Chapter 18
RAJAN REMEMBERS EXACTLY where the old LS bookkeeper used to pick up his work. That shitty café downtown, right next to a laundromat and a storefront that was perpetually for rent. Rajan’s been there a few times, dropping records off. He never thought he’d be back.
Inside, Zohra’s at the counter, elbows leaning on the table while she reads a book. She looks up when he enters.
“Where is she?” Rajan demands. Zohra laughs.
“Wow, Rajan. Maybe start with hello—Wait, stop!” She darts in front of him, because he’s reached the door to the kitchen.
He’s not in the mood for games. “Get out of my way.”
She doesn’t. “Just listen—”
Rajan pushes her aside—gently, because even now he’s conscious of what she’s been through. When she grabs his arm, he shakes her off and continues on. Nothing’s stopping him now.
Ever since his last meeting with Kat, this absurd thought had been niggling at him. But he dismissed it every time—it was way too stupid-sounding. Simran? Running with the Lions? No way. And yet, when he saw her with Chandani, he had to ask. Just to reassure himself.
What he got was the exact opposite of reassurance. And if Simran slipping up wasn’t enough evidence, calling Nick afterward sure was.
“I’m not getting involved in your drama,” Nick said when Rajan demanded the truth. “Sort this out yourselves. Tonight, at six.”
Rajan couldn’t concentrate at work after that. He kept thinking about the old accountant who was arrested. The Lions’ money issues lately. He started to piece it together, and it horrified him.
Now, he pushes into the café service hallway only to be caught around the middle by some LS dude, who pats him down for weapons. The second his hands are off, Rajan surges into the kitchen.
The industrial space is the same as he remembers.
But now there’s a desk in the corner, piled high with notebooks and paper.
Nick’s there, bending over the page Simran’s scrawling on.
She sits at a chair there like she owns the place, a pen in her hand, using a brick of brown-papered cocaine as a paperweight.
Rajan’s done shrooms once or twice, and the experience has nothing on what he’s seeing right now.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he says without preamble.
Both her and Nick look up, but Simran answers. “You should leave, Rajan. You can’t be seen here.”
Of course she’s not even surprised. Simran knows everything—or at least she thinks she does.
Rajan braces his hands on the table. Simran continues writing like he’s not there.
“I get what you’re trying to do,” he says to the top of her head.
“You’re trying to stop me from getting caught and going to jail, right?
And let’s pretend for one second that I’m okay with it.
Not that you even asked, but let’s pretend.
Have you thought about what’ll happen if they catch you? ”
Her pen pauses briefly.
“Do you want to go to prison? Screw up your future? Do you wanna die for them?” He gestures to the room.
“Because that’s where this ends. The Lions’ last accountant is locked up.
The guy before him got strung up in his own office.
This isn’t some fun little math problem for you to solve at school. This shit is real.”
“I know that.” Simran’s voice is sharp. “I’m not doing it forever. It’s temporary.”
He laughs. “Temporary? Fucking temporary? Is that what they told you?” His voice rises. In his peripheral vision, someone casually reaches under their jacket.
“Okay.” Nick grabs Rajan’s arm. “Take a walk.”
Rajan wrenches his arm away. “You take a fucking walk, you prick. I’ll deal with you later—”
“Let me rephrase.” Nick shoves him. Hard. “Let’s take a walk, or this isn’t going to be pretty.”
Rajan’s about to shove him back, but he pauses. The circle has tightened around him. Subtly. He ponders his odds, but Simran’s eyes are huge, and he doesn’t want her to see any of that.
So he lets Nick push him into the service hallway. As soon as they’re alone, he wheels on him. He wants to pummel him, but Nick just casually has his gun out right now. Rajan settles for: “You’re sick for taking advantage of her like this.”
“She offered.”
“And you accepted because you thought she had something to offer.”
Nick doesn’t reply for a moment. “I don’t let opportunities pass me by. You know I have a talent for finding talent.”
Rajan sees red. “You piece of—”
“It’s like she said. Until the end of July only. That pays your debts, and we should have another accountant by then.”
