20. Twenty
It was raining when we pulled up outside Bianchi's, and Aleksi had his hand halfway up my thigh, which would've been grand if his brother hadn't been sitting across from us watching it happen.
"Ye want to maybe save that," I said.
"No." His thumb pressed in along the inseam, slow, like he was testing the stitching to see if it'd hold. "Niko can look elsewhere if he doesn’t like it."
"I see nothing," Niko said, not looking up from his phone. "Continuez. Pretend I am not here."
"Bit hard, that. Yer the loudest thing in the car and ye've not said a word in ten minutes."
He smiled at me over the screen, the pretty one, the one that came easy to him the way the threats came easy to his brother. "He insults me," he told Aleksi. "All day, insults. This is how I know he’s good for you."
"Stop talking to him."
"You brought him on a date and made me come along. What did you think would—"
"Niko." Aleksi turned his head, didn't raise his voice, and Niko lifted both hands in surrender.
I turned my head to look out the window across the street.
This was the fourth shop of the day, and I was starting to think Nikita’s theory about diamond trafficking was complete shite.
But at least I’d gotten a nice wool coat out of the deal, and a matching hat.
The whole ensemble had cost Aleksi an embarrassing amount, and Niko was never going to let him live it down.
Me, I felt like some lass whose man had bought her pearls and Balenciaga heels. The man was earning his keep, diamonds or no.
"Out," Aleksi said against my ear. "Before I do something that makes Niko blush."
"I don’t blush," Niko said almost sadly. “It’s a fault I blame on my Russian half. C’est la vie.”
We got out and made straight for the shop’s front door. A little brass bell rang overhead when we pushed it open. The shop smelled of wax and money. A man came round the counter with his greeting half out of his mouth, got a proper look at Aleksi, and the rest of it died on him.
Niko was already gliding in to handle him. “Ah yes! Forgive my brother. He has the manners and the taste of a closed door,” he said and steered the poor soul off toward the display cases with both hands.
That was the arrangement. Niko charmed, Aleksi loomed, and I worked.
I went down the wall of jackets first. Aleksi came with me and stood at my shoulder, close enough I could feel the heat coming off him through two coats.
"Ye're crowding me," I murmured.
"I know." His hand settled at the small of my back, under the new coat, spread wide and heavy and proprietary, and pressed me half an inch closer to the leather. "Keep working."
"Cannae work with yer hand there."
"You worked fine with my hand other places."
"Aye, well." I picked up the next jacket to keep my own hands honest. "Different sort of concentration."
"Find me what I'm paying for, Fin." His mouth was at my ear now, low enough Niko's chatter covered it. "Be good for me in a shop full of people and I'll be very bad for you when we're not."
"Careful, boss man. I’m susceptible to bribes."
The jackets were clean. So were the bags — totes, a weekender, the linings sitting flat the way honest linings do.
The money in a shop like this never hung on the wall, anyway.
It sat in the back, made for one man's hand, four grand a piece.
I found the curtain half-drawn and a rack of finished orders behind it, each one in tissue with a name on the tag.
I zeroed in on an attaché in oxblood, a lovely thing.
My thumb went up the long seam where the lining meets the gusset, and I froze.
"Aleksi," I hissed through the curtain.
He slipped through, gun drawn.
“Put that away. You’ll put an eye out with it, ye will.”
I got out my seam ripper and picked the recess open a stitch at a time. The lining peeled back off a false wall sewn from the inside, the way I'd been taught to sew it. I turned the case over in my palm and gave it a shake, and the stones came down bright into my hand, all six of them.
"There's yer diamonds," I said. "Yer boss was right, the clever bastard."
Aleksi was still tucking the gun away when the curtain slid back.
“You! You’re not supposed to be back here!” He gasped when he saw the gutted attaché. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? That’s a four-thousand-dollar piece!” He made the mistake of grabbing my wrist.
Aleksi’s hand shot out and caught the shopkeeper by the elbow and yanked. The arm came back and twisted and…
I grimaced at the sound of bones twisting and snapping.
The man collapsed over his own bench, screaming. Aleksi kept his arm twisted in that unnatural position. “That’ll teach you to put your hand on my man,” he growled, and my cock gave an interested twitch.
