7. Alexei
Fyodor’s Rules #7 - Fear is only a useful tool if they know you’ll make good on your threats.
Feeding had improved Nikolai’s mood a little. He always let his hunger get dangerously close to overwhelming him. Lukas was still sulking. That man only had two moods—sulking and murdering rampage. I really needed him to switch back to his murder mode, but it wasn’t as simple as saying a codeword, or slapping him across the face. Fuck how I wish it was.
The afternoon had been spent working our way through some leads, and this was our third stop of the day. With the amount of blood we had spilled so far, Lukas’ sulking was really starting to annoy me. It was a good day. We were crossing false leads off our lists and reminding people why they shouldn’t fuck with us at the same time. I’d even been able to pull out some knives I rarely got to use.
Lukas scowled at me as his mutts fanned ahead, flushing the gangbangers out of the rooms of the crack den they had claimed as their headquarters. Just being in here was making my skin crawl, how they felt it was anything to be proud of was beyond me.
I would not let Lukas ruin my mood, so I whistled as I made my way down the hallway. The harsh sound of growls and screams echoed ahead of me, almost like a fanfare as I entered the room. If I ever had to pick a theme song, this would definitely be it.
The mercs who had attacked Lukas and his men at the warehouse had been reasonably expensive—not private army expensive—but certainly more than these assholes would charge. But moving money around without it being noticed was hard for any of the major families in Chicago. Everyone had their nose so firmly in each other’s business, it was a surprise they could taste anything other than shit. Disposable idiots like these gangers were a good middleman through which to siphon money.
By the time I reached the supposed kitchen—which actually resembled a fucking garbage dump—Lukas’ mutts had done their job. The gangbangers and their women were divided into two cowering groups. I rarely cared about collateral damage, but we were on a deadline today. I pointed the tip of my knife at the only woman who wasn’t crying, maybe because she was too busy glaring at me like I owed her money.
“Out. And unless you feel like vomiting later, I suggest you don’t come back. Take them with you.” I gestured to the rest of the squawking flock.
She looked like she was about to argue, and for a moment, I felt my excitement lift its head. Interrogation always went faster and easier when you could make an example out of the mouthy ones first. Unfortunately for me, one of her friends was already tugging on her arm, and the women were soon scrambling out the back door and into the sunlight.
When Lukas finally joined me in the damp, roach-infested room, I turned my attention to our captive audience.
“I trust I don’t need to introduce myself?” The few fearful headshakes were a balm to my soul. There was no point cultivating a reputation if it didn’t precede you.
“It’s your lucky day. I’m looking for information. You have all been blessed with an opportunity to tell me what I want and save your hides. Everyone will then get to walk out of here with all their digits and their eyeballs. But if you choose to hold your tongue, I am going to feed those tongues to the mutts. With me so far?” Another few nods and no glares yet. Not one tried to step up to me.
I just knew it was going to be a disappointing day when the one with the most backbone was a woman who wasn’t even in the gang. I looked over at Lukas, but he was just leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed and watching me. This was my show, so I was going to have to make it entertaining enough for both of us.
“There are mercenaries in town. Why the fuck someone thinks they can bring outside muscle into town, well, that’s what I am here to find out. I don’t expect any of you shitheels to know who’s bringing them in. We know they’re doing it through a middleman, and clearly you aren’t rolling in any fucking money. I want to know who’s bringing in money. Who’s been making moves lately? Maybe they have gear they didn’t have a couple of months ago. Who’s trying to scope out fresh territory?”
Silence greeted me, but that wasn’t a surprise. They were all too busy looking at each other. A couple of them had fearful looks on their faces, but two were giving the others meaningful, stern looks. You had to love when they just outed themselves like that.
Lukas had seen what I had, and his mutts were instantly growling and snapping at the assholes who clearly knew something. I was pretty sure one of them actually pissed himself as he tried to back up from the razor-sharp teeth that were about half an inch from his face. I didn’t know if it was the drugs he’d taken, or if he had finally realized how much fucking trouble they were in.
I tutted as I stepped forward, and the mutts backed off as I approached. Lukas’ ability to communicate with them telepathically proved, once again, incredibly useful. It meant none of these idiots knew which one of us was controlling them, not that it mattered. The mutts had been with us long enough that they knew how to do their job.
“I’ve been nice so far. I let your women go, so you’d have a chance to win them back. And I didn’t immediately kill anyone just to prove to you I could. I haven’t even damaged your rickety fucking house. So, tell me why you’ve chosen to treat me with such disrespect?” To emphasize my point, I slammed my knife through the shoulder of the one who’d pissed himself. The knife’s point pushed through his back and into the wall, pinning him there.
I waited, knowing that his screaming would need to die down before I got any intelligible answers. He even tried pulling at the knife, but there was no way he had the leverage to free himself. One stern look at his friend kept him from trying to help. I had no issue dishing out as much violence as it took to get the answers we needed, but Lukas and his scowl were really putting a dampener on my mood.
