Chapter 26
Dominik
My side throbs once, a reminder that I’m doing this with a hole in me.
The place matches Kyle’s description down to the rusted stair rail he told Renat about—proof the kid didn’t lie about everything.
My guys move with the efficiency of men who have done this too often to make mistakes.
Renat’s posted at the top of the stairs that lead to abandoned offices, his eyes seeing everything.
Viktor checks crates with a gloved hand and a ledger.
Petrov is next to me, his shoulders wide, knuckles split, standing over the only biker still breathing in this hellhole.
A biker who still thinks he has options.
Popeye sits in a chair, his wrists duct-taped to the armrests, ankles cinched tight to the legs with zip ties digging pink into skin.
No leather. Petrov cut it off him and tossed it on the ground, an intentional show of disrespect.
A line of blood tracks from the hairline at his temple and stops at his cheekbone.
His breathing is ragged, the kind that means Petrov has already taken the first round out of him.
I drag a stool across the concrete and plant it in front of him. The sound is unkind, a screeching menace to everyone’s ears. Intentional. “Talk fast,” I say.
Popeye grins with broken teeth; the kind of smile men think looks brave when it’s really just a dog baring its gums. “You first.”
“Dead men don’t need intel,” I assure him, making his face go pale. “Where are the other guns?”
“Don’t know,” Popeye mutters stubbornly.
Petrov doesn’t need instruction. He retrieves the mallet and throws it across the room, just over the man’s head. It hits the cement wall and leaves a crater. Popeye flinches hard enough to scrape skin under tape.
“Try again,” I say.
He sucks air through his teeth when Petrov retrieves the mallet. “They went out on vegetable trucks. A guy named Manny has them down the road on First Street.” He smiles again, teeth bloody. “You knew some of that. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
“Quantities,” I say. “And who calls the moves?”
“Twenty have left since the other night,” he spits. Blood flecks my boot. “You already know that too.” His eyes gleam. “Question is, do you know why your princess’s brother let you learn it?”
He thinks our intel came from Archer, which is a good thing.
Kyle may have a chance of escaping the biker’s wrath.
Still, heat climbs my spine at the mention of the traitor.
Alina’s face flashes in my mind, the way she looked when she promised she could handle the truth.
This is the kind of truth that cracks ribs from the inside.
I wish I’d never asked her to be strong enough for it.
“Go on,” I say.
Popeye sits up straighter, like a man told to deliver a eulogy.
“You think the two mil was the point? That cash was just a test. Six months ago, Archer said he could get shit for us. Since then, he drew us a map, gave up warehouses you use, the routes your vans take and when they move. He promised he could get us a route directly off the port when the inspectors get lazy. He said he could give us a pipeline. Not a onetime score. A pipeline, once you and your crew were wiped out.”
Behind me, I feel my men stop moving. It’s a small stillness, and I feel it like a shift in weather. I meet Popeye’s eye and lean in close enough to count copper in his breath. “How many of your men saw that map?”
He tries to smile again and can’t quite make his mouth do it. “Enough.”
He’s going to make this more difficult than it needs to be.
Over Popeye’s shoulder, a workbench similar to the one in the garage offers me an array of options: duct tape, a length of chain, a bucket, a stack of clear plastic drop cloth.
I pick up the plastic and unravel what I need.
Popeye watches me the entire time, up and until I lift the material and drop it over his head in one smooth motion.
It clings to him where his face sweats. The sound he makes when the world goes thin is unpleasant and useful, just like the sounds the kid, Kyle made.
Different man, same sound. Turns out loyalty breaks the same way in every family.
“Names,” I say, voice easy. “Who saw the fucking map?”
He tries to breathe. The plastic sucks into his mouth and shows the shape of a lie starting to form. I lift a corner, just enough for the air to return to him. “Jinx,” he coughs immediately. “Reed. Burn. Two prospects whose names I didn’t bother to learn.”
I pull the plastic off and let it crumple around his throat like a collar. He gasps then coughs.
“Archer Kent,” I say, hating his goddamn name.
“What about him?” Popeye is still panting.
“Who arranged the first meeting, who vouched for him, where and when?”
Popeye’s good eye shifts to my shoulder, calculating. “Pawn man,” he says. “One with a little shop in Jersey City where he keeps rosaries over a register and sells guns in the back.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, already knowing about the shop.
“Yeah. AK said he knew how to steal the guns and not to get caught. He didn’t look scared. He said he wanted more.”
“Did he give you anything else besides guns and maps?” I ask through gritted teeth.
Popeye grins through blood. “Your door code, zero-three-one-seven. Said we could send men to your building if we wanted to see how you lived. I told him we weren’t that fucking stupid.”
My body goes very still. Alina is staying with me now and Archer could have put her in even more danger. He didn’t just hand them my address; he handed them the woman sleeping in my bed. I breathe deeply around the hole in my side and let my racing heart slow.
“Archer walked into your world because he’s a greedy son of a bitch,” I say. “And you let him because you like cheap men trying to play at expensive games.”
Popeye laughs. It’s a broken sound. “Like you don’t.”
I look down at my hands and imagine them in other rooms, doing other things. The image makes me angrier than it should. “Who has your other ledger?” I ask softly. “The one with deposits, dates, whatever you call honest when you write to yourself.”
His mouth presses thin. “All in my head.”
“Wrong answer,” I say, and draw the 9 mm from my left hip. The suppressor threads on with a few quiet spins. His wide gaze volleys between the barrel and my face like a scared man staring at his own grave.
“You drug her into this,” he says suddenly, and it’s the wrong tactic, but men use whatever they can when they’re desperate. “The girl. Archer’s sister. The Pakhan’s going to take her. Better you give her to him yourself and keep your dick attached to your ego.”
