Chapter 30
Lorenzo
“You’re sure that Artem is alive?” Nikolai crossed his arms over his chest and seemed to be chewing on the inside of his cheek. He either had snuff clamped at the back of his jaw and was tonguing at it, or he was fucking with an ulcer. Stress-related, either way. I didn’t blame him.
“Seventy percent sure,” I said. “I know one of his underlings, Santino Rossi, is alive, and we had a body with his gold tooth melted into its gums. I don’t trust that the other one brought in was Artem.”
“Ya ubiu etogo ublyudka,” he muttered and rubbed at his face.
It wounded my pride a bit calling Nikolai, considering that Artem’s supposed death was the foundation for my alliance with the Russian Syndicate in the first place.
But Damian had nowhere to start tracking Artem and Santino down, so we were at the mercy of asking for help.
We were in my office at the Palazzo. A contingent of my men were waiting for orders.
Damian and Elio were both at the house. Usually, I would keep one of them with me for something like this, but we all agreed that they would both stay at the estate to keep an eye on things there in case this was another trap.
I was pleasantly surprised when Isabella didn’t argue about being left behind.
She wasn’t happy about it, I could tell, but her hand had been planted on her belly the whole time that I was making arrangements.
She knew that she couldn’t go rushing into danger, even if she wanted to.
I had never been so happy about the baby as I was right now because while she might not listen to me, Isabella wouldn’t intentionally do anything to put our baby at risk.
“As long as he dies, I don’t care who gets the credit for it at this point,” I said, equally as frustrated.
I had met cockroach men before, the ones who refused to die no matter what you did to them, but it never failed to impress and repulse me how much spectacular luck these figli di puttana seemed to have.
“My question is, where might he go? Any of his bigger businesses are out; it would be foolish for him to go somewhere where one of your men might see him.”
Nikolai called one of his men who was closer with the Volkov family.
He and Artem’s younger brother, Efram, were friendly.
“Sergei, where is Efram tonight?” he asked when the man picked up the line.
I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but Nikolai kept nodding and humming, and when he hung up, he gave me an address.
“It’s a converted warehouse in the Bronx.
Artem bought it for Efram after he graduated from college.
Only their closest associates and friends have ever been brought there. ”
Once we had a starting place, I sent the address to Damian and told him to find out everything that he could about the building. Then, I made a call of my own. “Alfie,” I said when the line clicked over. “I need to place an order. I need it to be foolproof.”
“Give me twenty.” The voice on the other end of the line was gravelly. Alfie was a firebug. Not only had he made a career out of supplying the Cosa Nostra with explosives, but he was obsessed with building devices that could be small and easily hidden but packed a massive punch.
I didn't call on Alfie often. But I wanted things settled with Artem and Santino once and for all: no more near-misses. So, it was time for the big guns.
Nikolai was able to confirm that Efram was home through his network. Even if Gemma wasn't there, we would take Efram. If Artem was as close to his brother as intelligence would suggest, then I would squeeze him until Artem came running.
Once I gave the address to my men, I met Alfie a few blocks away.
He handed over a duffel bag that felt far too light.
I opened it: there were half a dozen, palm-sized pieces of plastic.
I lifted an eyebrow. “You're sure about this?” I wasn't a stranger to the occasional bomb, but these were the smoothest, smallest ones I had ever seen. They looked like light sconces.
Alfie’s smile was unsettling. Even for me. “I know my shit, Don Vitali,” he promised. “Wherever you plant these babies, only a crater will be left.”
That was good enough for me. Alfie had a reputation for delivering and then some. “I wired your usual fee,” I said. “There will be more if this works how you said it will.”
Alfie looked pleased. “You’ll be plenty pleased, boss.”
Then, he disappeared, going back to wherever he tinkered with the kind of toys that would get him thrown into federal prison for the rest of his natural life. I zipped the duffel back up and carried it, carefully, to the rendezvous point. I wasn't interested in becoming a pink mist.
Four men were waiting for me, three were mine and Sergei, who was on loan from Nikolai. He would go in first as a recon while we planted Alfie’s bombs. “Get as much of a view of the inside as you can,” I told him. “Then get out of there. Report back to Nikolai, no stops.”