He’s being way too casual about this. “Seriously? She’s not an accountant. Why even trust her with these ledgers?” Rajan’s only glimpsed them rarely, passed between the hands of people much more important than him. “You’re handing her all the LS’s info.”
“Nobody has all our info,” Nick scoffs. “Well, except Manny, maybe. But Simran isn’t even allowed her phone while she works.
And you know what? She’s good at this.” He nods to the kitchen.
“We snagged ledgers from the Aces last night. The Aces. Manny wants one cracked tonight—he thinks the Aces’ don has been sending messages from prison, ordering a hit on an LS member.
And Simran was the first person I thought of to do it.
I wasn’t wrong. She’s pulling it apart.”
His glee turns Rajan’s stomach. “If something happens to her...”
“She’s doing the books, not coming to shoot-outs. Be grateful. She’s giving you an out.”
“I’d rather go to prison.”
Nick looks at him with something like pity. “Go tell your PO you were here, then.” He tucks his gun away. “But Simran’s still in it for the summer, whether you like it or not.”
Rajan breathes deeply through his nose. A shitty, shitty situation, and he’s losing control of it. “I want to talk to her.”
“Promise you’re finished with your tantrum first.”
Rajan rolls his eyes and shoves past him.
Simran stiffens slightly when he reenters, as does everyone else.
He grabs a chair from the corner and drags it over to her.
She watches warily as he turns it around, sits, and rests his chin on the back to stare at her.
“If you’re not gonna listen to me, don’t expect me to listen to you.
Every minute you’re here, I’ll be here, too. ”
“That’s defeating the point.”
“I’m glad it feels pointless.”
Her lips thin. She looks down at her book. Hopefully, she’s starting to see for herself how fucked up this is.
The room lapses into silence. For the next few minutes, he watches her write, cross things out, and occasionally stare into space with an expression he associates with her mental calculations.
He’s pretty sure she doesn’t even register the brick of cocaine sitting in front of her.
Which is unfathomable to him. God, how many highs could he get out of that much coke. ..?
His fingers start to itch. He puts his hands in his pockets. He could never afford it. More importantly, he isn’t into this shit anymore, right? He’s here to watch Simran. Not daydream about scraping off just a little—
Simran bends forward suddenly and starts writing furiously. It snaps Rajan out of it. Even though he told himself he wouldn’t care, he’s curious. He can’t help but bend with her over the book.
A faint popcorn smell wafts from the page, which contains complete gibberish—the letters don’t form real words. But Simran scrawls a formula at the top, frowning. It’s entrancing. He may be shit at math himself, but she makes numbers her bitch.
The minutes crawl by. Half an hour. An hour.
Everyone drifts into more relaxed positions.
Nick’s off having a smoke break; Zohra’s on the floor studying her LSAT prep book.
Rajan continues watching Simran work despite himself.
She’s decoding, all right. From what he can gather, all the letters have been shifted three letters forward in the alphabet, and when she shifts them back, it starts making sense. D is actually A. E is B. F is C.
“How’d you figure that out?” he asks, quietly, unable to help himself.
Simran glances his way, as if surprised he’s still there.
She pushes her glasses up her nose. “It’s called a Caesar cypher.
We talked about it once in calculus. The most common letter in this code is h, but the most common letter in the English alphabet is e.
Therefore, they’re probably substituting h for e.
” She points to the formula she’s scrawled.
“If i is a letter from the alphabet, i plus three is the letter it turns into. If C equals Caesar cypher, and i is the letter, the Caesar cypher of i is i plus three—”
“Forget I asked,” Rajan says. She grins.
“These pages are just inventory transactions, which is probably why they encrypted them so poorly. Nick must be looking for something else.” She flips to another section. Here, there are symbols instead of letters: Stars. Pitchforks. Crowns. Rings.
Nick walks back in the room. “Simran, you keep getting calls from a Neetu.”
It’s only when Simran tenses up again that Rajan realizes how much she’d relaxed in the last few minutes. “Neetu?” he repeats. That name sounds familiar. “The one from the kitchen?”
