26. Ronan
RONAN
Seven days go by fast when you're counting down to something you can't stop.
When he stalked her down at the grocery store—an encounter that still gives me chills from cold-blooded fucking fury—Lev gave Cali one week to accept his offer.
Today is the seventh day. She thinks I don't know that she's been counting, but I know damn well she keeps a little tally in her head.
I've caught her staring at the calendar on the fridge a dozen times this morning, looking more and more nervous.
I told her not to worry about it. She told me that if I said the words let me handle it one more time, she'd handle me with a cast-iron skillet. Fair enough.
So I do the thing I know how to do. I go to work.
The diner in Sheepshead Bay is an old, reliable spot. The waitress knows to seat us in the back and then forget we exist. I tip her a hundred before we even sit down, because it's cheaper than her memory if the FBI or their fake counterparts came along asking questions.
Grigor is already there when I arrive. So is Yuri. Sergei comes in a minute later, shaking off his coat even though it isn't raining. Semyon and Dima trail in after.
Semyon sits like a man with one foot already out the door. He takes the chair nearest the exit and he keeps his hands where I can't see them, down in his lap. He won't hold my eyes for longer than a second at a stretch.
Dima is worse. He keeps looking at Semyon, like he's waiting to see what Semyon does before he decides what he does.
Their loyalty is wavering. I can tell.
"Alright," I say. "Talk to me."
Grigor does the talking. He's the oldest, and he's earned the right to be blunt.
"Lev's people went quiet," he says. "Been that way for three days now. The ones who were buying drinks, making promises, being seen everywhere with everybody? All of them, gone to ground. Happened all in the same afternoon, too, like somebody flipped a switch."
My guess is that's exactly what happened. Lev is changing strategies.
"Quiet is good," Sergei offers.
"Wrong. It's simply what happens before a man draws his gun," Grigor says. "A man talks when he's still trying to convince you. He goes quiet when the deciding's done, and all that's left is the doing."
Nobody argues with that, because nobody can.
"Semyon," I say. "You've been staring at that door since you sat down. Are you expecting somebody, or is the exit just prettier than my face today?"
Semyon's jaw grinds. "I've got a family, Ronan."
"Yeah?" I snarl violently. "Well, so do I."
"You got a woman and two kids that aren't even yours," he spits out.
He finally looks at me. "Mine are blood.
And the word out on the street is that anybody standing next to you when this breaks doesn't get to keep theirs.
So yeah. I got somewhere to be. I got a whole lot of somewheres to be, all of a sudden. "
I don't reach across the table and put his face into it, which is what my father would've done. Even though some old, dead part of me would love nothing more than to do exactly that.
Because Lev is out there deciding things, yes.
But guess what?
I'm deciding things, too.
What kind of man I want to be.
What kind of world I want to build.
What kind of example I want to set.
What kind of life I want to lead.
"Then go," I say simply.
He does a double-take. "What?"
"You heard me. Go. There's no lock on that chair.
If you've already gone in your head, then take the rest of yourself with it and quit warming a seat I could give to somebody with a spine.
" I let my eyes pass to Dima. "That goes for you, too.
Both of you. If Lev's the horse you want to ride, then ride it.
I hope he feeds you better than he lies to you.
I won't chase you, beg you, or put your wives in the ground for doing what you think is best. That's the difference between me and Igor, and between me and Lev.
So if you can't tell which of the three of us is the better deal, then honestly, you were never sharp enough to be worth keeping. "
Judging by their faces, I might as well have fired a gun indoors.
Semyon doesn't get up. That's something. But he doesn't relax, either. He just sits there with his hands in his lap, half in and half out. I know exactly what he is now. He's a man waiting to see how it ends before he picks. There are a lot of those. There always are. They're no good to me.
Then, speaking of men who are less and less certain, the bell over the door jingles.
And Navi comes in.
He's late, which is strange. Navi has many faults, but tardiness is not one of them. The man is early to everything. He was early to his own birth, according to the family lore, arriving on this planet squawling and premature. He hasn't shut the fuck up since—but he's never, ever late.
He shakes off his jacket and drops into the empty chair next to me. I catch myself squinting at him suspiciously, which pisses me off. I watch the people I love hardest of all now. Maybe I'm not quite yet the man I want to be.
"Kind of you to join us," I say.
