Chapter 22
Dominik
The soft sound of my door settling back into the frame follows me down the hall along with the image of Alina in my bed.
I lock up the apartment because I don’t want anyone in there with her when I’m gone.
I trust my men with my life. I don’t trust anyone with her.
They can guard from the hallways, the lobby, the exits. I won’t be but an elevator ride away.
The hole in my side is a clean, unfriendly reminder of Archer that opens whenever I breathe too deeply. I keep my breath shallow. I keep my promises. Alina will be safe here even if I’m not with her.
Turning away from the door, I wait for the guards to arrive and give them their instructions before getting on the elevator.
The ride down to the basement is empty. My phone vibrates once in my hand, and I glance at the screen.
RENAT: He’s all yours.
I tuck the device away. The mirrored walls throw back a man in a black shirt that hides more than it reveals and a face that forgot how to be soft when it learned how to be useful. Alina’s scent lives on my skin now, and even that simple reminder of her makes me miss the soft part.
The doors open onto the lower level of the parking garage and rows of expensive cars. It’s a long line of space, steel overhead, fluorescent strips of light buzzing. The air is heavy with the scent of gasoline.
Renat meets me along the way, a slice of shadow with patient eyes. “Boss.” He doesn’t look at my side. He’ll keep pretending the hole isn’t there unless I fall over, and then he’ll pretend it was the floor’s fault. That is loyalty.
“We gave Archer the time for the money drop,” Renat says. “We’ll wait until the last minute to call him on a burner with the address.”
“Good,” I reply.
“You want him brought back here?”
“Not yet. Let him think he’s in the clear once he makes the drop. Keep someone on him, close enough to make him paranoid but far enough that he can’t spot them,” I respond.
“Yes, sir,” he says, then, “The biker’s in the very back.” He tips his chin toward the room where we brought Alina just a few nights ago. Petrov stands outside the door, rolling his shoulders like he’s been straining them.
“You sure you want to do this now?” he asks. “His mouth is still running. If you take your time, he might decide to say more important things.”
“I don’t have time to wait,” I tell him and slide the bolt.
Inside, the steel chair is bolted to the slab under a cone of white light, same as every other confession I’ve taken down here.
The kid in the chair is trying to figure out how to look older and braver than he is.
Mid-twenties if I had to guess. His leather jacket has been cut off him.
It hangs on a nail by the door. The patch that bought him this chair is partially sticking out of Petrov’s front pants pocket, a worthless symbol now that it’s been stripped.
The kid’s face is already a mess with his cheek split, lip busted, and one eye darkening. I can smell the fear on him right away.
“Name?” I demand.
His throat works. “Kyle.”
“I assume you know who we are,” I say.
He nods. The nod stutters. “Russians. Morozov.”
“That’s right.” I step into the light with him and watch his pupils try to shrink.
“Since you know who we are, then you know we can be efficient. You say something that helps me, I check it out, and you keep breathing. Or we can go the other route. You talk about loyalty to men who I’m guessing would sell your bike for parts if it bought them a night of safety and I take pieces off you until your tune changes. ”
“I don’t know—”
“Stop,” I say. It’s a quiet word he listens to because there are still reflexes left in young men that tell them when the person in front of them will make them hurt.
I pick up a wrench from the tray. Tools are a universal language, and I’m fluent in them all.
I let the weight adjust in my hand. The kid’s gaze is glued to it the whole time.
“Where did our other guns go?” I ask. “Who took them out and to where? How many pallets moved and when?”
Kyle licks blood off his lip. “Another warehouse,” he says. “Near the water. After the…” He swallows. “After the mess, Popeye said he wanted to consolidate. Two pallets went out last night under a tarp in the van going somewhere to the south. I’m a new patch. I don’t see the list.”
“South,” I repeat, unimpressed. “South where?”
He shakes his head along with his greasy blond hair. He thinks he can protect something if he pretends not to know its name. I crouch down so that my eyes are level with his. The wound in my side claws at my restraint. I ignore it.
“Look at me,” I say. He does even though he doesn’t want to.
“You think your brothers are coming to open this door behind me? You think they’ll hear the story you tell yourself about loyalty and decide you’re worth dying for?
They won’t. They’ll spend your dues on a new carburetor and tell your girl and your mother that you were a traitor, so they’ll forgive them for leaving you behind.
