Chapter 15 Maksim
Maksim
Three days.
It’s been three days.
Found my car the next morning at her place.
Ransacked her apartment. Her money sits untouched in her backpack. Like she plans to come back. Clothes I got her still on her bed. Toiletries untouched. Found the marshmallow body wash.
Cheap.
Still uncapped. Still damp. She missed her shifts at Smash and Sugar.
Mrs. Hardinoff hasn’t seen her. I’m wasting men scoping the city for her.
Fuck.
Beda.
I find the asshole, that cornered her outside the diner, now he’s tied to a chair in my warehouse.
I stare at him. Blood drips from his busted nose, painting the concrete in slow, lazy drops. His breathing is ragged, wet. One eye’s already swollen shut.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” he sobs.
“What are you to her?”
“Please,” he wheezes. “I didn’t—I didn’t know she was yours—”
“She’s not mine.”
The words taste wrong coming out.
I grab his jaw, force his head up. His good eye widens, pupils blown with fear.
“Where is she?” I continue, voice flat.
“I don’t know,” he gurgles.
I drive my fist into his ribs. Once. Twice. The sound of bone cracking echoes through the warehouse.
He screams.
I let him.
When he finally stops, I lean in close. Close enough to smell the piss running down his leg.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know about Ayla Smith,” I say quietly. “And if I think you’re lying, I’ll break every bone in your body before I let you bleed out.”
He’s sobbing now. “I don’t know anything—”
“Wrong answer.”
I grab his hand, spread his fingers against the metal chair arm. Vaska hands me a hunters knife.
“Wait! Wait!” He’s hyperventilating now. “She—she works multiple jobs! The diner, that bakery, some old lady’s house—”
“I know all that. Tell me something new.”
“She hangs around the docks. I’ve seen her there late at night.”
My hand stills.
The docks.
Something cold slides through my chest.
“With who?” I bring the blade to his middle finger
“Ricky Fuentes!” He shouts. “Fuck, please don’t.”
My head snaps to Vaska.
“Low level drug dealer, no affiliations,” Vaska mutters.
“When? When did you see them together?”
“I don’t know! A few weeks ago? Maybe more?”
I press the blade against his finger tighter. Not cutting. Not yet.
“What was she doing there?”
“I don’t know! I swear! I just saw her walking in that direction one night when I was—” He stops.
“When you were what?”
His face goes pale. “Making a delivery.”
Interesting.
“For who?”
Silence.
I apply pressure. The blade bites skin.
“For Kaya!” he shrieks. “I make deliveries for Gabriel Kaya sometimes! Small shit, nothing big, he doesn’t trust me, I’m just a runner, I swear—”
I remove the blade.
Of course.
I should’ve seen his fingerprints all over this from the beginning.
“Checks out,” Vaska mutters.
“Tell me more about Fuentes,” I demand, bringing the knife back to his hand.
“Just kill him and let’s go,” Vaska says bored. “Fuentes is nothing.”
“Don’t kill me, please,” he begs. “I know nothing about how long she’s been with Fuentes, but I’ll tell you everything you want to know about him.”
I stand back and study him.
Blood pools beneath the chair. His breathing comes in short, panicked bursts.
“Talk,” I say.
“Fuentes runs small-time operations. Weed mostly. Some pills. Nothing that would get him noticed by anyone important.” He’s rambling now, desperate. “He works out of a warehouse near pier seven. Has a crew—hangs with Jace Cross and a tiny girl, red hair. They’re nobodies, I swear.”
“And Ayla?”
“I don’t know what she does with him! Maybe she buys from him? I don’t know!”
I exchange a glance with Vaska. He shrugs.
“Pier seven,” I repeat.
“Yes! Yes, pier seven. That’s all I know, I swear on my mother—”
I drive the blade through his hand.
His scream tears through the warehouse, raw and animal. I leave the knife there, watch him writhe against the restraints.
“That’s for touching her,” I say.
For thinking you were entitled to look. To follow. To decide.
I turn to Vaska. “Clean this up. Then get me everything on Fuentes and his crew. I want addresses, routines, weaknesses. Everything.”
“You want this one alive?” Vaska asks, nodding toward the sobbing mess in the chair.
I consider it. Then shake my head.
“No.”
I walk out before the shot echoes.
