15. Fifteen #2
But I knew what was really on trial in this room, and it wasn’t whether I’d shot Pavel or not. It was my honor against hers, and this was a war I knew how to fight.
"When I called him a traitor," I said. "I was being kind. But since you’ve chosen to press the issue, I’ll state it plainly. The old way. Your husband was suka."
She flinched, eyes widening.
"He took money from the Italians," I said. "From the men who put a leather shop on Greek ground to spite us, who've been bleeding this organization for a year while we called it bad luck. Your husband sold us to them. I put him down for it. I regret the shot in the back. If he’d have given me the chance, I’d have shot him in the heart. I’d have done him that service if he hadn’t drawn on me, but he did.
He made his choice when he pulled a gun on me in that shop.
I’m sorry that I shot him in the back, but I’m not sorry I shot him. ”
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"And a suka's widow," I said, "does not get to sit in this office and call me a coward."
Her eyes widened even further, and she turned immediately to Nikita. “I didn’t know,” she said in quick Russian. “I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me anything, I swear to you—”
Nikita silenced her with a wave of his hand. “If you thought, even for a minute, that your husband was anything other than loyal, you’d never have walked through that door. Your honor was never in question.”
“But mine is,” I said a little meaner than I meant to. “Have all my years of service meant nothing to you?”
“Pavel served this organization for forty years, longer than either of us.” Nikita gave me a hard look and placed his palms flat on the desk. “I’m going to need more than your word this time.”
I pulled the folder out from inside my jacket and dropped it on the desk in front of him. "There's your more than my word."
Nikita stared at it. “What’s this?”
"Open it," I said. "The photos. That's Pavel at Saggio's on Pearl, back room, three weeks ago.
That's him with Tonio Marchetti, who runs the counterfeit pipeline for the Italians out of that leather shop.
That's the two of them shaking hands like old friends. There’s him with his Italian mistress too. "
I set my phone on the desk on top of the photos and thumbed it awake.
“That’s my building. Lobby camera, hallway camera, stamped this morning.
That’s Pavel coming through my front door with two men.
That’s my door coming off its hinges. And that’s Pavel walking Finlay Gallagher out of my home with a hood over his head.
” I let it run to the end. Nobody in the room breathed.
“We tracked the car to a bespoke leather shop in Greek Village. Italian-owned. Dario Kastelani was standing in the back of it, waiting to take delivery. You want to tell me a loyal man kicks in his own captain’s door and hand-delivers his asset to the Italians? ”
“And before any of that, he built the file. You handed it to me, he handed it to you. Three names, and he stacked every page on Doug Reeve and left himself one clean line at the bottom of his own. Two days he spent telling me to put down a man whose only crime was getting passed over, and the whole time he was the one in bed with the Italians.” I tapped the photos.
“He didn’t build that file to find the leak, Nikita. He built it to bury it.”
Lyudmila made a small, wounded sound. I didn't look at her.
"I didn't go hunting this for fun," I said.
"I went hunting it because the Italians shot up a flower shop and put four rounds through the window of the one place Izzy Costas can't live without.
Everyone knows the man loves his fucking flowers.
The Italians knew it too, which is exactly why they did it.
They wanted the Greeks angry. Angry Greeks start wars, and a war on that line takes all of us down with it.
" I tapped the folder. "I've spent all this time keeping that war in the box. This is what was in the box."
Nikita opened the folder finally. He went through it slowly, his face giving up nothing. "Where did this come from?"
"Izzy Costas gave it to me himself."
He looked up from the folder. “You met with Izzy? Without me?”
“Am I your right hand or not? What’s a right hand for? I’m not here to jerk you off, Nikita. I’m here to do the dirty work so you can keep your nose clean. That’s why I have crosses on my fingers and you don’t. I took an oath to serve. That’s what I’m doing.”
He set the folder down flat and smoothed his hand over it once. “Is it?” He glanced at Fin briefly before meeting my eyes again.
