Chapter Five
It had been a while as they waited.
Kosta never quit his search either.
Finally, Serenity looked up and asked, “What is her real name again?”
“LaDonna Rinc,” Pride told her.
Serenity paused then said,“I might have found her. You were right, um, Mr. Candy, she’s using an LLC to be exact.
Just let me check something here.” Serenity typed in more commands.
Then a few minutes later, she gasped and pushed her chair away from the desk.
Looking up at Sergi, her gaze was full of astonishment.
Pride’s men all stared at her, knowing this had to be big.
Slowly shaking her head, she reached out and hit print.
A few seconds later the printer spit out three pages.
Sergi walked over and grabbed the pages off the printer tray. He studied them then looked up at his men. He swung his gaze over to Serenity and asked, “See how far back these payments go. We need to know how deep this sting really is.”
Serenity shook her head and explained, “I can’t stay in this window too long or the bank will know I got through their firewalls.”
“Try at least,” Sergi told her.
“What did she find, Sergi?” Yuri asked impatiently. “What payments?”
Sergi handed him the pages.
Yuri studied them, his eyes widening as he scrolled through them. He looked up at Sergi and whispered, “Svyatoye der'mo...Holy Shit. Is she serious?” he growled.
“What is it?” Pride asked.
“She’s been collecting payments from almost every faction in the city,” Yuri replied. “Lots of them. If this goes back years, no wonder there is unrest in New Orleans.”
“Da, these men aren’t used to paying someone off,” Sergi commented. “They would rather put a bullet in someone’s head. And it seems we are the only faction here that isn’t paying. But I’m wondering what they are paying for?”
“Does it matter?” Pride asked.
“Da, it does.” Sergi nodded. “It also matters who they think they are paying.”
“Do you mean...?” Nicky asked him then he realized what he meant and his eyes widened when he came to the same conclusion. “Oh, shit.”
Sergi nodded as he looked troubled now. “They might be under the impression that we are demanding this money for them to be able to live here. If that's the case, then this money might be considered protection money. The Bratva doesn’t do that and hasn’t done that for many years.
We have kept a tight hold on our territory and shown them many times that we can be deadly if pushed.
We do not know if some have had enough of the extortion either. I imagine that they have.”
“I’m surprised no one has attacked us over this,” Yuri noted.”
“I’d rather not have that happen,” Sergi said. “Many innocent people could be killed in the chaos.”
“Should we call a meeting of the faction heads?” Yuri wanted to know.
Sergi nodded. “Da, we surely need to do just tah but first we need to have vse nashi utki vystroilis' v ryad.”
Serenity stared at him then asked. “Ducks in a row?”
Nicky shook his head. “I cannot imagine Sergi having ducks.’
Sergi rolled his eyes at the comment. “We need to know how long this has been going on and we need to find this woman.
“She set up a clusterfuck for sure,” Pride added.
“Finding her won’t be easy,” Candyman spoke up. “If she knows her brothers are dead then she’s tucked away safe from harm.”
Nicky looked pissed. “Then we find her and drag her out of her comfort zone. Give us some time, we should have some answers by morning.”
Sergi shook his head at him. “My dear boy, do not forget your wife’s delicate condition, she needs to rest at night.”
“I’ll rest when we have some answers, Sergi.” Serenity wore a determined expression. “I’m good at what I do. This affects everyone in this room and in this city. I’m not about to let you all down. This bitch is going down hard if I have anything to do with it.”
Sergi sighed as he shook his head. “If you feel tired at all, you need to sleep for a bit. The baby is important, my dear. To all of us.”
Serenity stared at him with a glimmer of tears in her eyes.
Nicky beamed at him.
“We can set up the meeting when we know more about this, whatever this is,” Yuri stated as he looked troubled by this news. “I want the factions to know that we did not do this. Damn, I wish one of them had said something.”
Sergi nodded. “I agree. But maybe they did?”
Yuri looked over at him. “What?”
He shrugged. “Last week, the Chinese leader of the Flying Dragons in New York said something odd to me over a phone call.”
“Odd, like what?” Pride asked.
“I had said that we were doing well on our end and that we weren’t trafficking anything other than wine, spirits and running a few high end hotels.