***
Pier seven smells like dead fish and diesel fuel. The warehouse Vaska identified sits at the end of a row of abandoned buildings, rusted metal and broken windows. A single light burns inside.
Sloppy. No security.
The warehouse door isn’t even locked. Inside, I find Fuentes sitting at a card table. Looks like poker drawn. Tiny redhead and another man, I presume, Jace, flank his sides They look up when I enter, hands already moving toward weapons.
“I wouldn’t,” I say.
My voice cuts through the space like a blade. All three freeze.
Fuentes recovers first. He’s younger than I expected.
Hell, they all are.
“Korsakov,” he says carefully.
“Ayla Smith, where is she?”
His expression doesn’t change, but I catch the micro-adjustment in his posture. Recognition.
“Don’t know her,” he says.
They’re too young.
Too thin.
This doesn’t look like a setup.
But he lies.
I pull my gun, aim it at his head. “Try again.”
“Whoa, whoa—” the tiny redhead stands, hands up and blocks my target.
My eyes stay focused on Fuentes.
“Hi, I’m Kay, sorry for Ricky, he’s…protective,” her hands shake. “This is Jace.”
She gestures toward the other man who is staring daggers at me.
“We don’t know where Ayla is, but if you’re looking for her it must be important. Is—is she in trouble?”
I lower the gun toward her. She gasps.
Jace Stands.
“Don’t,” I bark at him, eyes on Kay.
I nod at her, “Speak. Who are you to Ayla?”
“Her friends. We’re all runaways. My father was an abusive ass who snuck into my room nightly,” My grip tightens on the gun. “Jace’s old man would beat the shit out of him and Ricky was in and out of foster care. We’re just like her, no family—so we made our own.”
Family.
The word hits harder than it should.
I lower the gun. “Sit.”
She sits and lets out a shaky breath. Fuentes grabs her hand, but his eyes are on mine.
“We don’t know where Ayla is, but we’re the only family she has so if you’re looking for her to hurt her, might as well kill us right here.”
I stare at Fuentes.
Brave.
Stupid, but brave.
“I’m not here to hurt her,” I say, holstering the gun. “I’m here to find her.”
“Why?” Jace asks, voice hard. Protective.
I don’t answer that. Can’t. Because I don’t fucking know why anymore. Started as curiosity. Became obsession. Now it’s something darker, something that claws at my chest every second she’s gone.
“When did you last see her?” I ask instead.
The three exchange glances. Some silent conversation happening that I’m not part of.
“Weeks ago, maybe,” Kay says finally. “She comes and she goes. She works a lot.”
“She works for me, on my territory and she hasn’t been to work.”
Another glance between them. Fuentes leans back in his chair, studying me with eyes too old for his face.
“Look,” he says. “We know of you and we respect it. But Ayla’s been through enough shit without adding the Bratva to her problems.”
“I’m not her problem.”
“Then what are you?”
The question hangs in the air. I don’t have an answer that makes sense. Don’t have words for whatever the fuck this is.
I exhale hard and ignore his question.
“If you see her, you know how to reach me.”
Fuentes exhales slowly. “You think she’ll come back?”
I look at him.
At the warehouse. The bare table. The three of them clustered together like a thing that learned how to survive by staying small.
“She doesn’t know how not to,” I say.
Jace scoffs. “You don’t know her.”
I don’t bother correcting him.
I turn and walk out. The night air hits cold, sharp. The city hums like it doesn’t care that she’s missing—like it hasn’t swallowed people whole before.
I slide into my car and sit there for a moment, engine off, hands resting on the wheel.
They haven’t seen her in weeks. She’s been gone for days. But she didn’t take everything.
I start the engine. I don’t call anyone. I don’t send men. I don’t widen the net.
I drive.
Her building comes into view—familiar now in a way it shouldn’t be. I park across the street and cut the engine
Lights are off. Windows dark.
I break in anyway and sit on her thrift store couch. Because chasing didn’t work. Interrogating didn’t work. Tearing the city apart didn’t work.
But waiting—
Waiting is different.
She has no where else. She will come back. If she comes back scared, I’ll be here. If she comes back angry, I’ll be here.
If she comes back with a knife in her hand and murder in her eyes—
I’ll still be here.
I lean back, eyes fixed on her front door.