18. DANTE #3
"I don't know anything! I swear!" he exclaims. "I just—I just know it's a hacker, that's all! A-A man, a young man!"
I let go of his disgusting face. He cries Russian prayers. That Nyx is a young man is fucking useless information.
I crack my knuckles. Whether he knows more or not, we've come to do something else with his repugnant existence.
As I twirl the knife between my fingers, I hear a sound. Distant, but unmistakable. Sirens.
Viktor's eyes go wide. A glimmer of hope, pathetic and bright. Salvation. He looks from the kitchen door to the main room, almost smiling through his tears. The idiot.
The sirens get louder, stopping outside. I hear the voice of an older, tired man echo from one of my men's radios: " I want a two-block perimeter! Nobody in, nobody out! Contain the civilians on the south corner for statements! "
One of my men—Marco—at the entrance signals to me. He's coming. Alone.
Viktor doesn't see the signal. He only sees the silhouette of the detective entering the restaurant through the shattered door with his weapon drawn. For Viktor, the cavalry has arrived.
"Thank God, the police!" one of the cooks whispers from the dining room.
The detective enters. The place is a chaos of overturned tables and broken glass. Wealthy customers are huddled on the floor. My men, the ones who did the initial sweep, are standing like statues near the walls.
"NYPD! Nobody move!" the detective—Walsh—yells. His eyes scan the room and find mine, at the back, in the kitchen doorway. I don't move. I give him a slight nod. Do what you have to do.
Walsh acts. He points his gun at my men. "You two! Hands on your head! On your knees! Now!"
Marco and the other one look at me. They see my approval. Immediately, they obey, raising their hands and slowly kneeling. To the customers, it's a surrender.
Walsh walks with his gun still raised, past my kneeling men, and comes straight for the kitchen. He doesn't stop.
He steps into the kitchen, keeping his armed silhouette visible to my men, and gets close enough for the wall to hide him from the civilians. He leans in toward me.
"Dante, what the fuck is this?" he whispers. "I said I'd hold off patrol for ten minutes, not that you could demolish the place."
I don't look away from Viktor when I answer. "There was a rat infestation. Business, Detective."
The smile of relief on Viktor's face wilts. He looks from me to the detective, from the detective back to me, and his chin trembles. He understands. The cop isn't arresting me. He's complaining about the paperwork.
"Five minutes, Dante," Walsh says, eyeing Viktor with disgust. "After that, my men are coming in, and the scene has to be consistent with the story.
" He turns back to the kitchen door and puts his mask of authority back on, yelling to the dining room, "You two, on your feet!
Slow! Hands on your heads! Get in the kitchen, move! "
While Walsh puts on his show, I turn back to Viktor. The man is broken. There are no more pleas, no more bargaining. This is the end.
I ignore the detective's voice in the background. Viktor.
"Hang him," I say.
The men who were holding Viktor in the chair pull him up, his expensive shoes making a pathetic, greasy scraping sound on the floor. He's a dead weight, resigned.
In the background, I hear Walsh's theater continue. My men who were "surrendering" in the main room enter the kitchen with their hands on their heads as Walsh closes what's left of the door behind them.
"Go through the back," he whispers to them. "Disappear. Now."
The remaining men secure Viktor on the meat hook. The steel tears through the expensive fabric of his suit and lodges in his flesh. A low, guttural groan escapes his throat as his feet leave the floor. His sweaty carcass hangs there. A message.
I step closer. The smell of his sour sweat is nauseating.
"You took something of mine. I cripple something of yours."
I open the side of his throat with that same steak knife—a cut long and shallow enough not to kill him immediately. His body thrashes on the hook, and the scream dies before it's born, drowned in its own collapse.
"That's for my men."
I take a step back. The monstrous thing inherited from my father stirs. It likes this. It would enjoy letting him agonize while it breaks other parts of his body.
I don't.
I look around the kitchen—Walsh is already gone, and Grigory, who has been silent behind me the whole time, steps closer.
"Grigory," I say.
That's all it takes. He draws his weapon, the suppressor already in place. A muffled pop, and Viktor's head hangs limp.
I wipe the knife on the tablecloth.
"Leave him there," I command. "The house special."
I walk out the back. I can hear Walsh mumbling outside, behind the police tape, talking to other uniformed officers. Looking in every respect like the detective in charge of a horrific crime scene.
I find the men from the dining room by the Escalade, two blocks down.
