44. Alexei #2
“It certainly looks that way.” I stare at the screen in amazement. “This shit is better than any reality TV, I’ll give it that.”
“Shh,” she says, kicking me. “Let me listen.”
“Before Kristi joins us,” Roman says to Thorne, “we were discussing the Cardenas cartel’s supply issues. Now that we’re all comfortable, I’ll ask again—is the Cardenas family still our cartel of choice, or do we need to change direction?”
Oh, nice one, motherfucker. I hear Lars chuckling in my head. Our allies are also struggling to contain their amusement at Roman’s sardonic delivery, Dimitry almost choking on his drink.
Thorne, however, isn’t smiling at all.
At the mention of the name Cardenas, his face immediately settled into its habitual mean, resentful lines, his eyes small and dark behind his glasses.
“I want the Cardenases ended,” he says coldly.
“Not slowed down. Not arrested or exposed. I want those lying, worthless pieces of garbage finished—and by that, I mean I want their entire goddamn bloodline extinguished, and a guarantee that no member of that family will ever set foot on American soil again.”
“Oh, brother.” Renata shakes her head slowly beside me. “You are so fucked.” She sits back, exhaling heavily and threading her hands behind her head.
“Dom,” I say quietly into my comms. “Are the Cardenases getting this?”
“Alto y claro,” Dom says coldly. “Loud and fucking clear as a bell. Not to mention in widescreen Technicolor.”
That really does make me grin. “Excellent,” I mimic Thorne, which gets a derisive snort from Pavel through my comms.
Renata rolls her eyes. “You boys are enjoying this way too much.”
“If you don’t mind me saying,” Roman is addressing Thorne rather quizzically, “you seem to have a personal axe to grind when it comes to the Cardenases. Want to share?”
He folds his arms. “Not particularly.”
Roman grimaces. “Well, that’s a shame.” He gestures around the table.
“You see, we all have very real skin in this game. Rico here, for example, has recently lost several members of his immediate family to Kiril Novikov, a psychopath who likes cutting heads off. And Luca is here because Novikov got so cocky after his recent killing spree that he thought he’d try spreading his operation to the New Orleans Bellini family. ”
“Bullshit, obviously,” I say to Renata, covering my comms. “Luca is here because Thorne gave the orders for what happened in Sicily. But these fuckers don’t know that.
And look at their faces.” Both Hunter and Thorne are looking decidedly uncomfortable.
“They both know it was them who invited the Novikovs into town and gave them muscle to work with. Now they have no idea how the fuck to wriggle out of it.”
On deck, Roman is playing his part to perfection.
“I’m here,” he says, with a grimness I suspect he doesn’t need to entirely fake, “because Alexei fucking Petrovsky has systematically tried to destroy me. First with trumped-up corruption charges that have affected my business, then by turning my wife against me, and now”—his eyes gleam dangerously—“by seducing and then kidnapping my eldest daughter. When I say I have skin in this game, I mean my skin is all the fucking way in.”
He downs his whiskey with lethal intent, pinning Thorne with his famous death stare.
“So if you have some reason for being here that I don’t know about, Mr. Thorne, I suggest that now is the time for you to mention it.
” Roman tilts his head at the shoreline.
“And given that it appears you might need my help sorting this dump of a city out sooner rather than later, you might want to cut the shit and tell me what has given you such a hard-on for Miami politics.”
Thorne’s eyes dart around the gathering, clearly weighing how much it’s safe to say.
“Benson,” I say into my comms, “you’re up.”
The slightly pale soon-to-be head of Miami PD clears his throat nervously.
“The thing is, Silas,” he says, interlinking his hands on the table, “now that Sentinel is caught up in the Middle East, it’s Homeland that is going to have to deal with the fallout from this—and they’ll expect Miami PD to back them up.
None of us needs a scandal, so if there are any skeletons in your closet, now is the time to mention them. ”
Thorne visibly blanches at the word skeleton.
I lean forward, aware that Renata is tense and still beside me. Come on, you fucker.
Thorne clears his throat behind a closed fist, eyeing the group over it speculatively.
“Almost a decade ago,” he begins, “my eldest son, Carter, came to Miami with some friends for spring break. College kids, having fun. Unfortunately,” he says, his face darkening, “Carter chose the wrong girl to have fun with. An ambitious, calculating little slut called Renata Cardenas. She took one look at my son and saw a meal ticket, and likely her own college tuition paid for.”
