CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Slava
My left eye keeps twitching.
What the fuck is wrong with these sad excuses for men?
We're on neutral ground for this—the back room of a restaurant on the border between territories. I don’t trust a single person in this room besides Ilya and our men.
"I'm telling you, we saw Pyotr at the docks last night," the man to Spada's right says, jabbing a finger at the table. "This morning, another one of our shipments goes missing. You tell me if that's a coincidence."
I glance at Ilya. Same disbelief sitting on his face that's sitting on mine. Pyotr's been in Mexico two days, running our supply route. He hasn't set foot within a thousand miles of these docks.
"That so?" Ilya says, leaning back in his chair, hands loose on the table like he couldn't care less either way. Total performance. He's laying track for exactly where this conversation is about to derail.
Spada takes the bait. "My men confirmed it themselves. Clear as day. Your man walking our side of the docks right before the shipment disappeared."
"Huh." I tilt my head slightly. "Alone?"
A flush crawls up Spada's neck as he realizes he's walked himself into a corner. "It appeared so, yes."
"And you didn't grab him." I hum. "We all operate under the same understanding, Don Spada. Anyone caught on docks that aren't theirs gets his legs blown off. Every family in this city knows the rule. So why is my man still breathing, if your men caught him red-handed on your territory?"
A muscle jumps in Spada's jaw. Behind him, his men go very still, watching their Don get walked into his own trap.
"Have you really lost that much of your edge?
" Ilya asks, voice bored, entirely at odds with how furious I know he actually is under it.
We've both understood something in the last ninety seconds that Spada apparently hasn't caught yet—the Italians know we didn’t steal.
Because no one actually stole. This is a test to see if the Bratva would roll over and hand out a "peace offering" rather than deal with the headache of a dispute.
Cowardly, lazy, and insulting, in that order.
"It's your man's mess. We wanted to talk first, before things got ugly between our families," Spada says through gritted teeth. "We were being mature about it."
"Sure," I say.
"Sure," he repeats.
"You get him on camera?" Ilya asks, finishing the noose.
"No," the man beside Spada cuts in fast. "Cameras were down that stretch. Bad timing."
"Interesting," Ilya says, and doesn't elaborate.
I shake my head slowly. "See, here's my problem, Spada. Pyotr's been across the border two days, moving product so the Bratva doesn't have to run games on other outfits just to pad our own supply. You wouldn't know anything about running games like that, though. Would you."
"Are you calling me a liar?" Spada's voice climbs, and behind him three men shift, hands drifting toward their waistbands.
I laugh. "Walk me through your story again, because it's not adding up. Pyotr strolls onto your docks, past your men, past your security, steals product—and then your cameras just happen to be down for exactly that window. Are you fucking serious?"
Spada goes red from his collar up. His men's hands close fully around their holsters now.
Ours mirror the motion half a second later.
"We want compensation," Spada hisses. "Or this gets ugly fast."
"Compensation." I let the word roll in my mouth. "For your pathetic, idiotic lies? How about a fuck no."
Spada reaches across the table and pours himself another glass of wine.
"Then you leave us no choice." He takes a slow sip. "We'll retrieve it ourselves."
"Like. Fuck. You. Are."
This has gone too far. The patience we extended today made them brazen instead of grateful. That was our mistake. Won't be repeating it.
My bullet catches Spada's hand right as it lifts the wine glass. The glass shatters against the table, wine and blood mixing into the same red mess.
His men react instantly. One of them gets a shot off wild, panicked, and it catches the wine rack behind me instead. Pathetic. They couldn't even land their one free shot.
Ilya rings out two shots, and the two men both drop where they stand. He's already pivoting for a third target.
Ilya has always been a beast.
I put a second round in the man closest to Spada, then a third into the one still fumbling with his holster.
They are pathetically bad; it’s almost depressing.
The men who were stationed to ambush us from behind the bar we cleared out an hour ago for exactly this reason are screaming in terror—we are much better at this game than Spada.
Always assume it goes bad, always have men stationed where the enemy won't think to look.
Spada's clutching what’s left of his hand to his chest, and I step over his men to level the gun at his forehead.
"You had one job today. Sit across from me and not insult my intelligence. You couldn't even fucking manage that."
That's when one of ours pushes through the door behind me, breathing hard.
"Pakhan. I got paged from the estate. It's bad."
The estate.
My Bratva. My people.
My woman.
Everything in me goes very cold.
"Define bad," I say, not turning from Spada.
"They wouldn't say more over the line. Just that it's bad, and that we need to come now."
Spada is trying to crawl away, and I put my boot on his stomach to stop him. He reminds me of a cockroach.
"You get to live," I hiss. "For now. Because I don't have time to finish this properly. Mutilate you like you fucking deserve. But we are not done. The second I remove the threat from my Bratva… I’m hunting you down. And the way you die depends entirely on what I find there."
I holster the gun and run for the door. I don’t worry about Spada escaping; he could go to the other side of the globe and I’d still find him.
"Pakhan." Ilya falls into step beside me. "Whatever it is—we handle it."
"If anything happened to her," I say, and don't finish the sentence, because we both know I’d lose my mind.
I'm about to paint this entire city red.