Sergei nodded, and I handed him an ear piece and watched as he pushed it in and twisted it until it was only visible if someone was looking for it. My tech guy Vincent, a hacker that we recruited from NYU, wired him for a pinhead-sized camera and a microphone. It streamed directly to my phone.
Once Vincent was done with Sergei, and we sent him off, he put a bigger camera on me.
I had argued at first, it was far too bulky and would get in the way, but Vincent had won out.
“This gives me five extra eyes. I can notice things that you can’t,” he’d said.
“If we miss our mark today, we’ll have a video to review later so that we aren’t swinging in the dark anymore. ”
The other two men, Carmine and Matt, would be my backup. Matt would plant the bombs while Carmine and I were on extraction, if Gemma was in the building.
“Boss.” Carmine had been watching Sergei as Vincent fiddled with the camera.
I took the phone. A man who looked like a younger, much more hard-boiled version of Artem had welcomed Sergei into the converted warehouse.
He had bags beneath his eyes, like he was exhausted.
They started talking, mindless chatter, but my eyes studied the surroundings.
It looked like the same place from Isabella’s FaceTime call.
“You look sick, man,” Sergei said. “I’m not going to end up with Covid or some shit like that, right? I can’t take a sick day with Nik riding my ass.”
Efram waved a hand. “I just haven’t slept well in a few days. You’re fine.”
“I heard about Artem,” he said. “My condolences.”
The young man snorted. “Keep ‘em,” he grunted, but he didn’t elaborate as to why. It was enough for me: Artem was alive.
“Is it work breaking your back, then?” Sergei asked.
Efram gave him a weary look. “What’s with the third degree?” he asked.
Sergei just laughed, and I had to commend him for his acting skills. He looked totally calm, like he wasn’t in any danger at all. “You look like shit. Am I not allowed to be worried?”
Efram scowled. “It’s hard to sleep with all the screaming.” Sergei clapped him on the back with a crow, but he got shoved away. “I wish I was getting laid,” he complained. “I’m fucking babysitting. Bitch is driving me crazy.”
Carmine and I exchanged a look. “That’s good enough for me,” I said.
“Me too.”
Matt took the bag of explosives and went on his way to plant them. Vincent stayed at the rendezvous, and Carmine and I headed for the warehouse. “Sergei’s making his excuses to leave,” Vincent reported. “He should be clear in a few.”
“Got it,” I muttered.
The warehouse came into view, and from Damian’s research, I knew that there was a door down a side alley that ran along the one side.
That was our entrance point. It was largely out of view, and even if there was a camera, it would take time for whoever was inside to get to us.
The building really was fucking huge, and only parts of it had been renovated into living space.
Getting into the building proved far too easy; the lock was already broken, and while the door had been secured with a chain, it was easily broken and thrown to the side. We each drew a gun the moment we stepped inside, and Carmine watched my back as we headed down the echoey hallways.
As we moved closer to the residential area of the warehouse, a noise reached my ears. Wailing that reverberated through the hallways, making the place feel haunted. Carmine and I followed that sound until we found the source: a locked room.
“If I break the door, whoever’s here will come running,” Carmine said.
“Do it,” I told him. I wanted Santino and Artem to come; it would be easier than having to track them down. Carmine kicked the door in; it practically exploded inward, and the wailing grew louder, more panicked.
While it had been dim in the hallway, the room was overly, almost painfully, bright. Gemma was chained to an exposed pipe; she was alive, but I didn’t have to study her long to know that she was in shock.
“Fucking Christ.”
I glanced to Carmine, who was looking paler than before, and I almost asked what was wrong…
until I saw what he was looking at. Isabella and Gemma’s mother was still strung up to the wall, and it was clear that she was dead.
Her wounds had stopped bleeding at this point, and she looked like so much raw, torn meat hanging as she was.
They’d left Gemma in the same room as her dead mother.
“Get her out of here,” I told Carmine, gesturing to Gemma.
“You sure, boss?”
No one had come at the sound of us breaking the door. It was unlikely that Artem or Santino was here. “Go,” I said.
Carmine nodded, and after breaking through Gemma’s restraints, he hefted the screeching girl over his shoulder, and I went looking for Efram.
I had a video to record.