Chapter 4 #2
After I showered and got a quick bite to eat, I walked into Father’s office feeling refreshed but tired.
It had been a loooong forty-eight hours.
First with the attack on Illayana’s wedding, then tracking down those fuckers who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of inventory from our armoury, and lastly mounting a rescue mission to get my little sister back.
It had all left me running on fumes. The last of my energy was all but depleted.
My limbs ached, the faint traces of a headache starting to creep into the far corners of my mind. The smell of weed and alcohol lingered in the air, curling around the room. The weed was courtesy of Lukyan, who sat in front of Father’s desk, hair still wet from his shower.
Father had a strict ‘no drug’ policy. He needed all of us with clear, sound minds. Not hyped up on drugs. But he was a bit more lenient with weed. Especially right after a dangerous mission.
Lukyan had switched his combat gear for a pair of grey sweats and no shirt, leaving his chest bare. A joint hung loosely from his lips, his eyes dazed and glassy.
Nik sat beside him in his own chair, one hand clasped around a tall glass of vodka. He didn’t look any worse for wear, but I knew he had to be just as exhausted as I was. His laptop sat closed in his lap. The damn thing was like a security blanket for him. He carried it everywhere.
Like Lukyan, he was wearing a pair of sweats (his dark blue) and he also had a dark, long-sleeved shirt on.
“Good, you’re here,” Father said, his deep voice cutting through the silence.
He sat behind his desk still dressed in his bloody clothes, his fingers tapping impatiently on the wood.
“We can begin. Sit down,” he inclined his head to the couch off to the side and I took a seat, stretching out my body.
“What about Illayana?” Lukyan asked, puffs of smoke leaving his lips as he spoke.
“Your sister is exempt from this debrief. She needs to rest.”
Father was a man of many rules. He was a creature of habit. Routine. Always doing the same thing the same way for as long as I can remember. One of those things was the after mission debrief.
It didn’t matter if we were doing an unplanned infiltration—like tonight—or a regular drop with one of our clients. We always had a debrief afterwards. We discussed everything that happened and if there was anything we could have done better.
Father believed there was always room for improvement. That we could always be better. Do better. He expected the best from his children, and if we didn’t give it…
Lukyan coughed violently. “What?” he choked, smacking his chest. “How is that fair? Even when I broke my leg when that deal with the Triad went bad, you still made me show up to the after mission debrief.”
Nik snorted. “Not exactly a solid argument on your part, idiot. You had to be there. It was your fault the deal turned sour.”
“Hey! How was I supposed to know the chick I fucked the night before would turn out to be the Yakuza’s daughter? Or that she was engaged? She didn’t say shit to me about it.”
“You should have known better than to hit a Triad club the night before a meet with them,” Nik said, taking a sip of his drink.
Lukyan waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. The point is—”
“Enough you two,” Father cut in. “We have a lot to get through tonight, so sit back and shut up.”
Father began, delving right into it. He checked things off one by one on his notebook as he addressed each issue he had with our actions.
“Lukyan, you fucked around too much, not taking things seriously enough. Pull your head in. Nikolai, too slow, move faster. Aleksandr, pay more attention to your surroundings.”
He spoke about both the gun retrieval mission and Illayana’s rescue, focusing on key points he thought we needed to improve on, as well as questioning us on why we pulled certain moves.
By the time he was done, we had all been well and truly put in our place.
“Alright, onto the next point of business. Your sister said Rayna was the one who drugged her and handed her off to Nero—”
“Wait, what?” I frowned, leaning forward. “Rayna? As in our cousin , Rayna?”
Lukyan turned slightly to look at me. “Oh shit, that’s right. You weren’t in the car when she told us what happened. Rayna pulled her away from her guards and stuck a needle in her neck, knocking her straight on her ass.”
Adrian—one of Illayana’s guards—told us Rayna had asked to speak to her privately.
It was the reason they weren’t with Illayana when she was taken.
But I never would have thought she was the one responsible for kidnapping Illayana.
She was a selfish, entitled bitch, but she was family.
We’d never had a betrayal so close to home before.
“Do you think Dominik knew? That he was involved?” Nik asked.
“He has to be. Rayna doesn’t do shit without her father’s say so,” I replied, shaking my head in frustration.