"Niko," Aleksi said, not looking up. "Get the door."
Niko flipped the sign in the window, locked the door, and drew the blinds before coming back and peeling off his coat.
"You could have asked before you broke it," he said mildly. "Now he cannot even sit straight. Hold him."
Niko dragged the chair from the corner and Aleksi put the man in it one-handed, the bad arm hanging wrong, and when the shopkeeper started bucking and choking out something about police, about cameras, Niko bent and said something low in French against his ear that went through him like cold water. He stopped bucking. He kept crying.
"Cameras," Aleksi said.
"Already on it." Niko had the box open on the wall, pulling the drive like he'd done it a hundred times.
I should've made myself useful. Instead, I leaned on the bench with the six stones warm in my fist and watched my man work, and I'd not have moved for a fire.
The shopkeeper found one last scrap of fight, lunging his good side toward a drawer. Aleksi sighed like a man whose dinner had gone cold and drew the gun. The man saw it and went still enough that Niko barely had to work to get him back in the chair.
“Arlo Bianchi, right?” Aleksi broke the cylinder open against his palm, let one round drop in, just the one, snapped it shut, and spun it.
The man swallowed and said nothing.
Aleksi squatted in front of him, gun dangling between his knees.
“Do you believe in God, Arlo?”
Arlo’s jaw trembled, and he glared at Aleksi with nothing but raw spite.
Aleksi gave him the glare a moment and then stood. “Everyone’s got to have something to believe in. God. The Devil. Luck.” He paused and glanced at me briefly before adding, “Love.”
A shock of something warm and unfamiliar went through me.
Aleksi turned back to Arlo. “My pop believed in love,” he said.
“Believed in it so hard, he sold his soul for it. Sold his family. His life, in the end. The man died from being a bleeding heart as much as anything else. The point is,” he continued, waving the gun at Arlo, “right now, in that thick skull of yours, you’re praying to whatever power you hold supreme, hoping that it’s going to save you. But your god’s not here, Arlo. I am.”
"Who brings you the commissions?" Niko asked. "The special ones. With the room sewn into them."
"I have—" Arlo's voice cracked and started over. "I have hundreds of clients; I don't ask what they—"
Aleksi put the barrel to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Arlo screamed after, the way you do when your body's already decided it's dead and your ears have to argue it back.
I wrinkled my nose. “Christ man. Ye piss yerself on the first one?”
Niko stepped back from the spreading puddle beneath Arlo.
"One down," Aleksi said. "Five to go. Try again."
"I cut leather, I take orders, I swear to God I don't—"
"He's lying," I said. "That recess in the oxblood never came off an order form. I’ve seen it before."
Arlo looked at me properly then. “You. You’re the Scotsman. They said you were dead.”
"Fin’s a little harder to kill than he looks," Aleksi told him, near enough fond. He thumbed the hammer back. "Who brings them?"
"Renzo." The name came out of him with the snot and everything else. "Renzo, I don't have a last name. He collects the pieces when they're finished, that's all, that's all I do—"
"When?"
"Thursdays. He came this Thursday; he's coming back—there's a big one going out, a case, he said somebody's flying in for it himself—"
Aleksi went still. So did I, for my own reasons, because Thursday was two days gone and coming round again, and somebody flying in to collect was the nearest any of this had got to the man at the top of it.
He lowered the gun, looked at me instead of Arlo, and the corner of his mouth tipped up.
"There," he said. "Was that so hard?"
He stood, knees cracking, and held the gun back over his shoulder without looking. "Here."
Niko took it. And in the same half second, Arlo came off the chair one last time, his good arm diving for the drawer he'd been so keen on earlier. The gun went off once.
The shot echoed through the room so loudly I flinched back and covered my ears. I must’ve winced too because when I opened my eyes, Arlo’s head was a big red smear against the back wall.
Nobody said anything for a second.
Then Aleksi looked down at himself. The front of him was wearing a fair bit of Arlo now on his shirt, his jaw, and the whole front of him was ruined. He pinched the end of his tie between his fingers and stared at it. “What the actual fuck, Niko?”
Niko lowered the gun. "He was going for a gun."
"This was my favorite tie!"
