Chapter 10 Anton #2
Looking around the area, I can see the other reason Lev’s business failed.
As we park the car in front of the old building, I note the apartment complexes just down the road and the park right across from it.
The club is much too close to a residential area.
I’m surprised I never heard Lev talk about having to tussle with the city about whatever zoning laws were involved.
“What’s his name?” I ask Mikki before we get out of the car.
“You don’t know him. Emil Andreev. He’s shestyorka. Very low-hanging fruit. I’m told he was trying to win respect with Nikolai with this act.”
I scoff. I might’ve known it was some underling trying to be seen.
The way Maksim was killed speaks to someone who either had no respect for this life or was a bona-fide chickenshit.
He didn’t even have the decency to show his face and fight it out with him.
Or at least use a weapon. Dumb sonofabitch used poison, of all things.
Mikki and I walk across the street to the front door of the old club. Mikki knocks hard on the door and for a second, there’s silence. Then the door opens a crack as someone looks out. “You’re back,” I hear.
“I am, and I brought company.”
The door opens wider and I see one of my larger men, Boris. He sometimes works the door at the Firebird and, as I understand it, he worked out a deal with Magda where he would do it for free if he got a blowjob from one of the girls.
He nods and lets us in. “Good to see you, Anton,” he says in his low, gravelly voice. “He’s all trussed up and ready for you in the basement.”
That’s just what I want to hear. Mikki leads me through the dim light of the main room and to another door that leads into what I imagine was a kitchen. To the left of that is a door with stairs leading down to the basement. I follow him into the smell of dust and damp and through the cool air.
There’s a single light in the basement, hanging over the bastard as he sits tied to a chair.
Near him, half in and half out of the shadows, is a worktable with various tools sitting mute, ready to work on whatever needs fixing.
Two of my men are flanking the man in the chair and it looks like the fun has already started.
Both of them are standing there in tank tops, knuckles bruised, beads of sweat on their foreheads.
And the motherfucker in the chair looks like shit. Bruised jaw, bleeding lip, swollen eye… They’ve probably been kicking this guy’s ass for hours.
Mikki walks ahead of me, stepping into the circle of light around him, and the man looks up at him with his one good eye. “Please,” he says. “You got the wrong—”
Mikki socks him hard across the jaw. His head jerks to one side as a spray of blood splatters on the floor. “Didn’t say you could talk, did I?”
I stand just outside the circle. Just so that he can see that I’m here, but not my face.
Not yet. Mikki knows what his job is in this moment and he’s doing it.
He steps back and the man looks through the darkness at me.
He’s breathing hard as he squints his rapidly swelling eyes to try and see my face.
“So. You’re the one who killed Maksim Balakin,” I tell him. “You’re exactly what I was expecting. A cowardly little shit.”
“N–No—”
“You were in Astrakhan the same time that he was, no?”
“I… I was visiting my sister. I didn’t know that Maksim was even there. Please, you have to believe me.”
I snicker. “I have to believe you?” I step into the light. I want him to see my face. To see all the pain that I plan to give in my eyes. “You snuck into Maksim’s room and like a snake, you put poison in his tea. You were too much of a coward to face him like a man, huh?”
“It wasn’t me,” he says, cringing away from me. I don’t respond. Mikki takes the cue and backhands him across the face.
“Do you know what we could do to you? To your family for this?” I say in Russian. “Your sister who lives in the heart of where this brotherhood began? You would do something like this with her in our crosshairs? You are very lucky we found you instead of her.”
His good eye widens and his mouth moves without sound. This poor idiot never considered what was truly at stake.
“I could wipe out your entire bloodline,” I growl at him. “Fortunately for you, all I want is your head.”
“Please don’t kill me,” he responds in Russian, his voice shaking.
I laugh. “Oh, killing you will be the very last thing I do to you. Dawn is a full three hours away, my friend. I have so much more planned for you before I decide to let you die. If I decide that tonight. You took away the one person in this world who might’ve stopped me from spending days torturing a man in the name of vengeance.
Whatever sliver of empathy you thought I’d show died with Maksim.
” I pause just to relish the way he’s looking up at me.
Shaking, sweat coming down his face in rivers, little whimpers coming from his swelling lips.
“When we are done with you,” I add, “you will beg us to kill you.”
Mikki smirks and walks back to the table to grab the tools. It’s about to be a long night, but a good one. This is the workout I should have been doing all this time. I look forward to the end of my insomnia.
A round of gunshots goes off somewhere above us. Everyone freezes, listening as the familiar sounds of chaos erupt just a floor above. Mikki sets down the tools and reaches for his gun. I reach for mine.
“Watch him,” I tell the other two soldiers there.
Mikki and I head for the stairs. We’re not two steps before the door opens and gunshots ring out.
Mikki ducks and covers behind some shelves, but one of my guys takes a bullet to the head.
I slip back into the shadows as Mikki and my second guy open fire on our attackers.
And in all the chaos, Emil Andreev takes his moment. I see him lean and tip over with the chair. It breaks under him, setting him free. Arms still bound behind him, he scrambles to his feet and bolts toward the back stairs leading to the storm door that opens up into the alley.
Shit. The men come down the stairs with machine guns, pinning Mikki and my other guy down. I take aim, shooting them both in the head before they realize where the bullets are coming from.
With them down, Mikki whirls around and sees that Emil has escaped. “Fuck!” he swears in Fenya.
“I got him,” I say, darting after him. “Any more of these fucks, take them out!”
I rush up the stairs and out the open storm door. I reach the alley just in time to see him darting toward the street. I open fire on him but miss as he skirts around the corner. Son of a bitch…
I go after him and just as I get to the street, I see him diving into the backseat of a car. Amur’s men. Mikki is running out after them, but the car is pulling off. I dart across the street to my own car. “Mikki!” I shout. “Let’s go!”
He joins me, jumping in the driver’s seat, and before long, we’re pursuing them at full speed. Mikki keeps up with them as they swerve to avoid hitting parked cars and skid around corners. Finally, he gets right up on the bumper.
“Hold on!” he shouts. I grab hold of the roof handle above my seat as we collide into the left back bumper of the other car. It fishtails, turning and sliding across the pavement until the back tire hits a curb and the whole thing flips over onto its roof.
Mikki brings our car to a stop and we jump out, guns drawn. The Amur bastards in the other car are getting out too. They drag Emil out of the back seat.
Not today. These sonsabitches tried me. Now they all have to die.
I catch one, shooting him in the head. Mikki gets the other just as he’s raising his gun to us. I rush over to the side of the car where Emil is and see him crawling out of the broken car window. He yells the second he sees me. “No! Please! Don’t—”
I shoot him in his forehead. I watch the terror wink out of his eyes as his head jerks back and he falls limply to the pavement.
And then something catches the corner of my eye. I look up, expecting to see a third Amur bastard…
It’s her. Standing at the curb across the street under a street light.
The yellow light makes the red in her hair and the blue in her widened eyes glow.
In her plain white T-shirt and blue jeans, she almost looks like a dream, a product of delirium brought on by my lack of sleep and heightened instincts.
But she’s not. Natalya is here. Now. Watching as Mikki and I murder living and breathing men. She’s just witnessed it all.
I hear the click of a gun and it breaks the spell. I look over just in time to see one of the Amur standing just a few feet away. He sees Natalya too… and he’s raising his gun.