"Traffic," he replies.
"Out here? In the middle of the day?"
"There was for me. Guess the universe made an exception." He waves the waitress over, orders coffee, and doesn't look at me while he does it.
I want it to be nothing. God, how badly I want it to be nothing. I've known this man my whole life. He's pulled me out of more holes than I can count. He's put bodies in the ground for me and never once asked for thanks. I would take a bullet for him and he'd take one for me.
But there's been a leak in our operation for too long now.
So the question must finally be asked, the question I've been ignoring:
What if it's him?
Three people know the story of the scale. Me. Cali. And Navi.
The stand-down order the night a man came up her stairs was given in the old codes. Codes only family knows.
The hunt for the mole has come up empty for weeks now. What if that's because the man doing the hunting is only pretending to look for himself?
I don't like this fucking game. Receipt-gathering is something Cali did, and it turned Todd into a half-dead zombie. He deserved it, of course, but look at the cost she had to pay for going through that process, too. It nearly killed her. It shredded her trust in men, in humanity.
But the what-if is becoming impossible to turn a blind eye toward.
Semyon asks Dima something and the table turns in that direction. Using that as a smokescreen, I bend closer to Navi and ask, "Where were you?"
"Running down that lead," he says breezily. "The mole. Told you I would, didn't I? I don't say things I don't mean. It's a tragic personality flaw."
"And?"
"And nothing yet. Sorry." He finally looks at me.
His eyes are bloodshot and tired, but they look as honest as they ever have.
Or am I just seeing what I want to see? "I'm close, Ro.
I swear on my mother, and you know I don't invoke that woman lightly.
She'd rise up out of Brooklyn to smack me. A few more days is all I need."
"We might not have that long."
"I know." The waitress brings his coffee over and sets it down in front of him. "Believe me, Ro. I know that better than anybody at this table."
I turn back to the table. To the men. To Grigor's grim face and Semyon's cowardice and Dima following it around like a dog.
"Here's what I have to say," I tell them, "and then you can go home and think on it, or you can go home and pack a bag, I don't much care which.
Some of you know Lev made an offer. Not to me.
To my wife. He wants her, and the software she built, and he gave her seven days to decide.
I'll save you the trip to the calendar—today's the seventh. "
That gets a reaction. Even Semyon leans in an inch. This is news to most of them, and I let them chew it.
"So you're all sitting there wondering what I'm going to do," I continue. "Give her up? Give myself up instead?"
Nobody breathes.
"I'm not going to do any of that," I say.
"And I want this so clear that not one of you can pretend later you misheard me.
I will not trade her. Not for the money.
Not for the men. Not for my own life. She's my wife, and she chose to stay with me when she had every reason on God's green earth to run screaming into the night.
I would rather lose all of it than be the man who handed her over to save his own skin. "
I look around the table, at each of them in turn.
Sergei. Yuri. Dima. Semyon. Grigor.
And, last, Navi, at my side.
"So if you want to betray me," I say, "then betray me.
Go to Lev. But hear this before you push back your chair.
" I let my voice drop until it comes out cold, colder than I ever knew it could, the coldness that lives in me and always will.
"I will not forgive it. I will not forget it.
And I will not, under any circumstance you can dream up, change my fucking mind.
Once you walk, you've walked. That door only swings the one way. So be sure. Be very, very sure."
The diner is dead quiet except for the hiss of the grill up front and the tinny radio playing a happy little tune from thirty years ago.
Grigor is the one who moves. He lifts his teacup an inch off the saucer, the same little gesture he's given me twice now, the stay-of-execution gesture, and he sets it back down.
"Understood," he says. Which means: we'll see. Which means: not yet.
I'll take it.
Semyon doesn't lift anything. Dima doesn't, either. But they don't get up and leave, and in this business, on this day, that's about as much as a man can hope for.
I stand. The rest of them stand with me, on instinct, the old muscle memory of respect.
"Go home," I tell them. "Kiss your families. Sleep on it, if you can sleep. I'll be in touch."
They file out ahead of me. Grigor claps a hand on my shoulder on his way past and says nothing, which from Grigor is a whole speech. Semyon won't meet my eyes. Dima follows him.
Navi waits for me, like always. We're the last two out.
"You meant all that?" he asks, as we head for the door. "The whole no-forgiveness sermon?"
