Chapter 4Zane
4
Zane
“ T his is more important than you realize. It’s more important than anyone does, with the exception of me and Tema,” I growl as I fling open the door to the armored luxury sedan parked halfway on the curb.
Kiro is in the driver’s seat, his hand wrapped around the steering wheel like he’s trying to squeeze oil out of the leather. “I wish I knew why.”
“I’ll tell you why,” I say as I swing into my seat, slamming my door shut. “But step on it. I need you to get to 1-7-3-8 Grave Street as fast as possible.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “We’re already there, sir. Respectfully, none of this makes sense to me.”
I resist the temptation to slam my fist into the dashboard. “We’re at 1-7-3-8 Grove Street, not Grave. You got it? The package was delivered to the wrong address.”
Kiro’s eyes widen as he realizes the problem. “I told the courier the correct address, sir. I swear I did.”
“Just get us there. We don’t have time to waste. I have no clue who lives there and what their next move would be should they find a flash drive in their mailbox. For all I know, they’ll call the police, and then we’re really in trouble.”
Kiro pulls out his phone, quickly typing the new address in and setting it up on the dashboard. He mutters something to himself in Russian as he checks the route, and then we pull off the curb and hit the open road.
Traffic is thicker than the tension in the car, but Kiro is a skilled driver. He weaves through cars like he’s playing an arcade game while I break down the current situation.
“So, Tema upheld his part of the deal, as I assumed he was. The guy is a straight shooter, from everything I know. His courier is trusted as much as we can trust Tema, so I doubt he did any of this on purpose,” I say, pulling a cigar from my jacket before thinking better of it. No need to show how stressed I am.
I have to play this like it isn’t eating me up inside, while still letting Kiro know that it’s a big deal. A very big deal. A multi-billion-dollar deal.
“It’s about the stock market,” I continue. “We spent a whole lot of time and money to get this information. It’s a data dump, a little file on a device the size of my thumb that’s worth more than a thousand Miami condos. It’s our ticket to riches.”
“We’re already rich,” Kiro reminds me, turning down a narrow street and pushing hard on the gas.
I chuckle. “Not like this, Kiro. Not like this. I’m talking billions of dollars here. We need that package. I don’t care if it’s at Grave Street, Grove Street, or the middle of the ocean, we’re going to use all of our resources to get it back.”
“In this case, it could be as simple as knocking on a door and asking for it,” he says, and his words are calming to me.
It could be that simple. I could be stressed over nothing, but when there’s this much on the line, it’s hard not to be. Even the smallest mistake could change our entire future.
“We need to be prepared for anything,” I say as I pull a gun from inside my jacket. I check the magazine, making sure it’s full. The last thing I want is to run out of bullets when I’m caught in a shootout.
Paranoid as it might be, I’m always anticipating one. Since my old rival caught his ass hauled off to jail, I haven’t had to fire a single round, but you never know which way the winds will blow. Fortune often turns to chaos when you least expect it.
There’s always a tipping point, smoke in the air miles before you reach the wildfire. False positives are common, but I have a bad feeling in my gut, a sour sickening twist of organs that only happens when things are about to get really bad.
I check my gun again before tucking it back into my jacket and glancing at the navigation. We’re rolling through a residential area, two minutes away from the target address.
It’s a cruel joke that that’s such a similar address in the same city, but I’m also thankful it’s so close. We won’t waste much time on this endeavor, and I never skip the gym. Muscle doesn’t build itself.
Kiro likes to joke that I’m ninety-nine percent muscle and one percent human, but I disagree. There isn’t an ounce of humanity left in me after what I’ve been through. I’m incapable of love, incapable of empathy, and incapable of caring about anything but money.
Sex, too, but lately less of that. I’m not depressed, I’m just focused on making my fortune before I’m too old to enjoy it.
Besides, women in this lifestyle aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. They’ll lie, steal, and gleefully stab you in the back once you’re no longer useful to them. Forget about opening up and having a real conversation. It’s all posturing. There’s nothing real about it.
I used to think that one day I would get married and have a few kids, but that hope is quickly fading with my age. It’s not that I’m too old to keep up with a wife and kids, but I am too old to deal with the crap that comes from women who directly seek out Bratva men.
They’re nothing but trouble. I’ve seen plenty of men fall for a tall pair of heels and some cheap party tricks, but I have too much to lose to ever be fooled by a woman. If that makes me odd, so be it. I’d rather be odd and rich than normal and broke.
I look over at Kiro, wondering if he feels the same way. I know he was involved with a woman a few years back, but that didn’t last long. It feels like they never do.
Kiro’s eyes are focused on the road, but I can see his jaw clenching. “I’ve got us on track, Zane. We’ll be there in a minute.”
“Good,” I mutter, my mind returning through the possible scenarios we might face at this house. “Once we’re there, we move fast. We can’t afford any slip-ups.”
Kiro nods, accelerating as we navigate through the increasingly cluttered streets. It feels like we’re moving out of the city and into regular neighborhoods. “What if they don’t want to hand it over?” he asks.
“Then we make them,” I say coldly. “We use any means necessary to get that flash drive. This isn’t a negotiation, it’s a retrieval.”
Kiro glances at me, and I can see a shimmer of excitement in his eyes. Maybe he misses the old days, the times when we were constantly at odds with my rival, Maksim.
I felt like I had to be young forever when Maksim was still around. I could never sleep with both eyes shut. I always had to have one open and both ears listening for signs of danger. Once or twice, Maksim almost killed me.
We both played that game. I hit him in the leg once, knocking him to the floor, but my gun jammed when I went to finish him off. Karma came knocking for him when he thought he got off the hook, and two weeks later he was in prison.
I might be taking the same sorry route myself if I don’t get this flash drive back. Tema would start a war over it, even though I feel like it’s partially his fault for sending a courier to do the work he should’ve done himself. That flash drive is far too important to send someone who is capable of screwing up the address.
All I can do is hope that things haven’t gotten out of hand as we pull up to the house, a modest one-story brick building with a weed-ridden lawn and a few flowers by the mailbox. It’s the kind of place that screams normalcy, the kind of place where people go about their lives without a clue of the chaos that could invade at any moment.
But it looks as though chaos has already come, because there’s a shiny black sedan parked outside, reeking of luxury in a neighborhood that warrants nothing but middle-class modesty. It doesn’t belong, and that’s the first sign that something is amiss.
But it’s not the last. Not by a mile. I feel it in my bones as we park, and it becomes even worse as I look out the window toward the house. This isn’t Bratva territory, nor is it anywhere that dangerous gangs would lurk, but that doesn’t stop a prickle from hitting the back of my neck and making my hair stand on end.
“This isn’t right,” I mutter to Kiro. “I need you to be very careful.”
“You have a bad feeling?” he asks.
“A very bad one,” I reply, shaking my head. “Something strange is going on, and I don’t like it one bit.”