Chapter 20
TWENTY
EMORY
In the windowless basement, six Moriarty men crammed into a card room where the stagnant air stifled.
Gio never ventured down there, so dust gathered along the baseboards, and cobwebs cropped up in the corners.
Upstairs, he sang along to his cherished records and sent Amelia and Mirabelle into fits of giggles.
Emory, Jack, and two captains, Pete and Disco, sipped strong tea at the felted table. Two trusted street soldiers perched against a gold-vein mirrored wall while the rest stood watch outside the door.
“It’s too fucking hot for this shit, man,” Jack whispered to Emory and motioned to the gaudy samovar—a Russian tea urn—at the table’s center.
The caretaker, Viktor, had trotted it out to forestall the inevitable. It worked for a little while, and Emory let him dig his own grave with stories of wild excess and lost inhibition.
“More?” Viktor asked and reached for the samovar.
The man’s eyes were beadier than Emory remembered and his teeth a darker shade of decay. He was fatter too. His belly hung over his pants, and a wrinkled shirt struggled to cover it, the buttons liable to pop.
Emory shook his head. “It’s time to talk.”
Viktor pretended not to hear and stood so abruptly that he bashed his head on the red-shaded lamp hanging over the table. It emitted a jaundiced glow and rained dust motes as it swung on a brass chain.
“Enough!” Emory snapped. “Sit down.”
Bent over at the table, Viktor surveyed the room for a friendly face. Finding none, he sat again but gripped the chair’s armrests so tightly his knuckles flushed white.
“You know why I’m here,” Emory said. “Be straight with me and we won’t have any problems.”
“Is there an issue with the cash flow?” Viktor asked. “I get regulars. You get your money. I don’t bother you for a bigger cut.”
Emory pointed at him. “That right there. You never ask me for a bigger cut. Why?”
Viktor chewed a flake of dry skin on his bottom lip and inhaled a breath that wheezed deep in his lungs.
“I deal honest with you. I take my share and no more.”
“I’m not talking about padding your cut. I’m talking about the Rolls Royce outside and that shit.” Emory flung his hand to the gold chain around Viktor’s neck and the jeweled baubles squeezed around his fingers. “I compensate you well, but not that well.”
“What’s your point?” Viktor tugged a handkerchief from his back pocket and roughly dabbed at the sweat beading his forehead.
What a waste, all the years bleeding money on the joint. It was more than just a bad investment, though. Viktor’s duplicity was a dangerous liability. Emory held his composure and kept the room in deliberate suspense until even the captains stirred in their seats.
“This isn’t the lifestyle of a racketeer,” he finally said. “Cocaine is a lucrative business, though. So is heroin.”
Viktor folded his arms over his chest, but his attention drifted to the door. Emory turned in his seat to follow his gaze.
“Am I keeping you from something?” he asked with mock courtesy. It marked the third time Viktor had eyed the door.
The man stalled again. With grubby fingers, he rifled in his shirt pocket for a lone cigarette. He made an equally fine production of fetching his lighter and savoring the first drag.
“You brought a guest,” he said and pointed to the ceiling that no longer creaked with footsteps above, though music still bled through. “The girl upstairs.”
Amelia. The corner of Emory’s mouth twitched in a nervous tick. Everyone had them. He knew his and worked diligently to eradicate them. Too late, Viktor seized on the momentary break.
“My sister.”
“No. The red head. I saw you with her out back.” Viktor smiled and ashed his cigarette. “Pretty thing,” he added on afterthought and stared across the table at Emory. “She’s yours?”
As above, so below—all eyes in the room turned to Emory, unified in their scrutiny. Who was Amelia Havick to him? The answer didn’t matter, only the vulnerability she might’ve infected him with. They scouted it out like a sickness in him.
“We both like pretty things,” Viktor continued when Emory hadn’t answered and lifted a hand to admire his rings. “Except I favor pretty things I can stand to lose. I wonder if you’re the same.”
The heat of the room moved through Emory. He tore his gun from his waistband and slammed it to the table. With the barrel end pointed at Viktor, his hand rested on top.
“We’re not the same. I come by my pretty things honestly.
Cartel money paid for yours. I told you from the jump I’m not involved in that business.
I wanted this joint run clean, and you swore up and down that you understood.
So, here’s what it’s gonna be. You can keep your bullshit, but we’re done here. I expect you out by—”
“That’s not what’s going on!”
Viktor pounded his fist to the table so hard the samovar toppled and bled tar-black tea leaves onto the felt. Emory gestured to the captain of Las Vegas post.
“You know Disco. He keeps an eye on you, makes sure everything’s good. You think he didn’t notice that you run the business dirty?”
Viktor rolled his eyes with a huff. He’d pay for the insolence. For the time being, Emory filled the room with the boom of his voice.
“Are you suggesting he’s a liar? Tell him! Go on. Look Disco in the eye and tell him he’s a fucking liar.”
Viktor either had to come clean or double down on denial. Coward that he was, he did neither.
“Maybe you don’t know your men as well as you think you do,” he said with delight in his eyes mismatched to the scowl on his lips. “You talk about liars, but do you trust these men here?”
One by one, Viktor examined each man in the room, but Emory refused the bait. He didn’t need to ponder the question or evaluate them too. These were his brothers. Simple as that.
“More than I trust you. They took oaths. You didn’t.”
Viktor laughed darkly and squashed his cigarette in the ashtray. “Your blood oaths won’t protect you from what’s coming.”
