Chapter 4 Wesley
Wesley
We just… get each other.
The iron fence that completely surrounds the property has a gate with digital codes and fingerprint access, and the feed from the security cameras streams directly to all our phones, filtered through a program that alerts us to unexpected movement.
If someone tried to go over, the cameras would catch it.
If someone tried to go under, the perimeter of pressure plates would notify us.
When you kill people for money, it tends to make you a target, yourself, so we all take safety seriously.
I spy Dimitri’s SUV, Mac’s nondescript blue sedan, and Eleanor’s zippy Mini Cooper on the other end of the long garage. Nicole doesn’t have a car—she’s still under house arrest until we completely resolve some issues with the remaining members of the Volkevich Bratva.
Gang’s all here, then.
The foyer is dark, since Dimitri has begun daily sweeps of the house, turning off lights and lowering the thermostats in every room the girls have left, muttering to himself about wasteful Americans.
But I know Eleanor and Nicole like the prisms of light cast by the intricate chandelier that hangs between the staircases.
It’s flashy and somewhat gauche, and it makes me smile, too.
So, I flick it on as I hang my jacket in the closet in the entryway.
It almost always smells good on the first floor of this house with Eleanor in residence.
And though she’s nowhere to be seen in the sparkling clean kitchen, there’s still an incredible, savory scent wafting from the 12 neatly stacked black containers cooling on the center island.
My stomach growls—how long has it been since I filled it with anything other than caffeine and B-vitamins?
—but eating can wait. I’ll grab a meal on my way back to my office after the debrief with my team.
I’m betting after patching Dimitri up and some sharp words, Nicole put him straight to bed to recover comfortably. I’m also betting Dimitri’s awake now, and Mac is already running his mouth to an irritated but captive audience.
I cross the stone patio and knock at the door of what was once the most pointlessly well-appointed pool house.
The patient is on his stomach, laid out on the massive king bed that dominates the entire right wall, with a pillow propping up his hips, and a thick layer of padding creating some additional bulk around his left arse cheek in a thoroughly comical image.
Mac is perched on the arm of the sofa, arms crossed, clearly exhausted from his night’s work, with dark circles under his eyes and a slight slump to his posture. He also missed some flecks of blood on his forearms when he was cleaning up. He’s lucky he didn’t get pulled over on his drive back.
Predictably, though, I was right about the running his mouth part.
“Eh, doesn’t look so bad,” he’s saying with a chuckle as I gently close the door behind me. “Just another scar for the collection, eh, Big D? It’ll match your face. Hey, you love being literal—you ever hear that phrase butt-ugly?”
I snort. “He’s only saying that because he’s out of your arm’s reach.”
“You bet your ass, I am.”
Dimitri sighs instead of rising to the bait, an excellent display of restraint. But he’s clearly uncomfortable with more than just the puns, and he shifts on the pillow, trying to roll up to see me better, but wincing and falling back into place. “This is so undignified,” he huffs.
I move around the bed so Dimitri doesn’t have to strain to see me. “What is the recovery time for bruised pride?” I ask, getting in a subtler jab of my own.
Dimitri’s jaw clenches, but he speaks with a softness he reserves for the mention of his personal nurse.
“She will not let me rise except to take a piss for another several days, and then I will be using those to move around until the threat of tearing and infection is past.” He gestures to a pair of crutches leaning against the far wall.
I gape. “Where the hell did those come from? They look about six inches too short for you.”
He waves his hand dismissively. Yeah, I’ll be rush-ordering something better after a bit of research—one of those knee scooters ought to help his mobility.
“Enough of this. Did he talk?”
Knowing the question is directed at him, Mac’s smile dissolves into a grim expression and he nods.
“He admitted to killing Alfano, but that’s about all I got.
I may have hit him a bit too hard,” he admits with a chagrined wince.
“A couple hours in, he passed out and I couldn’t wake him back up, so I made the call. ”
“Brain hemorrhage,” Dimitri assumes with a grave, but clinical air.
“Probably,” Mac agrees.
“A simple mistake for someone unaccustomed to the work. I should have been there,” Dimitri grumbles.
“Yeah, I wish you had been,” Mac shoots back, though it’s not defensive. He rubs the back of his neck as he shakes his head. “I don’t have the stomach for that shit.”
There’s a reason he shoots to kill from 500 yards, just as there’s a reason I primarily support from behind my screens. It’s not easy to look someone in the eye as you take their life. I don’t know how Dimitri does it, and I can’t say I particularly care to.