"Every word."
"Even me?"
I stop. I look at him. My cousin. The idiot I'd take a bullet for. The one man I've told myself, over and over, it can't be, it isn't, I refuse.
"Don't make me put an answer to that out loud, Navi. Don't do that to either of us."
He nods slowly. "C'mon," he says. "Let's get you home before your wife kills me. She's a scary woman, you know."
That startles a laugh out of me. For one second, it's just us, cousins, same way it's always been, and I feel like a paranoid fool for ever thinking otherwise.
Then we step out into the gray afternoon.
The caravan's parked along the curb the way it always is. My car in the middle, a chase car front and back, drivers already turning over engines. Ordinary. A hundred times ordinary.
Except the street's too empty.
I clock it a half-second too late. That's the thing about half-seconds in this line of work. They're the whole world and they cost you everything, and you never feel them until they're already gone.
Two SUVs come off the side streets at once, one from the front and one from the back. They box the caravan in tight, nose to tail, and doors are already flying open before the tires have even settled.
Men pour out. Masks. Long coats. The dull black shapes of rifles coming up.
"Down!" somebody roars—Grigor, I think, still on the sidewalk—and the world detonates into noise.
I don't remember deciding to move. My body decides for me. I'm reaching for the piece under my jacket and turning my shoulder to put the car between me and the muzzle flash. Glass is coming apart above my head in a hard bright rain, and men are shouting in two languages at once.
Then Navi hits me.
It's not a stumble. He hits me full and deliberate, both hands flat on my chest, all his weight behind it, and he drives me sideways and down, off my feet, out from the line I was standing in.
This is betrayal then. He's shoving me into the line of fire, almost literally stabbing me in the back.
Except for—
Wait.
No, he's not.
He's shoving me out of the way…
… and raising himself up as a barrier to protect me.
"Ro—!"
I hear the rounds. Two of them. Close together, close enough that they're almost one sound, that flat, wet thud that has nothing to do with the movies, the sound a body makes when it stops something meant for someone else.
We go down together. I crash hard on the asphalt with him on top of me. I hear my men firing back now, the crack of return fire, tires screaming, an engine gunning, somebody yelling go, go, go. The enemy SUVs are already peeling off. In and out. A professional job.
But I'm not paying attention to any of it.
Because Navi is heavy on me, dead weight in the true sense, and when I get my hands up to push him off, they come away wet and red.
"No," I hear myself say. "No, no. Navi. Navi."
I get out from under him and roll him onto his back on the street, spreadeagled in the broken glass, in the spreading dark. I press my hands to his chest because that's what you do, you press, you keep it in, you don't let it out.
There's so much of it. It's coming through my fingers no matter how hard I press, hot, slick, and impossibly fast. His shirt is soaked through until it's black. His eyes are open and finding mine.
"Told you to get down," he croaks. "You never listen to me."
"Shut up. Shut up. Don't you dare talk right now." I lean on him harder. My hands won't stop the flow. Nothing will. "You idiot. You stupid, stupid idiot—why would you—"
"'S the job," he breathes. His hand comes up and finds my wrist and holds it, weak. "Take a bullet for you. Said I would. Been saying it since we were kids stealing cigarettes off your old man. Guess I'm a man of my word after all."
"Not like this. Not for me. Navi, look at me. Navi."
He smiles. Blood in his teeth.
My cousin, my whole life. The last honest thing.
"Wasn't me," he says. "The codes. The scale. It was never—" He coughs. I feel more of him leak through my fingers. "Had to make you hear it. With my own mouth. Wasn't me, Ro."
"I know," I sob. It kills me, that he's spending the last words he'll ever have to tell me the one thing I should never have doubted. "I know it wasn't. I always knew. Forgive me. Please, Navi, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."
His eyes are going somewhere. Somewhere past me, past the gray sky, past all of it.
"A CAR!" I scream. It rips out of me, raw, a sound I've never made in my life. My hands are packed to the wrist in my cousin's chest and I can't stop it, I can't hold it, it won't stay in. "Somebody get me a fucking CAR!"
Footsteps. Shouting. The world crashing back in.
"Stay with me," I beg him, pressing, pressing, useless. "Navi. Stay. You stay with me, you hear? Don't you leave. Please."
His grip on my wrist goes soft.