"If it weren't for you, boss, that rat in a suit would be in the trunk by now," Marco says, lighting a cigarette as he gets in the car.
I do the same, and the others follow. Nobody really likes working with cops.
"The little State detective thinks he's in charge," another complains.
"A pig is a pig," Vinny, who has been quiet since the restaurant, mutters under his breath, holding his wrist against his chest.
Marco hits the gas. Grigory, in the front seat, looks at me in the rearview mirror, nervous. He can sense it's not a good day to bust my balls, and he's waiting for my reaction. But I don't say anything about Walsh. Walsh is nothing more than an expensive, annoying tool.
Vinny tries to adjust his arm in the back seat without making a sound. He fails. A low groan, almost a hiss, escapes as he moves.
The car falls silent. Everyone hears it.
I see his reflection in the rearview mirror, in the back seats.
"How's the wrist, Vinny?" I say.
Grigory glances at me in the mirror again. Marco turns to face the window.
Vinny swallows hard. Everyone's eyes flicker to him.
"I... I think it's broken, boss," he stammers, his voice like a boy who just took a ball to the face and is holding back tears. He's probably expecting an order to go to our doctor, maybe a twisted word of comfort. He's too young. He doesn't understand yet.
I take a drag from my cigarette. Dunhill. Nyx .
"Good," I say.
Vinny doesn't reply.
The itch under my skin returns. I see Vinny flinch. It's stronger now. Nyx . His eyes never leave the inside of my eyelids. Nyx, away from me.
We still have nothing concrete. Just a body hanging like a side of beef.
Nyx .
That he's scared right now is unlikely. He's not afraid of a fucking thing. Bored, maybe. Thrown in some dusty basement with nothing to do, or getting beaten, taking hits for not knowing how to shut his fucking mouth. And I will kill anyone who lays a finger on him with my own two hands.
Nyx. In pain? Beaten, forced into some unknown place. Or turned on?
I clench my fists. The mere thought makes me want to destroy someone, to go back to that restaurant, dismember every one of Viktor's organs and make Walsh regret selling himself to someone so inhuman.
Nyx gets off on danger, on threats. Would he be barking back at the head of the Malakovs?
Moaning for a punch, working for them now?
I crush the cigarette. It's a reflex. The men beside me shrink away, trying to give me space.
And what if, right now , he's swearing some sick love to someone else? Someone who gives in to the opportunistic violence he begs for, more than I do. Fuck. Fuck .
"Faster, Marco," I order through gritted teeth. Marco speeds up, pushing past the speed limit, and I see the tension in his shoulders.
No. We haven't had any cyberattacks, nothing to alert us or imply that Nyx has turned against us. But he could do it. I know he could. Attack without being detected. With one order, one well-placed fucking pull of his hair, he'd do it, moaning .
"Boss?" one of my men calls out. There's a hint of concern in his voice, and I notice an intrusive, angry tremor in my fists. A tremor demanding an unmeasured, inherited violence. My father's ghost in the backseat, smiling at me.
Disgusting.
"Shut up, Boris."
He clears his throat and falls silent.
I focus on the blurs of the city sliding past the windows. New York. Nyx's fucking city.
I can't stand still for a second. I can't allow enough empty space in my head for that voice to echo, spitting memories of Nyx on his knees, repeating endlessly, he belongs to anyone with a firm hand.
I have to prove him wrong.
This illogical hurricane destroys the structure I've built.
Is he even alive , in the first place? Or is he so insolent that he provoked them until he got a bullet in the head?
He's too useful; if he's dead at the hands of the Malakovs, it would be an act of monumental stupidity.
Getting rid of him is getting rid of an asset that dismantles empires for fun.
And, instead of treating it like a matter of logical probability, all these possibilities make my blood boil to the point of burning through every artery, bone, and muscle in my body. It's an ugly anger. An anger that only he can ignite.
I pull my phone from my pocket. Vibrating, incessant, is Svetlana's name on the screen.
I answer. Grigory is on alert. He's waiting for me to kill everyone in this car.
" Dante ," she says. " The security systems were disabled at the moment of the attack. Alpha-level access codes, used in a five-minute window to create a complete blind spot on the entire west perimeter. "
Of course the attack began as internal. They couldn't have gotten through without inside help. I squeeze the phone. The plastic groans.
" Luca also reported back. Sal's wife and kids were home. They said he left for work and never came back. We've moved them to one of our compounds in Queens under constant surveillance. They're terrified. "
I hate this.