Chapter 36
KIR
“Good to be back?”
Freya sighs. “That feels like a loaded question.”
I grin as I pull the car into the underground parking lot beneath the building that houses my Midtown office when I don’t feel like working from home.
“If I say yes , it’s good to be back in Kyoto, I’m a dick because it means I’m happy to have left New York. But if?—”
“Freya,” I sigh. “Don't overthink it. I’ve accepted the fact that all three of you are mostly going to be on the other side of the planet now.”
She sucks her teeth. “That might make me feel guiltier if I didn’t know you have the coolest girl in the world keeping you company.”
The three of us ended up having dinner twice more while Freya was in town, and she and Brooklyn have gotten close enough that I’m sure it’s going to bite me in the ass at some point.
“Tell her I say hi?”
“Of course.” I step out of the elevator into the vast glass and steel office space overlooking Bryant Park. “Did you, ah, find what I was asking you about?”
Freya snorts. “ Duh . It took me like four minutes.”
“A whole four minutes?” I cluck my teeth. “You’re slipping.”
“Gimme a break. I was on a plane.” She sighs heavily. “Who is this guy? He’s fucking gross.”
My jaw tightens. “This guy” would be James Lucareli, Brooklyn’s abusive piece of shit ex-boyfriend.
He's fucking lucky his uncle Giovani is the president of the longshoreman’s union. Even so, that’s not a hard wall, just an obstacle I need to navigate.
And if there is no way to navigate it, and I have to smash through that wall?
So fucking be it. I’d watch the whole goddamn world burn for her.
“He’s just…a problem,” I growl. “One that I will be dealing with.”
“ Good ,” she mutters. “This guy is a serious piece of shit. Sending you everything I found now.”
After we’ve said our goodbyes, I open my laptop and download the dossier Freya’s emailed me, resting my elbows on my desk as I start to page through it.
Unbelievably, I hate the motherfucker even more after I finish reading.
Laying hands on Brooklyn, terrorizing her and manipulating her is already more than enough for me to want to put this piece of shit through a woodchipper while he’s still alive. But when I see what Freya’s dug up, my blood boils even hotter.
Freya's an expert at searching both known and unknown things about people—even if they’re sealed court documents.
For instance, part of what she’s found are James’ numerous arrests—and a pile of dropped charges—going back to when he was a juvenile: assault, sexual battery, more assault, sexual assault, rape, another rape, restraining orders from three different women, another assault charge coupled with a drunk and disorderly, and yet another sexual assault to top it all off.
I glare death at the screen. Somehow, he beat all the charges—probably a mix of his uncle pulling strings with the police union, and some greased palms here and there. I’m also guessing intimidation played a substantial part in it.
In three of his assault cases, the accusers dropped charges. All his rape arrests are the same.
I seethe.
James’ “lucky streak” has officially ended .
Because it’s not just the “known” that Freya digs up. She finds all the unknown stuff that people really don't want to come to light. Every dirty secret. Every vice. Every sin.
James’ sins are plentiful .
Rape and assault don’t appear to be enough to slake the vile hunger in that motherfucker. James has a thing for girls.
And I do mean girls .
Based on his web history, his forays into the dark web, and the trove of files on his hard drive, Brooklyn’s actually on the older side for him.
…By about ten fucking years .
Fury and bile churn in my stomach before I close the file and shut the laptop.
I know exactly how to deal with James now.
My smug satisfaction as I plan exactly what I’m going to do to him is, sadly, cut short when my phone rings.
That said, a call from Taylor Crown right now could be very good news.
“Ms. Crown,” I smile.
Technically , she's “Mrs. Krylov” these days. But given that Crown and Black is one of if not the most prestigious law firm in New York, taking the name of her husband—a notorious and ruthless Bratva kingpin—could be bad for business.
“I hope this call means things have transitioned smoothly?”
It took all of one conversation with Diego Padilla, Brooklyn’s stepfather’s lawyer, to decide I didn’t trust him further than I could throw him.
For what Brooklyn has been shelling out for him, he should not only have had Derrick out of prison with all charges dropped by now, but should also be suing the justice department for wrongful prosecution.
Yet somehow, despite the considerable money Brooklyn has paid him for various “experts”, the case is going nowhere.
Which I why I called in the big guns, reached out to Crown and Black—who’ve done legal work for me before—and hired Taylor to take over.
Taylor exhales. “There’s a small speedbump, Kir.”
I scowl. “Padilla? If he’s dragging on handing over the case, get a number from him to fuck off, and I’ll pay it.”
“It’s not Padilla,” she says slowly. “It’s Derrick Wagner.”