“And what’s that?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
Viktor’s yellowed teeth split his lips with a sinister smile. “Your brother.”
“My brother?” Emory asked, the breathless question useless filler. He’d heard just fine.
Viktor leaned forward and whispered, “Ivan.”
Emory’s grip tightened on the gun, and his free hand curled into a fist, the nails digging into his palm. Name your demons. Make them real.
“Ivan,” he repeated, just as quiet. “You’ve been chatting up ghosts?”
That earned a round of laughter from the room. Viktor found no humor in it. Neither did Emory.
“I’m not lying. Ivan said you’d deny it, so he told me to tell you this. Remember the girl in the woods, the day it was just you and him. Do you know what that means?”
Emory nodded vacantly as the memory assailed his senses.
The taste of blood in his mouth. The sun beating hot against his neck.
Face down in the leaves. God, how they’d reeked of wet rot.
No one knew about that day, not a soul on earth except Ivan and him.
Emory’s stomach roiled, and he swallowed down a crippling wave of nausea.
“Ivan’s alive,” Viktor added, almost apologetically, “but you knew that, didn’t you?”
Emory shook his head. It loosened a bead of sweat that rolled down his temple.
Hadn’t he known, though? How could he not?
The same blood coursed through Emory’s veins as his brother.
Maybe that meant something in a primal sense because Emory discerned Ivan’s existence in the ineffable; the shape of the night and the horrors that it hid.
“He asked me to pass along a message,” Viktor said. “He promised you something the last time you saw him. He’s ready to deliver.”
“We’re done here, Em,” Jack broke in and reached for his sidearm, but Emory stopped him with a raised hand.
“You tracking?” Viktor asked.
Emory didn’t respond. The room pulsed in a funhouse distortion where the mirrored wall seemed to creep closer, and his chest tightened, each breath more labored than the last. I can’t fucking breathe.
Four years ago, he took the helm of the Moriartys, and Ivan slithered from the shadows to congratulate him.
On a cold winter’s night in Northern California, Emory walked to his car, but a presence followed.
He led that presence beneath a lamppost to force it out of the darkness.
Ivan had slipped into the light but hardly looked human.
His remaining eye was black and soulless, a killer’s stare.
“Little brother,” he’d whispered. “Don’t assume your place at the top means you and Mirabelle are safe. I will destroy everything you love. Piece by bloody piece, I will take it apart then I’ll take you.”
Emory never saw him again. Word came his body had been discovered in a burned-out car at the bottom of a ravine.
No one claimed that dead man, so they called him Ivan Holt and rendered him to ashes.
In Emory’s dreams, Ivan’s rotten corpse was ripped limb from limb with maggots in his mouth and one goopy eyeball oozing down mottled skin.
Rest in torment. What a fitting fucking end.
In death, there’d been paltry relief, so Ivan’s ghost remained. Better to be haunted than hunted, though. Emory couldn’t live with that affliction again, didn’t know how to anymore. He’d lost the skill in these years of fragile peace. This has to end.
Emory flew to his feet and sent the chair tumbling to the floor. He racked the slide of his gun and aimed it at Viktor.
“Where is he?”
“You won’t find him. He’ll find you.” Viktor clicked his tongue and added with a wicked grin, “And your pretty things too.”
Emory rounded the table in a few pounding strides. Fury blackened the edges of his vision. He seized Viktor by the front of his shirt and hurled him to the floor.
“On your knees!”
Still smiling, Viktor clambered across the floor as the room stirred.
Everyone scrambled from their seat. Someone entreated him to stop.
Emory didn’t know who. He didn’t take commands from others.
He’d earned this. Viktor huddled against the wall.
Kindling to the rage, Emory relished the sight. Make him beg for his life.
“Get on your fucking knees!”
Viktor tried but not quick enough. Emory yanked him up by a fistful of hair. It loosened in clumps from his scalp. With one hard kick, he stomped Viktor’s jaw to wipe that fucking smile clean. Viktor’s head snapped back. On hands and knees, he spit up blood before collapsing to the floor.
“Where is he?” Emory bellowed and straddled Viktor.
His fist smashed into the man’s jaw; once, then twice, three times, four, until he lost count; until bones broke and Viktor’s face was a mess of shredded tissue and gold teeth glinted on the floor. In the mayhem, a body landed on top of Emory, a voice screaming in his ear.
“Em!” Jack shouted. “Em! Stop!”
Emory tossed Jack off of him. His blood-slicked hands cinched Viktor’s neck. He squeezed until bones popped against his palms. With another dump of adrenaline, he slammed Viktor’s head against the floor.
“Where the fuck is he? Answer me!”
Viktor’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and mouth gaped open.
Out poured more blood and broken bits of teeth.
Emory let go. Viktor gulped down hard breaths and rolled to his side.
His cheek rested in a shallow pool of blood.
Hands shaking, Emory pressed his gun to Viktor’s temple, and his voice trembled just the same.
“Tell me where he is.”
Viktor pointed to the ceiling. Up above, the music had stopped. Amelia and Mirabelle didn’t laugh. Gio didn’t sing. In their place were muffled shouts. A single gunshot. Mirabelle’s scream. The storefront window shattering.
Viktor lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. Please. I—”
Emory pulled the trigger. Blood, bone, and brain exploded out the back of Viktor’s head as mayhem unfolded outside the door.