He then said to me, ‘Well, that is no surprise as you have gotten so rich from your payments that you do not need to break any laws.’ I had to pause and wonder why he believed that. ”
“Fuck...” Yuri swore. “I do remember some comments made by a supplier maybe a month ago. He said something like why were we still here when we could retire on a beach somewhere after all the money we have raked in. I did pause at that. When I asked him what he meant he looked really scared.”
Sergi nodded at him. “I imagine many who knew, think we got rich from those payments. Menya eto besit...Ticks me off.” He turned his head to look at Nicky and Serenity.
“See if you can track her down and get all the information you can by tomorrow. I’m sure there’s going to be lots of questions from these leaders.
And follow the money to see how deep this goes.
” He looked over at Kosta now. “You follow this LaDonna. Find out where she lives and what she does with her time. And do it like yesterday. We will supply this information to my team. We need to stop this now.”
Everyone kept at the computers, attempting to carry out his orders.
Sergi now looked at Kirill and Pride. “I think you two need to watch over Boo. She might not have understood what was happening as a child but she’s grown up now and she’s probably going to remember everything that has haunted her for all these years.”
Kirill nodded. “Da she already is. On the way over here in the car, she was remembering what LaDonna looked like when she was working on her laptop. That she had an unholy glow in her eyes. She said that LaDonna really hated someone and she almost felt sorry for whoever she was going to destroy. Now we find that LaDonna was setting up her plan to destroy the Bratva. I have to wonder why she did it the way she has. Using us as a fake villain? I also have a feeling that the meeting between the faction leaders is going to bring her plan out fully.”
Pride nodded. “I think the Kings were in her sights all along as well. We haven’t even found why she collected on us.”
“Her brother really hated us, Prez.” Cosmo spoke up.
Candyman nodded his head. “Revenge is an awful drug, man. From what little we know of her family, she had a wild obsession with her oldest brother Lionel.”
Pride agreed, “He was the one who stepped in when her dad started throwing his fists around, whether it was in her mother’s direction or at her for being only a girl.
That man had an obsession with her brothers and taught them how to be what he called real men, who would lie, cheat and bully others to get what they want.
When Joanie and I were together she used to tell me about that family.
She grew up in Blind Lagoon and that’s where the Rincs grew up too.
It got better after the dad went to prison but then their mother finally took off after she attacked LaDonna.
She stabbed her own daughter because she had some delusion that LaDonna had slept with her own father and was turning his head against her.
To avoid arrest for the stabbing, her mom just left town. ”
“They were all crazy from what I saw,” Kirill commented.
“It extended to her too,” Serenity added her information.
“ I found hospital records and files from that time. When she got out of the hospital after the stabbing event, LaDonna began hurting herself. She had to be doctored up more than once. Tried to commit suicide a couple of times or so Joanie told me.”
Pride nodded as he filled in some of it, “That’s when Lionel got interested in Joanie but she didn’t want anything to do with him.
She had to leave town to get away from him and that’s when she met me.
She told me stories of how crazy the Rincs were.
The dad was a monster alright. He let his fist speak and he had no love even for his own wife.
This drove her to be unhinged, even after he went to prison.
So that is where LaDonna got her mental issues and her hate from.
She never stood a chance against inheriting the Rinc’s temperament or bad blood I guess. ”
“And now we are facing the repercussions of that insane line of people.” Kirill shook his head. “From one of them that we never even met.”
Sergi agreed with this, “Lionel, Logan and Lincon were bad inside and out. So this LaDonna could be far worse.” He then looked back at his team. “We have faith in the people in this room. I know they will unravel LaDonna’s mess.”
“Do you really believe that?” Pride wanted to know.
“We do. We’ve been here before, Mr. Pride,” Yuri replied. “Maybe not accused of this, but we have had many battles.”
“Da, I believe it as well,” Sergi growled. “No one will ever beat the Bratva, not on our home turf and believe me when I say this might not be Russian soil but we have a foothold here in this country that no one will ever take away from us.”
Pride and his men all nodded at him. They already knew some of what the Bratva was all about. They felt like this LaDonna did not stand a chance.