"I’ll buy you a new—"
"They don't make this tie anymore." He took a step. Niko took one back, both hands up, the gun held off to the side like a man who'd finally clocked it was the problem. "I will backhand you into next week, I swear to God—"
"He was going for a gun! Fin, tell him—"
"Leave me out of it," I said. "Ye shot the man. Ye can answer for the tie an' all."
And there it was, the thing I'd not have believed if you'd told me a year past I'd find it fetching — the most dangerous bastard in three states, gone red in the face over haberdashery, chasing his brother round a dead man like the pair of them were ten years old.
I watched Aleksi Laskin get one good cuff in across the back of Niko's head, and I thought, God help me, that's mine.
That whole ridiculous murdering man is mine.
Aleksi got out his phone and made a quick call in Russian before turning back to his brother. "Niko." He didn't look round. "You did it. You wrap it."
For a second, I thought Niko might argue, but he sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work. He complained the whole time, but he did the work, wrapping what was left of Arlo up in a tarp they found out back.
Niko was elbow deep in the sudsy water, scrubbing the floor when the cleaner arrived. He was a fresh-faced kid of twenty at most, come in from the rain in a coat a size too big and a scuffed up duffel. The lad took one look at Aleksi and got stars in his eyes.
“Mr. Laskin, sir, it’s an honor,” he said, sticking out his hand.
Aleksi looked at the kid and frowned.
The kid slowly lowered his hand. “Ah. Right. You’re, um, covered in… all that.”
“I don’t know you,” Aleksi half growled. “Where’s Holt?”
“Oh. Right. I’m Evander Renko. My friends call me E.J.
” Another pause so awkward, I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something smart.
Poor lad. “Oh, right. Holt. He’s on the warehouse, and Pavel is…
Well, you know. You’re the one who…” He cleared his throat and popped up on his toes briefly. “Anyway, that means you get me.”
“Riiiiight.” Aleksi sighed. “Just don’t fuck it up, kid.”
“No, sir, Mr. Laskin… sir.”
I inched closer to Aleksi as EJ snapped on his gloves and unrolled the plastic. “Go easy on the lad.”
Aleksi snorted. “Why? Going easy on him will just make him soft.”
“Oi, can’t ye see? Yer his hero.” I gave him a gentle shove.
Aleksi rolled his eyes. “Then the kid has bad taste. I’m gonna go smoke.”
“Och, then ye best not ask for a wee kiss after.” I folded my arms. Then made an undignified sound when he grabbed my arse.
“I don’t ask, brat.”
I shoved him toward the door and stayed inside with EJ.
The lad worked fast and clean, gloves on, the body bagged, already eyeing the wall, and he was good at it.
But every so often his eyes went toward the front where Aleksi and Niko were smoking, and I’d see a flash of something familiar I just couldn’t put my finger on.
It was in the jaw, maybe, or the way he tipped his head when he was working a thing out.
Some Laskin stamp I’d no name for yet. I told myself it was the smoke in my eyes and let it go.
After his smoke, Aleksi changed into a suit off the rack that didn’t fit quite right and handed all his dirty laundry to EJ. He parted only reluctantly with the tie, and I didn’t know why. Wasn’t anything special about that damn red silk tie.
When it was all done, the body loaded, the clothes bagged, the shop clean as a whistle, Aleksi ducked into the washroom to avoid having to speak to EJ again. Niko tipped the kid a handful of bills and I went in to check on Aleksi.
The daft man was working at a spot of blood on his chin and missing it by a mile, so I snatched the cloth out of his hand and did it for him. “Yer a coward, dodging the lad like that.”
“It’s awkward,” he mumbled.
I wet the cloth and went at his jaw, slowly, holding his chin like a thing I meant to keep. "I watched ye break a man for putting a hand on me," I said. "And now yer in here hiding from a little small talk. Aleksi Laskin, yer a strange one."
He turned and kissed me then, blood on his chin and all, and I didn't care a bit.
It was Gregori who clocked the car on the way home.
He didn't say anything, just took three turns we didn't need and watched the mirror while he did it.
Whatever had been behind us wasn't behind us anymore by the fourth.
Nobody said K's name. Aleksi held my hand on the seat and checked the mirror for ten miles, and I pretended I hadn't seen him do it.