Chapter 20 Roman #2
Out of the darkness, they walk around Abate’s car and into the headlights, their guns drawn. In full tactical gear with FBI painted in yellow on their chests, they start to surround us. We’ve maybe got a second or two to react.
Ares grabs the gun of the closest guy and pushes it up. It goes off as he punches him in the face, knocking him back. It’s on.
I go for the closest guy to me and knock his gun to one side as I reach for my sidearm. I slap him across the face with it. He falls backward, blood flying from his mouth. I shoot him in the head before he can even gain his footing again.
The firefight starts after that. Abate’s men do their best against them, but all but Abate’s right hand are shot down in quick succession. Ares rushes past me with the suitcase in hand. “Let’s go!” he shouts as he shuts the trunk door.
We get into the car as the bullets start flying. I’ve got no idea where Abate or his right hand got to. All I know is that we’ve got to get the fuck out of here.
We screech out of the parking lot and past a flurry of red and blue lights as the police surround the club. In all the confusion, they just miss us. Ares drives the truck down the road and into the nearest alley just in case.
“Get down,” he says, pushing my head down. We hide as sirens get closer, then speed past us. After a few moments, we both look up and out the back window.
“Shit, that was close,” Ares says.
“Too close.”
“What do we do now? The crates—”
“We need to get this truck and the crates off the fucking road. They’ll be canvassing the neighborhood within the hour.”
I pull out my phone. Most of my guys were at the club tonight. Any of them who didn’t get shot are probably being arrested as we speak. We need to start the contingencies for just this problem. I dial Ivan’s number.
“Hello?” he says groggily.
“Ivan, I need you to meet us at the warehouse in an hour.”
A slight pause, then movement. “Okay. I take it things did not go as planned.”
“They did not. One hour, Ivan.”
I hang up and lean back in my seat. “The warehouse by the docks. Let’s go.”
Ares puts the car in drive and we’re off.
Thanks to Ares knowing the back alleys and side streets, we manage to evade the police all the way here.
We pull up to the warehouse encased in darkness and looming over us.
Out here, there’s nothing but the sound of the water lapping at the shore of the lake about a mile or so away.
We get out of the car as another car pulls into the lot behind us.
As I watch Ivan park next to us, I start to wish I could have told him to bring a few more people with him.
He gets out of the car. He’s thrown on a track suit and his usually well coiffed hair is mussed. “What the hell happened tonight?” he asks. “It’s all over the news that the FBI just raided the club?”
“Yeah,” Ares says. “It was fucked up. Abate might’ve bought it. I didn’t see him when the bullets started flying.”
“We can compare notes later,” I say, walking to the back. “Let’s get all this back in the warehouse.”
I open the hatch and the two of them grab one of the crates from end to end and carry it across the lot to the warehouse’s front door. I watch them until they disappear in the darkness, then I pull out my phone. If what happened is all over the radio, I should call Sasha and Ember—
The sound of a gun clicks in my ear and cold steel presses against the back of my head. “Don’t fucking move,” somebody says in Fenya.
I don’t need this right now. “You picked the wrong guy to rob tonight,” I answer back in turn. “If you step away now, I’ll let you live.”
“I don’t think so, Orlov. Tonight is your reckoning.”
The time and space between the moment I realize that this isn’t a normal robbery goes by like the blink of an eye. I’ve only got a breath to make a choice before he pulls that trigger.
I make that choice and move fast, ducking under the gun and turning as it goes off.
I bring my arm up and around, crashing into his and slamming it into the truck’s bumper.
He yells out as the sound of the gun clatters behind me.
I don’t even give him time to react. I punch him squarely in the nose.
His head jerks back and he stumbles, holding his arm as blood pours from his rapidly swelling nostrils.
“Fuck!” he curses. He looks up at me in a scowl and I instantly recognize him.
The last time I saw him, he was a shitty little twelve-year-old holding a gun bigger than he was. Back then, I disarmed him and gave him that cut over his eye as a thank you. I also let him walk away. If I had known then who he was, I would have shot him in the head then.
Now it all makes sense.
“You must be Sergei,” I say.
He stands up. He’s about the same height as me with a little less muscle mass. His blond hair is cut short on the sides and a little too long on top. It’s falling into his face now as he regards me.
