Chapter 32
ROMAN
Grigori is mid-sentence when my phone goes off.
I look at the screen under the table. Kostya.
I stand up, pick up my folder, walk to the door.
Someone says my name. I don’t stop. I pull the door open and walk through it and let it close behind me, and Kostya is already in the corridor with his phone in his hand and his face doing the thing it does when what he has to tell me cannot wait.
“Talk,” I say.
“Viktor called it in eight minutes ago. Four men in a black van, no plates, intercepted Elena on the street outside a building on 74th. Two of our details are down. Viktor has a graze on his left arm.” He looks at me directly.
“Mara Sokolova took a bullet to the left shoulder. She’s at the Kessler facility on 68th.
She went into surgery fifteen minutes ago. ”
I look at him. “Why was Elena on 74th Street?”
“I don’t have that yet. Viktor’s call was fragmented. He was still on the scene. All I know is they were intercepted outside the building.”
“Get the car,” I say. “We go to Kessler first.”
He’s already moving.
The Kessler facility sits on 68th between Lexington and Third, a building that looks like a private medical practice from the outside because that is exactly what it’s supposed to look like.
Inside it is something else, staffed by doctors who understand that the people brought through its doors sometimes arrive with complications that cannot be reported to the NYPD and who are compensated accordingly for that understanding.
The on-duty doctor meets me in the corridor outside the surgical suite. She is young, direct, and does not waste words.
“The bullet entered the left shoulder, missed the subclavian artery by approximately two centimeters,” she says. “We removed it without complication. She lost significant blood, but she is stable. She will be in recovery for the next hour.”
“I need to speak with her,” I say.
“She’s coming out of anesthesia. She’s not—”
“I need to speak with her now.”
The doctor looks at me for a moment. Then she steps aside.
Mara is in the recovery room in a hospital gown with her left arm immobilized and an IV in her right. Her eyes are open when I come in, half-focused, moving to the door when she hears it, and when she sees me, they sharpen.
“Elena,” she says. Her voice comes out thick, slow from the anesthesia, but the word is clear. “Where is Elena?”
“I’m working on that,” I say. I pull the chair to the side of the bed, and I sit down, and I look at her. “I need you to tell me what happened this morning. Everything you remember.”
She blinks. Swallows. “We were at the penthouse. In the kitchen. We were just talking, having tea, when Elena grabbed the counter and said she was in pain. Sharp pain, low.” She pauses, her eyes going slightly unfocused before she pulls them back.
“We thought it was the baby. We got scared. So we got in the car.”
I look at her. “There was no appointment scheduled.”
“No. We just went. Because she was in pain and we panicked.” Her jaw tightens.
“Someone was waiting for us. The moment we got out of the car, they were already moving. Four of them, from both sides of the street at the same time.” She closes her eyes briefly.
“They knew we were coming. They had to have known. Nobody moves like that without knowing.”
I sit with that for a moment.
Someone gave them the building on 74th. Someone knew that if Elena felt enough pain, she would leave the penthouse and go there. Someone either manufactured the reason or was positioned to move the moment any reason presented itself.
“The pain,” I say. “Has she had it before?”
“She had something similar weeks ago. The doctor said it was normal. Round ligament pain.” Mara’s eyes find mine. “Roman.” Her voice drops. “She’s twelve weeks. The baby.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m going to get her.”
Her hand moves on the bed toward me, slow, the IV pulling slightly. “She doesn’t know about any of this. The Bratva, the council, Grigori. She has no idea what she’s in the middle of.” Her eyes are wet. “She’s just a girl who fell in love with the wrong man, and she doesn’t deserve—”
“I know,” I say again.
I stand up.
Mara looks at me from the bed, her shoulder immobilized, her face pale, her eyes doing something that costs her something she doesn’t have to spare right now.
“Bring her home,” she says.
I look at her for a moment. “Rest,” I say. Then I walk out.
Kostya is in the corridor with his phone and two printed sheets, and he hands them to me before I reach him.
“Marchetti properties in the tri-state area,” he says, falling into step beside me.
“We have been running every contact, every wire, every surveillance asset we have. A contact near the Hoboken waterfront reported unusual vehicle activity at the warehouse conversion on Sinatra Drive forty minutes ago. Two vans, additional personnel, all arriving within the same thirty-minute window.”
He taps the first sheet. “A traffic camera on the Holland Tunnel approach picked up a van matching Viktor’s description at nine fourteen. No plates, but the make and the partial color match.” He taps the second. “The Newark property has been dark all morning. Nobody in or out.”
“Hoboken,” I say.
“Primary, yes. Newark stays live as backup.”
We push through the building’s front door. Three cars are at the curb, engines running, Pavel and Gregor standing beside the second one. I hand Kostya back the sheets.
“Gregor takes six men to Newark. Confirmation only, nobody moves without my call.” I look at Pavel. “You’re with me. Ten men, full kit, we leave in four minutes.” I look at Kostya. “I need Federov and Bashir in a room before I leave this building.”
Kostya looks at me. “Roman—”
“Four minutes,” I say. “Make the calls.”
Federov picks up on the first ring. Bashir is with him inside three minutes.
I put the folder on the hood of the car, and I walk them through it in the cold outside the Kessler facility, not in a conference room, not at a table, just three men standing on a pavement with the wind off the East River and fourteen months of evidence spread across the hood of a black car.
I tell them about Renko. Mishin. Brusin. The decoded communication. I tell them my wife was taken off the street this morning using intelligence that came from inside our own council.
Federov looks at the last page for a long time.
“Call the session back,” he says. “Right now.”
“I can’t be in that room,” I say. “I need to be in New Jersey.” I look at him. “You and Bashir take it in. Everything in this folder goes on that table. You present it, you move for suspension, you get the votes.” I hold his gaze. “Can you do that without me?”
Federov picks up the folder. “Go get your wife,” he says.
I get in the car.
“Hoboken,” I tell Viktor. “Fast.”
The car pulls away from the curb, and I look out the window at the city moving past, and I think about Mara’s voice saying bring her home and I think about Elena in a room somewhere across the water with her hands pressed against her stomach, waiting.
I’m coming.
I look out the window.
I’m coming.