Chapter 25 The Next Adventure
THE NEXT ADVENTURE; JAKE
JAKOB
I have never cursed traffic as viciously as I am right now. Mostly in my head, but an occasional snarled curse of frustration shoots past my teeth.
Beside me, Brys is sitting prim and proper, one knee folded just so over the other, back straight. Her cheeks are pink, though.
Almost is as pink as her ass is about to be.
It took every ounce of restraint I possessed not to rip her clothes off and take her right then and there on the jet in front of everyone.
She has no idea who she's dealing with, presenting her bare ass to me like that. She'll find out, though.
I bite my tongue to stop myself from yelling at the bus driver—it's not his fault.
Our group is big enough now that we need a full-size party van—or, as Saxon calls it, the Fun Time Party Barge.
The others are having fun—booze flows, cannabis smoke swirls, bags of gummies are passed around.
There are card games. Saxon, Terra, Annika, and Chance are playing something like Charades, except no one can guess what anyone is doing, there is too much hysterical laughter.
Only Nicolae, Brys, and I are tense and serious.
Even my raging arousal is dampened upon our arrival at Club Sin—I haven't been back since I left weeks ago.
Now we're back—I'm back, and I don't know how to feel.
I'm not the man I was when I left this place.
Beside me, Brys leans across me to peer out the window at the club. It's a huge black cube; the upper few stories are black glass. Club Sin is written across the top around all four sides in fifty-foot-tall letters designed to look like dripping blood.
The bus pulls alongside the private entrance around the side, parks in a hiss of brakes, and then the bi-fold doors rotate open. We all troop off, stretching and yawning—none of us has slept much in days.
Sol pays the driver with a stack of cash, and the bus trundles away in a smelly cloud of diesel exhaust, and we're standing in the parking lot in the baking Vegas sun.
I gesture at the door. "Well? Are we going in?"
They all stare at me.
"You're…coming down with us?" Silas asks, surprised.
I shrug, nod. "Yes. The need to protect my identity is over.
You all know me, now." I pause, let out a breath.
"And, to be honest with you all, I don't want to go back to being a recluse.
" I glance at Brys, smiling. "I realized recently that while this," I sweep a hand at the building, "is Club Sin.
“This,” I gesture to the whole crew, including myself, “is the real club.” And I want to be part of it. "
Chance steps forward. "Then you need two things, Boss."
I frown. “Those two things being?"
"The brand and the vow."
I grin savagely. "I absolutely agree." Roll a shoulder. "The brand may have to wait until after I’m healed more, though?"
Chance smirks. "I suppose that's fair." He ducks under the lintel and inputs the code into the keypad; the door lock clunks, and he tugs the door open, holding it for everyone. I'm last, and he stops me. "You really want to take the brand, Boss?"
"Can't very well be part of the club without it, can I?"
"It's not just a club, sir."
I shake my head. "No more, Boss, no more, sir. I'm just…Jakob."
"It's a brotherhood, Jakob." His eyes are dark and serious and wise. "You've more than earned a place with us. You created this brotherhood. You don't need the brand to be one of us—you already are."
There's a hot lump in my throat. "Thank you, Chance."
A squeal of brakes draws our attention—a trim figure in black leather stands straddling a sleek motorcycle; an opaque black visor shields the figure's features.
"Nicolae Dragos?" The voice is of indeterminate gender, muffled by the helmet; it could be a soft-spoken male or a woman with a deep voice.
Chance has a handgun out in an eyeblink, the figure gripped by the jacket, the gun shoved up under the lip of the helmet. "Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want? You have five seconds to answer before I turn your skull into a soup bowl."
Moving slowly, keeping their hands visible at all times, the figure pulls something from inside their leather jacket using two fingers—a manila document envelope. "For Nicolae Dragos."
"I am here," Nicolae says, shuffling slowly back up the stairs and out into the sun. "Easy, Chance, my brother. This person is merely a messenger. Yes?"
The rider nods once. "Correct. I am unarmed." They produce a pen from the inside pocket, and a crumpled, much-folded piece of paper—an invoice. "Sign, please. Anywhere."
"What is this?" Nicolae says, signing the paper with a scrawl. "I am not expecting anything."
"I don't know what it is. All I know is that I was contracted to deliver this package to these coordinates. I received it one hour ago."
"Do you know who sent it?"
The figure unfolds the paper Nicolae just signed. "Ahhh…a Major Lisel Neufeld. It originated from Ramstein Air Force Base."