Dimitri catches Mac’s haunted expression and his brows snap down even lower, deepening the crease of the scar through his face. “As in anything, practice is the only way to improve—but this is my role on our team; it should not have fallen to you. Do not beat yourself off.”
Mac snorts. “Beat myself up?”
“That is what I said.”
Mac and I exchange grins—mine, pure amusement and his, tinged with relief.
I know from personal experience how it feels to be absolved of blame by Dimitri’s gruff practicality.
I cross my arms, tapping at my bicep with a thumb.
“I’ll get to work on an ID, then. It would be good to know who he was working for. ”
“That is unnecessary. I found him.”
“What? How?” Mac gapes.
Dimitri taps a tablet next to him, briefly waking the screen. “Wesley sent me the footage. I shot at the screen as he ran from the house and cross-referenced his photo using Wesley’s files.” There’s a beat of silence, and my jaw falls slack. Dimitri stares back at me,eyes narrowing. “What?”
“I… didn’t know you knew how to use the shared drive,” I say, unable to keep the surprise from my voice.
He lifts a brow, unimpressed. “You gave me a password and showed me how.”
“I did,” I agree, feeling my head bob. “But that was ages ago, and this is the first time you’ve used it.”
“Important information should not be treated thoughtlessly,” he scoffs dismissively. “I do not like them, but I am not allergic to computers.”
“Was that a joke? Did Nicole give him morphine?” Mac interjects.
“Of course she did; I was shot,” Dimitri says, anger lacing his tone. “Can we get back to the job? I am trying to tell you that I found his mugshot in the Volkevich files.”
That sobers us up right quick.
“Fuuuuck,” Mac groans.
Silently, I agree. We offed the head of that Bratva a few months ago, stole the crime family’s fortune and legacy and hid it away, but cleaning up the rest of the mess has proven to be a never-ending endeavor.
Mac took out as many as he could with his rifle, and Dimitri single-handedly killed nearly a dozen while saving Nicole from a lunatic with an inferiority complex, but the rest scattered into the wind.
We’ve been picking them off whenever we can find them, but it’s like trying to stop up a leak in a dam—they just keep coming.
They want their money, they’re out for blood and the only ones left are smart and careful.
In a city the size of Ulysses, there are only so many distinct Russian crime families, so of course it was a possibility that the man who killed Alfano was from the same Bratva whose leader we killed. Still, coincidences are always suspicious in our line of work.
“You sure?” I ask, my stomach dropping.
“Confirm as you always do, but yes, I am certain,” Dimitri sighs.
“What the fuck was a Volkevich doing in Mexican drug cartel territory?” Mac voices what we’re all thinking. “You think it might have been a business relationship? Bratvas sell drugs sometimes, and they gotta come from somewhere, right?”
Dimitri’s scowl deepens further. “They would not work together.”
“A dispute, then? For territory?” I suggest.
“Possibly,” Dimitri allows. “Though, disputes such as those are usually settled in the field, not resolved by assassinating the leader of the gang.”
“A connection is exactly what I’ve been hoping for in my search for information about the General,” I say thoughtfully.
It still feels odd to share this information that I’ve been keeping so close to my chest for so long.
It makes me rethink every word—trying to make sure I’m not giving away more than I mean to or should.
Mac audibly shifts in his seat. “Um… Now that you mention it, something the Russian said before he up and died on me makes a bit more sense now.”
“Go on,” I prompt when he hesitates. “The suspense is killing me. Less effectively than your interrogation tactics, thankfully.”
He shoots me an unimpressed look at my joke. “I think the guy might have said Felix’s name.”
Dimitri goes rigid. “You are sure?”
Expression serious, Mac shakes his head. “He was babbling pretty incoherently in Russian at that point, and I’m not as fluent as I’d like to be. I think he said Felix. Are there any Russian words that sound like that?”
“Of course there are,” Dimitri dismisses.
“Felix was working with Kyle Volkevich,” I say. “You’re thinking maybe he still has contact with them?”
Mac shrugs. “It’s a possibility, right? I know I’m jumping to all kinds of conclusions, but what if he sent the Russian in there because he knew we were after Alfano, and he knew we’d show up?
He’s got ears and eyes everywhere, and he knows my face—he could pretty easily have me followed and figure out we were after Alfano. ”