I swallowed. “Of course. This organization comes first. It always has. It always will.”
Nikita came around the desk, buttoning his jacket.
He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell the vodka and the cigarettes under his cologne.
"You've made your case," he said. "Pavel was suka.
The folder is good. Better than good. The Greeks will keep their peace, the Italians will lose their shop, and a traitor is in the ground where he should be.
" He nodded, almost kind. "On the matter of Pavel, you are clean. I want you to hear that from me."
I waited. There was always a but with Nikita. He just liked you to reach for it.
"But you didn’t kill Pavel for the organization," he said.
"I just told you—"
"You told me a good story. It even happens to be true." He tipped his head toward the desk, the folder, all of it. "You found the proof. You kept the war in the box. All of that is real. None of it is why you hung up on me and put a bullet in a made man without a word to anyone. Is it, Aleksi?”
I didn’t answer.
“Answer me honestly. If I’d asked you to wait, would you have waited?”
“There wasn’t time,” I started. “They were going to—”
“They were going to what, Aleksi?”
I dropped my head and ran a hand through my hair. No matter how I answered, it wouldn’t save me. Nikita knew. He’d known before I’d known how much Fin meant to me. He’d called it days ago when I was standing in his law office, before I even knew about Pavel.
Nikita sighed and folded his hands. “When my father suspected I was with Yuri, despite my marriage to Tatiana, I did terrible things to protect the man I loved. I disobeyed my father’s commands.
At the time, I told myself I was doing it in service to the organization, but I knew it wasn’t true.
I’ve always been a selfish bastard, Aleksi, so I know a selfish bastard in love when I see one. ”
“It isn’t… It’s not like that.”
“You can lie to yourself, Aleksi, but do not ever lie to me. That dishonors us both.”
The room was very quiet. Lyudmila had stopped crying to listen. Nikolai was watching me with that warm, awful attention, enjoying it, and Warrick in the corner had gone still.
I swallowed. “Fine. Then the price is mine to pay.”
“And you’ll pay it.” Nikita made a vague gesture.
Nikolai drained his glass and stood, coming around behind me. I braced myself for the beating I knew was coming when my brother put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he said.
And then Kostya shoved Fin, grabbed his arm and yanked it forward, forcing his hand onto the desk. “What the fuck! Get yer hands off me! Fucker!”
Warrick grabbed his bag and stood. Nikolai pulled me back, and his fingers tightened on my shoulder. I realized with a terrible sinking feeling what was about to happen, and then I realized… There was nothing I could do to stop it.
"Wait," I said. "Wait, Nikita. Stop. Leave the boy. Take your pound of flesh from me."
"It’s not about the flesh," Nikita said. "It’s never been about that."
Nikolai's fingers dug into my shoulder. I could have broken his grip.
I'd broken bigger men. But there were six guns on the wall.
Kostya had Fin's wrist pinned flat to the desk.
The second I moved, somebody put a bullet in one of us, and it wouldn't be me they'd aim at. I knew that. Nikolai knew I knew it.
Fin was still swearing, still pulling, the cords standing out in his neck. "Get off me. Aleksi. Aleksi, tell them—"
Warrick crossed the room with the bag. He set the bag on the desk, opened it, and carefully laid out a few absorbent pads, gloves, surgical clamps, and a bone saw. “Spread his fingers, please. I need the one you want isolated for a clean cut.”
Kostya wrestled with Fin’s hand a bit, enough that Nikita had to step in to keep Fin from headbutting him, but they eventually got the ring finger on his left hand isolated and pinned to the absorbent pads.
Warrick finished putting on his gloves. "Hold still,” he advised Fin. “If you move, it won’t be clean.”
"Warrick." My voice cracked. "Warrick, look at me. Don't. Please. I'm asking you. I'm—"
"I'll keep it as clean as I can," he said without looking at me.
And then he took Fin’s finger clean off at the first knuckle.