Nicolae's eyes widen. "Thank you."
"Of course. Have a nice day." The rider guns the engine and is gone in an eyeblink.
Nicolae is still just standing there staring at the document envelope like it's either a bomb about to explode or the most precious item in the universe.
"Let’s take it inside, shall we, Nicolae?” I suggest.
He nods. "Yes. Yes."
Downstairs in the newly-renovated Arrow quarters, we all cluster in the common area around Nico as he pinches the metal tabs together and opens the flap.
"Are you expecting anything from your contact, Nic?" Solomon asks.
Nicolae shakes his head. "No. I have not heard from Major Neufeld since our meeting in Germany.
I had not expected to for some time, if at all.
The wheels of justice, as we all know, grind rather slowly.
Internationally, most especially." He hasn't withdrawn what's inside, yet.
He lets out a breath and does so, slowly, gingerly.
Photos. 8x10, glossy, high definition.
The top photo was taken with a telephoto zoom lens—Pugli in the passenger seat of a battered red Lada Niva from the last century. His right hand is wrapped in a red-soaked bandage…and by hand, I mean stump; there is no hand—that must have been what got crunched by the press.
Nico passes the photo to me, his face impassive.
The next few photos show Pugli in various activities, all taken by the same zoom lens from a great distance. Eating awkwardly with his left hand. Crossing a street, the stump held against his stomach. Gesturing angrily at a henchman. Riding in another car—a silver Peugeot, newer.
"So we know he's in Europe," Solomon says. "Let's get that jet spooled up again."
Nicolae literally gasps when he flips to the next photo. "That appears to be unnecessary."
I take the photo from him, an odd and overwhelming mixture of emotions rifling through me at what I see.
Pugli.
Dead.
It's a police photo of his home in Lyon. The front doors are wide open, showing the expansive marble foyer and the suits of armor and authentic Greek and Roman busts. Pugli is on his back on the foyer floor in a pool of blood.
It's a disturbingly gory image.
His throat has been cut from ear to ear, his tongue pulled out to hang down from the open flap. His eyes are gouged out. He's naked. His cock and balls have been sliced off and stuffed in his mouth.
Cash—I see Euros, US Dollars, Brazilian Reals, Colombian Pesos, Romanian Leu, and more—have been dumped out and scattered around him, soaked in blood, sticking to him.
"Jesus," Sophia breathes. "Jesus." It takes a lot to shock the daughter of a cartel kingpin.
Nicolae is clutching the photo in trembling hands. His face is stony and impassive.
"My love?" Tatiana whispers, touching his jaw. "Speak to us."
"He is dead." It's flat, emotionless.
He flips to the next photo—an autopsy photo, gore-free, the corpse cleaned and draped with a sheet up to the shoulders. It is unequivocally Roberto Pugli.
The last photo shows a message inscribed on the floor of the foyer next to Pugli's body, written in his blood, in Romanian Cyrillic. He flips the photo over—the translation is written in blue felt tip pen: "For our girls. Rot in hell."
After the photos is a single sheet of printer paper with a short, handwritten note and a signature.
Dental records, facial recognition software using the official Interpol dossier, and fingerprints all confirm that the decedent is Roberto Antonio Pugli.
Power to the entire block was cut for 10 minutes.
Local authorities got a hit on a black Sprinter van leaving the area, but quickly lost track of it.
Between you and me, Lieutenant Dragos, no one is looking for his killers.
My team's best guess, based on interviews I personally conducted with the residents of the village his men recently hit, and the message written in Romanian, is that the village was protected by someone very powerful in the world of Romanian organized crime.
As your American friends would say, he fucked around and found out.
Nils shared some of your story with me, Nicolae. You did not deliver the killing blow, and perhaps this is for the best. He is dead, and he suffered. Justice has been served, I think.
I hope you will know freedom.
Your friend,
Major Lisel Neufeld
"He is dead," Nicolae repeats.
Silence.
His eyes lift; he releases the letter; Solomon catches it, scans it, and passes it around.
Shocked, Nicolae staggers backward, a frown scrunching his brow, and sinks onto a nearby bench.
"I…I cannot believe it. I have…I have hunted that man for so many years.
I have dreamed of the moment I…" he pulls a knife out from a sheath secured horizontally to his belt along the small of his back; the black blade is long and serpentine and wickedly sharp.
He stares at it. "I have dreamed of the moment I plunge this very blade into his heart and watch the life bleed out of his fucking eyeballs. "
No one speaks.