“Yes. I was supposed to meet her tonight—Never mind.” Simran rubs her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”
But clearly it does. Rajan glances at the page. He shouldn’t help. He really, really shouldn’t encourage this. But...the thought of her being trapped here...
“Listen, I might know some of these.” He picks up her pen, ignoring her blink of surprise. “This upside-down L. That’s probably referring to us—I mean, them. The Lions.” Talk about a Freudian slip.
“Why’s it upside down?” Simran asks.
“Disrespect.” He’s seen it in their graffiti before.
Simran takes the pen and notes it in the margin. He points to another symbol.
“The ace of spades is Aces.”
She writes quicker now. “Tell me everything you know about the Aces. I think this is the kind of code you have to understand your enemy for.”
As it happens, Rajan knows a lot about the Aces.
“They’re older and more established than the Lions.
They’re exclusive about who they let become full members, but they’ve got tons of wannabes doing their dirty work.
” That asshole Zach Singer from school was one of them.
“And they’ve got rules. No stealing each other’s shit, no going after family members—don’t be a coward. Don’t use what you sell.”
“Half those assholes smoke crack anyway,” Nick mutters.
“They don’t always follow their own rules,” Rajan agrees. “But they pretend to.”
Simran nods thoughtfully. “Any...symbols? The Lions have tattoos. Do they?”
Snake Tattoo immediately comes to mind. “Snakes. And they have this motto. ‘Reign in hell.’ They write it fucking everywhere.” Also seen on graffiti. The lack of imagination is inexcusable.
Simran taps one of the symbols—a palm tree crossed out. “‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ That’s from Paradise Lost. Who decided on the motto?”
Nick speaks up. “Otis. He’s the don Manny thinks wrote this message.”
“Otis,” Simran murmurs, then scrawls the letter O next to the symbol. “If they really write their motto everywhere, maybe they wrote it here, too. Let’s look for a five-letter word, two-letter word, and four-letter word.”
They scan the page. Rajan spots it first. “There, at the bottom.”
“Good eye,” Simran says appreciatively, and god, he’d completely forgotten the rush her praise gave him. “We can crack the alphabet way faster now.”
And they do. They put letters together, some through context clues and others through meaningful symbols. Nick and Zohra drift closer, as if too curious to help themselves.
When it’s done, they all stare at the message.
“Letter to Adrina,” Nick reads. “That’s his wife.”
“Any guesses why he’s acting like Manny’s his son instead of his mortal enemy?” Zohra mutters.
Nick picks up the notebook. “Because it’s coded.” He squints for a minute, then tosses it back on the table. “Every fifth word. Read it.”
And suddenly it becomes clear. THE SHIPMENT IS MOVING OUT SOON. HIT MANNY BEFORE THEN.
“Shit.” Rajan breathes. A hit order on an LS godfather? This is big. The last time a godfather got killed was before Rajan’s time, but he’s heard the stories. It was chaos.
Nick rips the message out of the book. He’s trying to be casual, but Rajan can tell he’s shaken, too. “You can go now.”
There’s a collective exhale; chairs scrape back. Zohra wanders off to pick up her textbook, and Nick’s already making phone calls in the corner. But Simran stays put, staring at the inside back cover of the Aces ledger.
“What?” Rajan asks.
She tilts the book his way. A small slip of paper tucked into the inside cover falls out. Written on it:
Yeah, not suspicious at all. Raisin strudels has to be code.
Simran taps the date. “Maybe it has to do with the shipment they’re talking about moving?” she whispers.
Rajan has no clue, of course, but he doesn’t like the way she’s gazing at the numbers.
Entranced. Nick hangs up his phone, and Rajan makes an executive decision.
“Doesn’t matter.” He tucks the slip back into the cover, closing the book in her hands.
“Don’t let them see, or who knows how long they’ll keep you here. ”
Simran glances Nick’s way and hesitates before nodding. She looks exhausted. Rajan wonders how much of that is from her own life and how much of it is from his.
“Still think this was a good idea?” he asks her quietly, and she doesn’t respond.