There was a lot of bad blood between us and them, but betraying the family and handing Illayana over to be raped and murdered? No. Even I would never have foreseen such a treacherous move.
Father leaned back in his chair. “I agree. My brother had to have known, maybe he even orchestrated the whole thing. The truth is, we have no way of knowing exactly how involved he was with the whole thing until I speak with him. At this moment, he’s ignoring all my calls and has gone into hiding, like the little bitch he is,” his eyes locked on Nik.
“How long will it take for you to find him?”
Nik frowned in thought. “Depends how well he hides, if he chooses to stay out of the spotlight. But I can set up a facial recognition program that will scan for him over the thousands of cameras in Vegas, and it will alert me when he shows his face. If he’s still here.”
A dark, angry look crossed Father’s face. “Oh, he’s still here alright. This was a power move of his. There’s no way he’d leave the country now. Do it. Find him. And search for Rayna too. I want them both.”
“Yes, Father.” Nik flipped open his laptop, typing with one hand as he slowly sipped from the glass in his other.
Father’s gaze cut to me. “While Nikolai’s doing that, Aleksandr, I want you to interrogate the Zeta prisoners. Find out everything you can about them, including why the fuck they’re taking orders from the Outfit. If they don’t talk, you make them talk.”
I inclined my head. There was no point in telling him that was what I was planning to do anyway. He wouldn’t take kindly to it. Not in the presence of others, at least.
Father was a bit more lenient when we were alone. He didn’t care if I spoke back to him or disagreed with him, as long as it was done privately.
Father continued handing out our next assignments. “Lukyan, you’re on inventory.”
My younger brother groaned. He hated inventory. Loathed it. But it was a necessary evil. We inventoried our supplies once a week to ensure everything matched with our records. And since our armoury had recently been raided, an inventory was even more essential.
“Go through all the guns we recovered and match them with what we have on file. Make sure none are missing,” he continued.
“Yes, Father,” Lukyan all but whined.
“Good, now we have another issue to address. We’ve been approached by a new up and coming MC gang operating out of North Las Vegas. The Dirty Vultures. They’re wanting to buy a case of MP5s and M4 SOCOMs.”
Lukyan whistled. “That’s alotta hardware.”
“How did they get our information?” I asked.
Father was paranoid at the best of times. He only ever did deals with people he knew or people that had been vetted. Which meant someone we’d worked with in the past had given them our details.
“I have no idea. They refused to say. But they were adamant we could provide them with what they needed. And they offered to pay double.”
“ Double ?” Nik placed his now-empty glass down on Father’s desk. “Where are they going to get that kind of cash?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Father grunted. “You know I don’t deal with people I haven’t vetted.”
“So you told them no?” I highly doubted they took kindly to that.
“Of course I did. They weren’t happy about it, obviously.
Said we’d regret turning them away, that we didn’t want to make an enemy out of them.
All that threatening, posturing bullshit.
So I want to keep a close eye on them, monitor their movements and make sure they’re not planning anything stupid.
Everyone reach out to your contacts on the streets and gather as much intel as you can about them.
I want to know where they eat. Where they sleep.
If they’ve got wives, children. Everything. ”
“I think they call them Ol’ Ladies in the MC. Which I never quite understood. Who would wanna call their woman an old lady?” Lukyan took a long drag of his joint, blowing smoke rings. “Seems super weird to me.”
“It’s a position of authority in the MC. Some of those Sweet Butts hang around for years hoping to be made someone’s Ol’ Lady.” Nik’s eyes never left his laptop screen as he spoke.
“I know that,” Lukyan snapped. He hated when Nik explained things to him like he was stupid. But that was just Nik being Nik. He was a fact checker, and sometimes he really couldn’t help spouting off some technically correct statement.
Nik and Lukyan started to argue, which I wasn’t all that surprised with, to be honest. Lukyan had the power to make anyone argue with him.
“Alright, enough,” Father sighed, cutting in. “That’s all for tonight. Go get some rest and you can start your tasks tomorrow,” he waved towards the door, dismissing us. “Aleksandr, you stay,” he said briskly when I stood to leave.
I held in my sigh of annoyance because I knew if Father wanted to talk to me alone, it meant something bad was about to happen.