I can see my own men moving through the lower level, stepping over bodies.
And there, in the corner, is Cosmo Kouris.
He's sweating profusely, wearing only underwear. His hand trembles as he points a gun directly at us. His face is pale, eyes wide with terror.
"Stay back!" he shouts, voice cracking. "I'll shoot! I swear to God, I'll shoot!"
Dimitri laughs. "You think that little gun scares us?" He steps forward. "Look how many guns are on you. You even try to fire that and you're dead."
Cosmo closes his eyes and fires. The bullet whizzes past Dimitri's ear and embeds itself in the wall behind us.
"That's one," I say calmly. "How many more do you think you have before one of us puts a bullet between your eyes?"
Normally I would have just killed him, but we need him.
Cosmo adjusts his grip on the gun, trying to steady it. "You're making a mistake," he says. "Do you know who I am? Who I work with?"
"We know exactly who you are," I say. "Minister of Infrastructure. Member of Parliament. Murderer."
"Murderer? You break into my home, kill my security, and you call me a murderer?"
I step closer, ignoring the gun. "You funded the Athenian Warriors. You ordered the hit on my father. You tried to take my son."
"Your son?" Confusion flashes across his face. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't play dumb," Dimitri snaps. "We found the ledger. We have the bank accounts. We know everything."
Cosmo's eyes dart to the monitors, perhaps looking for a way out. There isn't one.
"Listen to me," he says, lowering the gun slightly. "Whatever you think you know, you're wrong. I'm just a middleman. I was just following orders. Money, okay? It was only about money. Nothing personal. Some people didn't like how we were making it. So—"
"Like my father?" Dimitri yells.
"Whose orders?" I demand.
"If I tell you, I'm dead anyway."
"You're already dead," I say flatly. "The only question is how long it takes and how much it hurts."
Cosmo looks at me.
"Look. Your father. He found out. And… there was too much at stake. I was forced. I didn't even know him, but you know how it is. Money is everything."
"So if you're just a puppet, then who's controlling you?" I ask.
Dimitri steps forward. "Answer him, you piece of shit."
Cosmo starts to sob and raises his weapon pointing it directly at me.
I can see it in his eyes. "You don't want to do this—"
I move fast, firing my gun. My bullet finds a home just above his right eye. His gun goes off and hits the floor inches from my foot. He stumbles back and falls, crashing into the monitors and hitting his head on the table.
Blood pours from him.
"Fuck!" I yell and put my gun away. "He was our link. We needed him alive."
Cosmo's body stares back with empty eyes, all his secrets dying on lips now forever silent.
So close. We were so fucking close.
Dimitri exhales sharply. "He was going to shoot. You had no choice," he says, walking into the panic room. "On the bright side, he admitted to having Dad killed."
"Yeah, but by pressure from someone else. That's the fucking person I want. Now we're back to square one."
"Maybe not," Dimitri says. "There's always a trail."
I look up at the monitors on the wall and see my men making their way to us. This was supposed to be clean. Get in, get Cosmo, get answers. Now we have more questions than when we started.
"Here," Dimitri calls out, crouching beside a small cabinet next to the monitoring equipment. He pulls out a phone. It's sleek, black, and looks expensive despite its basic appearance. "It's a high-grade burner phone. Encrypted, from the looks of it."
I step closer, taking it from his hand. The screen glows with a complex lock pattern and what looks like a number already dialed. When I try to press another button, nothing happens. The keyboard is locked.
"Shit," I say. "It's secured. Can't dial out without some kind of code."
Dimitri takes it back, examining it closer. "Look at this," he points to the call history displayed on the screen. One number, called repeatedly in the last twenty minutes. The contact is simply labeled 'S.'"
"'S,'" I repeat, looking back at Cosmo's body. "He was calling someone while we were breaking down his door."
"Yes, and may I remind you, thanks to our little drone flying outside, he wasn't able to make contact. Could have been asking for reinforcements or something," Dimitri says.
I tighten my jaw out of frustration. "Still reporting to someone, even as we were banging on the door. Crazy."
"Look, this is a win, bro. This motherfucker ordered it and he's dead now. From your gun. Take it. You got Stassi and Xander now."
He's right. My life has changed so much since I started down this road.
"Okay, this is good for now," I say and turn to walk out.
Dimitri slips the phone into his pocket. "Let's see who you were calling, asshole," he says to the corpse. Then to me, "I know a guy who can crack this. Might take some time, but we'll get in."
He follows me out and calls to the men approaching us.
"Gather anything that looks suspicious. Hard drives, computers, papers—anything that might tell us who he was working with."
As we walk down the stairs, I step over a body on my way out, not even looking down. They don't matter. They were in my way.
My hands are sticky with blood—some mine, most not. I flex my fingers, feeling the skin pull where it's starting to dry.
As we exit the villa, the air feels cooler than it did when we first got there. Some of our men are walking around, checking the dead bodies for anything useful.
"You good?" Dimitri asks.
I look at him, at the blood splattered across his face and clothes, and I think of Stassi's face when I left. The fear in her eyes—not for herself, but for me.
"I just want all this to be over," I say, surprising myself with the confession. "Get back to Stassi and my son. Have a bit of a normal life, you know?"
Dimitri glances at me and nods.
Our SUV waits at the end of the driveway, engine running, our driver waiting for us.
Dimitri and I slide into the back seat, and as we drive away, Dimitri pulls out the phone we found, turning it over in his hands. The blue light from the screen glows in the dark.
"You get back to Stassi," he says, not looking up from the device. "I'm going to figure out who this 'S' person is and bring death to them."
There's an edge to his voice I haven't heard before.
"It's my way now. No more chasing leads, no more strategies. You've had your turn. You wanted to find who ordered the hit on Dad—you did. Now it's my time. Let my guns lead the way. Leave a trail of bodies, and the person you're looking for shows up."
I study my brother. He's the hothead—the no-plan-is-the-plan type. And I can tell he's ready to burn the world down to find answers.
"Fair enough. Let me get married first," I say. "Maybe get them settled back in Chicago." I reach out and put my hand on his shoulder. "Then we'll go after this 'S' person, and we'll do it your way."