1. Alexei #2
Which means making my excuses for yet another family event, no matter how much it pisses off Roman and Darya.
Given that I’ve managed to miss the christening of all four of their young sons, not to mention any number of Christmases and birthdays, it shouldn’t come as any surprise.
Darya’s and my communication has gone from phone calls to sporadic texts.
Roman and I communicate about Mercura and very little else.
Even Mickey, with whom I was once quite close, largely communicates with me via Lars these days, since they often work together.
Dima reverses the trailer down the ramp, and I drive the airboat up onto it with the ease of long practice.
He’s got the headlights down, not that it matters.
I put this ramp in at my own expense years ago.
It’s miles away from any main roads and not on any official map.
I idle the boat down, wondering how best to manage my refusal to Roman and Darya’s invitation.
Or rather, wondering how I’m going to break the news to Papa that I’m not flying to France with him when he leaves.
My father is the only family member I still speak to with any regularity.
Despite being closer to a hundred than ninety now, he’s still as sharp as ever.
Even though he lives in Spain with his wife, Rosa, he comes back to Miami at least once a year for an extended stay.
I dread these visits almost as much as I long for them.
My father is the one person who sees straight through me. And I know he doesn’t like what he sees.
If he knew what happened between Ofelia and me, he’d like me even less.
Dima’s low whistle has me crouching in the boat and reaching for my gun before I’m conscious of doing either. I glance warily around for the source of his warning, then straighten up when I see Renata Cardenas standing at the top of the ramp.
“Hola, carnalita.” I grin at her as I jump down from the boat and bang the side to give Dima the all clear. I walk up the ramp and wrap her diminutive form in a big hug. “What brings you to my swamp?”
Renata and I have been friends since we were teenagers. Her mother, like mine, died when she was young. Her brothers head up the Cardenas cartel’s Miami branch. The cartel used to work for the Orlovs.
Now they work for me.
But back when I was a skinny kid, they treated me with the same contempt Vilnus Orlov did, laughing when Dima was ordered to cut me open on a daily basis for their collective amusement.
Renata, however, hated both her brothers and the Orlovs even more than I did, which made us allies.
One of the only people who knew about the secret passages in and out of my family compound, she’d sneak in after dark and sew my wounds closed while we drank tequila straight from the bottle.
Renata was my first, and only, real female friend.
We kissed once when I was sixteen, but we were laughing too much to make it stick.
You don’t forget friends like that.
Unfortunately, given her late-night visit and rather pained expression, I suspect our friendship is about to be tested.
“Please tell me that wasn’t Ron Watkins you just fed to the gators,” she says without preamble.
Dima’s cough fails to mask his chuckle. He shrugs when I glare at him. “She always was smarter than you, mudak.”
He’s not wrong. Renata got out of Miami, and away from her family, at eighteen, moving to New York and entering the NYPD as a rookie straight out of school. She studied nights to earn her degree in criminal justice, then moved to the US Marshals office.
Despite our opposing positions on the law enforcement spectrum, our friendship has, rather bizarrely, survived, not least because there’s usually a thousand miles between her operations and mine.
Usually.
Tonight’s visit definitely doesn’t bode well.
“You could at least buy me a drink first,” I say, feigning hurt. “What do the feds want with a piece of shit like Watkins, anyway?”
“Fuck.” Renata shakes her head. “So it was him.” She gives me a dirty look. “Just for once, I wish you weren’t quite so efficient at garbage disposal, Lex.”
“Hey.” It’s my turn to shrug. “It’s what I do. So what was so special about that particular piece of garbage?”
“Since my only reason for being back in this shithole city just disappeared into some gator’s belly,” Renata says dryly, “why don’t we have that drink, and I’ll tell you all about it?
” She nods at the cooler in the rear of the boat.
“Probably best to stay here and out of sight, if there’s any beers left. ”
I jump up and pull three beers out of the cooler, then toss one to Dima, who catches it and wanders off to a diplomatic distance. In our line of work there are some conversations best had without witnesses. Renata hauls herself up to sit beside me on the rear board of the boat.
“Salud.” She clinks her bottle against mine, closing her eyes as she takes a long drink. “Maldita sea,” she says, when she finally lowers the bottle. “I needed that.”
“Must be some special kind of shit show to bring you this far south?”