Ice-cold fury trickles through my veins like deadly fuel. I don’t dare look at Renata, who is frozen beside me, but I do reach over and take her hand. It sits lifeless and cold in my own, as if all the blood has left her body.
“According to Carter’s friends,” Thorne goes on, “Carter fell for this girl the moment he saw her at the beach. He disappeared later that night, apparently to go and meet her.”
You must be fucking kidding me.
Renata has gone pale with shock.
“Well,” he goes on grimly, “it seems Carter found her, all right. Or rather, he followed the trail she set for him—right into the trap she’d been planning.” His eyes burn with righteous anger, his mouth trembling as he stares into the distance.
Christ, I think cynically. He’s got this performance down to perfection.
“They slept together,” Thorne says. “Afterward, from what little the police were able to tell me, my son returned to his hotel. But Renata Cardenas,” he goes on bitterly, “didn’t go to sleep. Oh, no. She went straight to a pharmacy and bought a DNA test.”
Renata’s mouth hardens. “A DNA test,” she whispers. “A fucking DNA test? That’s what he’s calling a rape kit now?”
“But our little Latina didn’t take the test to her family,” Thorne says scornfully. “She knew what the men in her family would do to a girl who’d been fucking around with a white college boy.”
Renata’s hand tightens on mine hard enough to stop the blood flow. I grip hers right back.
“And besides,” he goes on, “she needed Carter alive to get money out of him. Alive—and in enough pain he’d agree to give her whatever she needed. So who did she take it to instead?” He glares around the table. “To the best torturer in Miami,” he says softly. “She went to Alexei fucking Petrovsky.”
There’s complete silence at the table—and on the other end of my comms.
I’d pay good money to see the faces on Renata’s brothers right now.
“Petrovsky took the sample straight to a lab,” Thorne goes on. “That same fucking night. These were two people who knew what they wanted and saw a way to get it. Petrovsky was a slave to the Orlovs; Renata wanted a way out of Miami. My beautiful son was the billion-dollar payday they both needed.”
His eyes dart around the assembled group, as if to gauge how his story is hitting.
He pauses for effect, then continues in the dramatic vein of a documentary voice-over.
“Nobody has ever found out what happened to Carter that night. We know he came back to the hotel. But after that?” He shakes his head bitterly. “Nothing. But here’s what I know.”
He holds his hand up and ticks off the points on each finger.
“Shortly after Alexei Petrovsky left that lab, the hotel security cameras were short-circuited and rewired to show a loop. Several hours after that, a car was stolen from the hotel parking garage, and Carter’s own room tag was used to open the gate.
The next day, that same car was found burned out at the Everglades, near an abandoned jetty.
Teeth were found inside it that belonged to Carter,” he finishes with an almost triumphant close of his hand, as if to say, case closed.
I grimace. Should have waited to punch that fucker until I had him out of the car.
“It took some time for me to realize that several million dollars had been withdrawn from Carter’s trust fund that night,” Thorne says bitterly.
Renata spins to face me, white-faced and questioning.
I shake my head. “Not a fucking chance,” I say grimly. “He took that money out himself and donated it to Hunter in his son’s name, then fudged the money trail.”
“Clearly my son gave in to torture,” Thorne is saying, “and withdrew the money under sufferance. But they killed him anyway.
“By then, Renata Cardenas was long gone, to college in New York City. And soon after, Alexei Petrovsky somehow put together an army that took down the Orlov family.” He looks around the table, anger burning in his eyes.
“My beautiful son was seduced, extorted, and then killed, all so a little whore could become a US Marshal and a degenerate criminal could regain his family’s former glory.
Even worse, Carter’s name was then slandered in the press—they implied that Carter had been taking drugs and partying.
My son was a good boy,” he says tightly, his eyes flickering to the faces of the two law enforcement representatives opposite.
“One who always knew the right direction to follow.”
Cool story, bro. But even Lars’s imaginary voice has a somber edge to it. Be careful, brother. This is one nasty little motherfucker.
“When I tried to investigate myself,” Thorne says, “I was anonymously sent the DNA test. The letter with the results called it a rape kit.” He shakes his head sorrowfully.
“It was made very clear to me that if I stirred up any more trouble, the results of the kit would be given to the press—and to the Cardenas cartel. I knew that my life, and the lives of my family, would be ended, so I pretended to give up on the whole thing.”
And there it is, I think savagely. The lie underpinning all this shit.