“And you’re a dead man,” he says. He reaches for a knife in his belt and swings it at me in one smooth movement.
I only have time to block and he slices my forearm.
I manage to hit him in the side of his face with the back of my fist. Again he stumbles back.
I catch him in the chest with a palm punch.
He’s on the ground for just a moment, but he scrambles to his feet, ready for more.
“Hey!” Shouting from the warehouse door. Ares and Ivan must have heard the gunshot. We both look to see them running toward us, guns in hand.
Sergei points one finger at me and says, “Next time, asshole.”
He runs off into the darkness, but not before Ares and Ivan open fire on him. The bullets miss him as he disappears around the corner.
Both of them rush past me to catch him, but a few minutes later, they come back, holstering their guns. “Who the fuck was that?” Ares asks.
“Trouble.”
The guns were taken care of without incident after that, but I’m deep in thought about what happened.
I hastily wrapped my arm up using an oil rag in the truck, which stopped the bleeding, but I’m going to have to tend to it properly when I get home to keep it from getting infected. What a fucking nightmare this whole night has been.
Ares pulls in front of the house and says, “You think we ought to head underground? You know tonight won’t be the last we hear from the FBI. If they’ve gone this far, they’ll probably try to raid the other businesses.”
I shake my head. “Ivan has the books and we were able to get away with the guns and the money. They won’t find anything else at the club.
” The other part of this has been nagging me.
The part that screams that we’ve been infiltrated.
I can see Ares wanting to say something.
He looks at me with anticipation on his face.
“Go home,” I tell him. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
I get out of the truck and head inside. As soon as I walk in, I see Ember sitting on the couch, her phone in her hand. She stands up, her eyes wide with worry. She sets the phone down absently, all her focus on me.
“I heard about what happened at the club. Are you… ?” Her eyes drift down to the makeshift bandage around my forearm. “Oh, my God. What happened?”
“Long story. Where’s Sasha?”
“In bed,” she says. “It’s after two in the morning. She went to sleep hours ago. I…” Her eyes dart over the makeshift bandage, black and red with dirt, motor oil, and blood. She takes hold of my arm to get a better look at it.
“I’m fine,” I say. She frowns at the rag.
“No, you’re not. We need to clean this up. Come on.”
She leads me into the kitchen and sits me down at the table.
I watch her as she finds a clean dishrag and a bowl, then starts running the water in the sink.
There’s something about this that reminds me of when Mila was alive.
The way she’d care for me after I was injured, quietly, without question.
Lovingly. Ember sort of reminds me of that peace that she would bring after a bad night.
She sits down across from me with the rag and bowl of warm water, then undoes the rag on my arm. “What is this? Motor oil? Where did you get this thing, anyway?”
“I was caught off guard. It was all I had to work with.”
She sighs as she regards the dirty wound. “At least you came back in one piece. Thank God for that.”
I smile in spite of the sting of the damp cloth on my wound. In silence she cleans my wound, her white gold hair falling into her face as she works.
“I’m not going to ask for details right now,” she says, “but eventually, when you’re ready to talk about it, I’d like to know what happened just the same.”
“Might be better if you didn’t know. This is the part of my life that’s hard to hear, Ember.”
She pauses and looks up at me, then back down to the wound.
“If this is going to go any further with us, I have to know. We need to be all in with each other for this to work, right? That’s what you said.
I have to understand that you’re a monster.
Well… if that’s the case, then I should know what the monster did to get this wound. ”
She’s right. Completely. All in or not in at all. There’s no halfway in this world.
“You need disinfectant for this. And some decent bandages. I think I’ve got some at home,” she says. “In the meantime, I’ll need a clean piece of cloth and some tape to cover this up. It shouldn’t be exposed. I can come back tomorrow morning and finish the job.”
“I’ve got bandages and alcohol,” I tell her, then, “Stay with me tonight.”
She stops altogether and looks up at me. “Roman—”
“I’m not asking.”
Her eyes read my face slowly, then she nods. “Okay.”
Beyond everything, it’s the right move. With Sergei lurking around out there, there’s no safer place she’ll be than with me tonight.