“If you want to help your friend, you can tell me what you know. Otherwise, you’re going to be joining him. Do you know how many parts of the body I can pin to the wall with my knives before you pass out? My record so far is fifteen.” I looked over my shoulder at Lukas, trying to lighten the mood. “Does today feel like a record-breaking day to you?” I saw the corner of his mouth lift into the hint of a smirk, and I was going to take that as a victory.
Of course, the idiot who wasn’t pinned chose that moment to take advantage of my inattention, as though I was really going to let him escape.
A shove of my boot and another swing of my arm. Rather than just pinning him to the wall, I stabbed downwards, and the knife went through his palm and into the thigh of his friend.
“Well, would you look at that? Maybe this is a chance to bring you two closer together? Kind of like a blood brother’s pact.” I stood and took out the next knife from the row sheathed around my wrist. I needed to give the pair a minute to stop cursing and spitting.
Looking over at the rest of the gang, they were all frozen in horror. It always surprised me how men who lived a life of violence, carried guns, got into fistfights, and probably beat women, were always horrified when they were the ones experiencing pain rather than inflicting it.Maybe someone should do some kind of study on why that is.
I tapped the knife against the palm of my hand, waiting patiently for one of the two idiots to give me what I needed. I really should have brought my knitting, it always made an interrogation session go faster. The threats and begging were easier to tune out when I could concentrate on my cable stitches.
“Ten minutes, Alexei.” I looked over at Lukas and sighed.
Putting a time limit on these sorts of things rarely went well. I knew he had a list that he wanted to work through logically, but there was nothing methodical about the way I worked. Information extraction was artistry. You had to read people to know what they were thinking and feeling. It wasn’t simply a case of following a list. This wasn’t paint by fucking numbers.
Sighing, I stepped back over to my soon-to-be whistling teapots and loomed over them. The one I had stabbed in the hand was still cursing, but I ignored him, focusing instead on the tear-stained cheeks of his compatriot.
“The Shadow Aces! A bunch of them have new bikes, and they got a new clubhouse! It’s still in their territory, but it’s one of those fancy fucking houses!” The words fell from him like a waterfall, spilling all over the floor.
Great. Bikers. The Aces had always been relatively small-time, more about the bikes than crime. They did some minor money laundering, things like that, so it was actually kind of surprising to hear their name. I looked over at Lukas, knowing he would have more to say on the subject, but from the look he was giving me, I was going to have to wait until we got into the car to hear his opinion.
“See how easy that was? No one had to lose their tongue today. An excellent lesson for next time.”
Reaching out, I retrieved both my knives, ignoring the writhing and swearing. You couldn’t blame a man for swearing when you’d just ripped a knife out of his flesh. I would not leave excellent knives behind, though.
Lukas and his mutts were already halfway down the hallway by the time I got to the doorway of the kitchen and turned. “Make sure whichever vet sews you up gives you antibiotics. This place is fucking filthy.” With that last piece of friendly advice—and more information than we had when we arrived—I whistled happily as I made my way back to the car.
The wheels squealed and Lukas took off the moment my passenger door was shut, not even waiting for me to do up my seatbelt.
“If I didn’t know better, brother, I would think that you wanted me to die in some sort of terrible road accident.” I licked the blood from my knives, ignoring the scoff from the driver’s seat. Once they were clean, I carefully put them away. “The Aces are a bit of a surprise, I will say. Either they got themselves in debt over their head, in which case, why are they being paid for their services? Or one of them has actually grown some sort of backbone or ambition gland and decided to play for a bigger slice of the pie.”
“They weren’t even eating pie before this.”
Lukas’ agreement told me I was right to think this was out of character for the motorcycle club. He knew more about that scene than I did, since he spent his time when he wasn’t acting as our head of security racing the death traps. Nikolai had always encouraged him to pursue it as a more serious career, but none of us were very good at engaging in things that weren’t our duty to each other. Just another thing to thank Fyodor for.
“So, what do you want to do next? Do we keep working our way down the list, or is a trip to the Aces in our future?”
I look over at Lukas and see the thoughtful expression he has on his face. He could have been mulling over what to do next, or he could have been using his abilities to locate one of the Aces. Sometimes I envied him his ability to find anyone whose scent he already knew. Other times, I was sure that took the fun out of it.
“I think if we want to get information out of them, we need to be smart about things.”
That got my eyes narrowing at him. Was he implying that what I did for the family didn’t require intelligence? Information extraction took a lot of skill. He wasn’t looking at me and didn’t look like he regretted a word he’d said.
“I don’t think just bursting into the clubhouse is the best idea. Some of them like to race. That might be a good way to talk to them covertly.”
Sighing, I leaned my seat back, closing my eyes. “If that’s what you want, Lukas.”
I knew he’d be the one forced to knock on my figurative door as he asked for my help. If he wanted to waste some time racing around a track first, I would not stop him. I was starting my internal stopwatch, though.
We’d get to the fun part . . . eventually.