Shit .
“He’s okay, right?” I growl. Not that I give a fuck about the man, but Brooklyn does, and if something’s happened to him in prison, it’s going to destroy her.
“I'm afraid I don’t have an answer to that,” Taylor says. “But I can tell you what he’s not , which is a prison inmate .”
My jaw tightens. “Excuse me?”
“Derrick Wagner is not incarcerated anywhere in New York or any other jurisdiction within the United States.”
I frown. “They released him?”
“Correct,” she says tightly. “Three years ago, after his last stint for wire fraud.”
Holy shit .
“The federal grand larceny charges?”
“ Legally speaking ,” Taylor says carefully, “that’s all I’m able to share with you given attorney-client privilege. But I’m going to transfer you to, well…I’ll let you get acquainted on your own. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help with this, Kir.”
I shake my head. “No no, I appreciate the effort. Thanks, Taylor.”
“Of course. Transferring you to Peter now.”
The line clicks over.
“Mr. Nikolayev? This is Peter Traif. I…think we’ve met before.”
We have indeed . “Peter—glad to see your skills are still for hire.”
Peter is sort of a private investigator, though one that has no issues working, shall we say, outside the legal guidelines binding most private investigators. It's why Taylor was so delicate about passing me on to him just now, though I know he’s done work for Crown and Black in the past.
“I’m hoping you can fill in the blanks Taylor was obliged to omit?”
Peter clears his throat. “Bluntly, Derrick Wagner is a liar. Not only is he not in prison anywhere, the auto shop he was supposedly stealing from doesn’t exist.”
My eyes widen. “You’re joking.”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Nikolayev. Derrick Wagner is a con artist and has been for years.
He’s wanted as Mike Brommer in Texas for bilking a military widow out of her late husband’s death benefits.
Tennessee knows him as Carl Willoughby, and they’d love to talk to him about an investment scam he ran on a retirement home in Mount Juliet. ”
Motherfucker.
“Tell me you know where he is,” I growl, seeing red.
“I don’t, not yet,” Peter says. “But I’ve got some promising leads. You want me to find this guy?”
“Definitely,” I hiss. “If you can clear the rest of your workload to focus on this, I’ll triple your rate.”
“Consider it done, Mr. Nikolayev, and thank you. I’ll keep you in the loop. It shouldn’t take me too long.”
When I hang up I surge from the desk and stalk over to the windows, running my fingers through my hair as I pace in front of them.
Mother.
Fucker .
I already didn’t like the piece of shit for losing Brooklyn to the foster system in the first place. I fucking hated that she was stripping to keep him out of jail.
But now that I hear that he and Diego have been bilking money out of a girl who's barely keeping her head above water, and that she did it all for nothing …?
Pure venom surges through my veins.
The worst part is, I can’t tell Brooklyn. It's obvious she thought Derrick was the one man she could actually trust in this world, who wasn’t just trying to rip her off, or play her, or fuck her.
If I tell her all this, it’ll break her. And I can’t do that.
…I will , however, rip Derrick’s head from his body when I get my hands on him.
My phone rings again, shattering my lurid fantasies of dismembering Derrick bare-handed.
“Dimitri,” I growl. “To what do I owe?—”
“We need to meet, Kir,” he grunts. “ Now .”
I tense. “What’s this about?”
“In person, Kir,” he sighs. “My restaurant in the West Village. You know it, da ?”
I do. Truth be told, I’ll miss it when Dimitri pulls out of New York after our deal goes through. It’s not easy to find honest-to-God vareniki —Russian dumplings—in the city.
I agree to meet him and head back to the car to drive downtown.
Dimitri’s men nod when I arrive, ushering me through the back door of the closed restaurant.
“Ahhh, Kir.” Dimitri stands from the table he’s sitting at in the back, offering me his hand before we both sit. He pushes an empty glass in front of me and splashes expensive vodka from the open bottle on the table into it. We clink glasses and drink, then I set my glass down and eye him.
“So, what was so important?”
His face darkens. “It’s…not pleasant business, Kir.” Dimitri sighs. “This is a big ask… I’m going to need you to restrain yourself in a moment.”
My eyes narrow. “ Restrain myself? Why?”
He looks across the room to his two men standing by the kitchen door. “Bring him,” he grunts.
Everything dissolves to a black and red mist when the motherfucker walks in. I’m on my feet in a millisecond, a snarl on my lips as I grab the vodka bottle by the neck, fully prepared to smash it on the edge of the table and use the broken part to carve a hole in Lou’s chest.
“Kir, please!” Dimitri barks, moving to me. “This is business.”