She nods. “Watkins was in witness protection.”
I pause with my bottle halfway to my mouth. “He was fucking what, now?”
“Yep.” Renata stares grimly at the dark water.
“We turned him six months ago. Got him out of New York and safely undercover in Wisconsin. Nice job, white picket fence, the whole bit. Then a month ago, he upped and disappeared. Took us until three days ago to track him to the Cays, but by that time, he’d made his way to Miami.
” She shoots me a dark look. “Unfortunately, it appears that’s where the trail ends. ”
“Who did he turn on to wind up in witness protection?” I take another swallow of my beer. “Wasn’t me, was it?”
Renata grins. “No, idiot. Unfortunately, however, now that you’ve knocked him off, you might just have put a target on your back that not even the swamp can get rid of.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised at what lies hidden down there,” I say lightly, tilting my head at the still water. “All manner of dark, dirty secrets.”
Seeing Renata’s grin fade, I instantly regret my choice of words.
“I’m sorry.” I touch her arm. “I wasn’t talking about that.”
“I haven’t forgotten what you did for me, Lex,” she says quietly. “I never will.”
I wince inwardly. Nice one, asshole.
Ten years ago, on Renata’s way home from school, she was raped by an entitled college kid who was in Miami for spring break.
If she’d gone to the police, his family would have bought their way out.
If she’d gone to her own family, they’d have killed the kid but never let her forget the shame, even though it wasn’t her fault.
She came to me instead.
I was still under the Orlovs’ control. But I’d been doing their bidding long enough by then to have a degree of independence.
It took me one night to hunt Renata’s rapist down, string him up, then slice and beat him until he screamed for his mother.
Just before dawn I took him deep into the swamp and fed the bastard, still alive and conscious, to the gators.
It was the first time I’d ever killed someone for my own reasons, instead of on the Orlovs’ orders. Even though I knew nobody would ever see it, I carved a Romanov eagle instead of the Orlov sparrow into the arrogant prick’s skin.
In some strange way that secret act of defiance gave me strength, the sense that even if I was the murderous dog the Orlovs had made me, I was still my own man.
“I did nothing,” I say now, in a belated attempt to lighten the mood. I swallow a mouthful of beer. “Remember?”
Neither of us ever told a soul about that night, and we both swore we never would. A month later, I gave Renata enough money to get to New York, even though I was living on a pittance at the time.
“Sorry.” She leans in, nudging me with her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Brought what up?” I force a smile. “But this can’t be good, if you’re even thinking about shit like that. Not to mention downing beers so fast.” I nod at her empty bottle.
“It’s not.” Renata climbs over the back of the boat and pulls out two more bottles, then throws one to me. “Several days ago, about the time Ron Watkins showed up here, Miami Congressman Martin Hunter Jr. contacted you.” Her flat statement isn’t a question.
I conceal my surprise. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you wound up on tape, fuckface.” Giving me a dry look, she hits play on a voice recording.
And she’s right: it really isn’t good.
“I’ll make sure Ron Watkins won’t supply anyone else, ever again,” I hear myself say coldly. “Consider it taken care of.”
An indistinct voice asks a question that isn’t audible.
My answer to it, however, is court-evidence clear: “Nobody deals in my clubs without my permission. I said I’d take care of it, and I will. Watkins will be gator bait inside the week.”
Renata cuts the recording. For a moment we sit there, rustling saw grass the only sound.
“Well,” I say finally. “Fuck.”
Renata nods slowly. “Yup.”
“Although if you really think about it, it’s not that bad.
” I dangle the bottle between my fingers.
“Marty boy isn’t going to be an issue.” I grin at her skeptical expression.
“Marty Hunter Jr. is filthier than a Miami sewer. I can do him a thousand times over, worse than he can do me, and he knows it.”
She grimaces. “Maybe not this time, Lex.” She glances at me. “I’ll give you one guess who Ron Watkins was supposed to be giving evidence against.”
My hand on the bottle stills, my eye narrowing. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. He was witness in a case against Hunter?”
Renata clinks her bottle against mine. “Bingo.”
Fuck.
“Want to explain why Marty Hunter Jr. was calling you about Ron Watkins?” she asks dryly. “Off the record, which I probably don’t need to say, given that this conversation has already violated a dozen federal statutes.”