You need to talk now because the only thing in this room that is gentle is the time I’m giving you to make a better decision. ”
“I can’t,” Kyle whispers. It’s the words of a boy too stupid to realize all that’s left now is to try to save himself.
“You can,” I say, and swing the wrench into the chair just beside his knee.
The sound is a metal scream that dies fast. The kid jolts like I sent electricity through him. That’ll come later if I need it. I hope I won’t.
“Your radio words,” I say as I brush my thumb once against the wrench handle. “River. Smoke. Tell me what they mean.”
He swallows. “River is move. Smoke is… disappear.”
“Good,” I say, and this time the wrench lands on the hard meat above his kneecap with the unpleasant thunk of bone because pain sharpens memory.
He screams. Men always sound younger the first time they break. His veins rise in his neck like ropes. The chains clink and don’t let him leave the chair his body wants to escape. I let the noise fill the room then settle.
“You have ten seconds,” I tell him when he finally runs out of air. “Use them to say something that convinces me not to take a piece you’ll miss.”
“Please—”
“One.”
“Please!”
“Two.”
“Okay!” he sobs. “Bayonne. The other guns are in a moving and storage warehouse in Bayonne! Trucks with vegetables come in and out. They move them a few at a time from there to a cold storage place down the road on First Street.” He’s not making any sense at first, but I think we may be getting somewhere.
“Clarify your nonsense quickly.”
“There’s…there’s a man named Manny who takes orders to a guy in Miami called Delgado. Sometimes they call him El Gallo on the radio because he’s a dick. That’s where. That’s where the other guns went. ”
“What are the addresses?” I demand.
“The warehouse is two-hundred-something West Fifth Street. Cold storage is…it’s on West First Street. I don’t know the exact addresses.”
Petrov makes a small sound behind me. I don’t glance at him, though. I keep watching Kyle. He looks like a boy who is finally admitting that he bit off more than he was ready to chew.
“How many?” I ask. “How many pallets left that warehouse before we got there?”
“Two,” he says, fast, eagerly. “The first night. I was there. I watched from the roof. Popeye came to oversee things. He said he didn’t trust the van’s driver because he plays pool like a liar.
By now half are probably at each location.
” Now he’s just spilling shit that doesn’t matter, but that’s okay.
I’d rather hear too much talking than not enough of it.
“And how long will those guns stay in Bayonne?” I question him.
“I don’t know. Until later today or tomorrow?” he whispers. “When the call says south.”
“And who says it?” I press. “Who makes that call?”
He hesitates exactly the amount of time it takes for his stomach to consider what happens to him next if he holds back the intel from me. “Burn,” he says eventually. “He’s a runner who wants to be important.”
“He already is,” I say. “He’s going to be my lesson.”
Kyle’s chest is heaving now. He’s not done keeping secrets. Men never are. They hide a big one away in their sock drawer. He thinks this is the one that lets him stay a man. I lay the wrench down and take a pair of bolt cutters from the tray because I want to hear every secret he’s ever kept.
“You told me about Manny and Delgado because you think saying names that aren’t in your biker gang protects the ones that are.
Now we need to talk about them. Who runs the watch at the door?
Who sits in the sedan pretending to be drunk?
Who decides when to change the keycode so he can feel important? ”
“Don’t.” He shakes his head while staring at the cutters. “Please don’t.”
“You keep seven fingers, you can still make a fist. You keep six, you can still count your losses. You keep five, you can still ride. You keep four, you learn to hold on.”
“God,” he whispers. “God, please don’t!”
“God doesn’t come down here,” I say, catching his left hand where it tries to curl away. I take the smallest finger in the cutters and watch his chest stutter like a bad engine. “Give me a name.”
“Reed!” he blurts.
“Who?”
“They call him Reed because he smokes the thin ones. He waits in the sedan with the magazine and calls when he sees anyone who don’t belong. He—he’s not a bad guy.”
“Then he should stop doing bad work,” I remark, and remove the cutters without removing the finger because men learn an important lesson from mercy. I lay the tool on the tray, and the relief that floods him is now a drug I control.
“Code?” I demand.
“Two-six-six-seven,” he says immediately, terrified of inventing shit. “I swear that’s what it was the last time I was there.”
“Who patrols the roof?” I ask.
“Jinx,” he says. “They only call him that to piss him off. I don’t know his real name.”
“Good,” I say, and move behind him.