I step close enough so that I see the lines around his eyes and lower my voice. “Archer isn’t your cheap pipeline. He’s the warning I’m going to nail across every door you think you’ve ever bought.”
Popeye opens his mouth as if to beg for something I don’t plan to give him. I put the muzzle to his forehead. “You shouldn’t have mentioned my girl,” I say to him before I squeeze the trigger.
The shot is small and final. Popeye’s head rocks back, then bows as if he’s finally praying for his soul.
Silence isn’t empty in rooms like this; it’s crowded with what won’t happen next. The forklift rattles once and gives up. Petrov exhales. Viktor doesn’t. His eyes meet mine for a second, and I see the thought neither of us say: we now own one less problem, and probably at least three more.
“Burn the leather,” I order. “Crate the inventory. Renat, I want Reed and Jinx put down. If they can run, they can talk. We need to pay Manny a visit. But first…” I slide the pistol away. My ribs complain; I ignore them. “Viktor.”
“Boss?” he says.
“Time to have that meeting,” I tell him.
He nods in understanding. We already know where Archer is because a man shadowed him after the drop instead of shooting him where he stood under that parking garage.
Archer thought he had vanished. He zigzagged through Secaucus like a rat in a maze of alleys.
He switched motels, traded phone SIMs, then ordered food and holed up.
Renat planted a car he didn’t recognize across the street and watched his every twitch.
I wipe Popeye’s blood off the barrel, holster the weapon, and let the rage settle into something colder. Anger is loud, but I need quiet now for planning.
Viktor drives and Petrov rides shotgun. I sit alone in the back because sometimes I need my space when I’m weighing hard decisions and don’t like any of them.
The Secaucus motel is the kind of two-story place that you rent by the hour from a clerk who looks the other way for a dollar.
Renat’s tracker waits under the dripping eave near the corner, hands buried in his jacket, hood up. He nods once. “Room twenty-seven. He’s been pacing for the past hour.”
“Neighbors?” I ask.
“Nobody on the left side. On the right is a woman with a kid who doesn’t want to go to sleep. You’ll need to be quiet.”
“We will,” I agree.
We climb the stairs, and the metal grates give a small scream under our weight.
I keep my hand by my thigh, close to my pistol.
My mind on the woman who told me to sit down and take it easy, making me softer every second I’m near her.
A bad time to grow a conscience. A worse time to want anything I shouldn’t.
Petrov ghosts a keycard with a right wrist flick that looks like a magic trick outside room twenty-seven. The green dots blink in a hurry. He pushes. The door opens with the stink of cigarette smoke.
Archer is exactly where I expected him to be, a weak man taking up too much space on a bed that’s seen more sorrow than sleep.
There’s a glass bottle by his side, a burner phone on the nightstand, a duffel half-packed with stupid choices on the bed.
He lifts his head and swears when he sees my face.
“Get out,” he snaps, reaching for the drawer like he’s determined to make worse choices before the day is done. Petrov goes over and kicks the drawer shut with his shoe and Archer gets his fingers jammed. He yelps, then yanks his hand back, and glares at me. “You can’t—”
“We can,” I say. If Archer had gotten that gun, Alina would never have forgiven me for what I’d have to do next. I step inside the room and close the door with my heel. “You should have run further.”
“Where?” he spits. “Where, you fucking—” He catches himself on the edge of a name he won’t survive. His eyes go mean. “You don’t get to lecture me. You took my sister! You bleed because you earned that shit.”
“I bleed because you sold us out to fools with loud new toys,” I say. “The difference is I’ll heal from my wounds. You won’t.”
His chin comes up, reminding me of his sister. “You think you can scare me? I grew up in a house with worse men than you.”
“It’s adorable that you think so,” I say. But the information settles in the back of my mind, refusing to budge. If Archer grew up with those types of men, then so did Alina.
While I’m distracted, he lunges. It’s ragged and a stupid move that makes Petrov laugh in a low, affectionate way, like watching a kitten trying to catch a bee.
Stepping sideways, Petrov takes Archer’s wrist, turns, and the kid is face-down on the carpet in less than a breath, all his energy going into a curse that can’t find a god.
Viktor’s knee pins his shoulder; the handcuffs click.
My men lift him by his elbows. Archer continues to fight like a boy who never learned when he’d lost.
“You’re going to kill me?” Archer asks. It comes out as a question because he’s still acting like a boy, no matter how many guns he hides under furniture. “Will you do it with her in the other room so she can hear it?”
“No,” I say. “I wouldn’t put her through that.”
“What then?” He throws his head back toward the ceiling. His eyes flash, desperate and bright. “You want me to beg? You want me to apologize? I did what I had to do for us. The bikers made me give up the meeting time and place when I thought she was already as good as dead.”
“You did it for yourself,” I say. “You stole two million. You promised men a pipeline you couldn’t build.
You handed them maps they didn’t deserve and door codes that weren’t yours.
You took a debt and turned it into a string of bad choices.
Don’t speak to me about ‘us.’ Even Alina is fed up with you and your shit. There is no ‘us.’ Not anymore.”
He shakes his head hard enough to hurt something inside his thick skull. He has that look on his face I’ve seen a hundred times, the one that says if you tell the story long enough it’ll become true. “She’ll forgive me,” he says hoarsely. “She always does.”
He says it like it’s a guarantee. Like she’s a resource he owns.
That, more than betrayal, seals his fate.
The words land in a place I don’t let enemies touch. And the fury that I feel hits me so hard that I lose my breath for a second.
That smug bastard. I step close enough that his breath hits the base of my throat. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I say, and watch the minute flinch he doesn’t want to give.
“Bring him,” I instruct my men.
Tomorrow at noon hangs over us like a loaded gun. And Archer Kent is the weight that might help us tip the scales.