Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Kolya
“I’m too old for secret meetings like this.” Ivan climbed into the passenger seat of my work van, which I had parked between alleyways in New Jersey.
A muffled sound came from the back of the vehicle.
He glanced over his shoulder and sighed. “You’re taking me along on a job?”
I reversed the van and backed out of the alley. “Killing two birds with one stone. Besides, don’t you miss it?”
When the van was back on the highway, heading deeper into New Jersey's industrial parks, Ivan asked, “Who is he?”
“Child trafficker,” I said shortly. Specifically, Jordan Wilson. This was a favor to one of Kirill’s political allies. They couldn’t prosecute Wilson. Powerful men protected him, and there were still missing children. A congressman’s daughter was taken as a warning.
“Are we going vigilante now?” Ivan asked.
“Let’s just say it’s a reparation for what Grigori did under your nose.” I glanced over at him.
When Ivan was pakhan, the Zahkarov bratva had a thriving sex work industry in Europe.
Some legal, some illegal. Ivan, during the last years of his reign, had grown complacent and hadn’t dealt with the nitty-gritty of the flesh business.
My cousin Grigori went too far and veered into human trafficking, teaming up with all flavors of criminal organizations protected by a cabal of untouchable elites.
Well, not really untouchable. We knew who they were, but they were experts at evasion and burying the evidence of their heinous acts.
They would never see the inside of a courtroom or a prison. It was a delicate operation, dismantling these entities whose perversions dated back centuries. Take them out too quickly and the entire world’s economy could collapse.
Jordan Wilson was a broker and facilitated the transport of children, but their current shipment hadn’t left their New Jersey location.
We arrived at a deserted warehouse near the marshlands and railways. The surrounding ecosystem of tall grass and wetlands made it an ideal dumping ground for organized crime. It concealed. The biodiversity hastened decomposition.
I exited the van and opened the back door. Wilson was tied in a way that facilitated his transport by tossing him over my shoulder, and I gagged him so I wouldn’t hear his whiny voice.
I tossed the key to Ivan. “Can you unlock the entrance?” A chain and a padlock held the split opening together.
“I thought we were going for a walk,” Ivan huffed.
“Aren’t you nostalgic for wet work?”
“I’ve paid my dues,” he responded.
I instructed him to turn on the lights. The warehouse was used for interrogation and disposal. I didn’t know what was in most of the boxes. I recently stocked up on cleaning supplies and body-dissolving acids. Cleaner and less possibility of identification.
I stalked into a room where a sole metal chair sat in the middle, dumped Wilson on the floor, and dropped my duffel of tools beside a stainless-steel table positioned against the wall.
A single light bulb hung from a wire attached to the ceiling. The faint scent of bleach permeated the air.
“You know, if you give him a concussion, you won’t get information out of him,” Ivan said.
“We’ll see, shall we?” Wilson was fine. I made sure his hip hit the floor first, but it didn’t mean his skull didn’t receive a banging. And I was prepared to dose him with drugs to keep him lucid.
I dragged his body up and sat him on the chair, uncuffing his wrists before re-cuffing him with his hands behind his back.
He appeared dazed, but he inhaled sharply when I yanked the duct tape from his mouth. Duct tape—the basic arsenal of any hit man. I kept rolls of it in my bag of things.
For good measure, I broke a vial of smelling salts beneath his nose.
“What the fuck?” He glared at me, eyes tearing.
“Come on, Wilson.” I slapped his cheek. “I don’t have all night.”
“You’re going to kill me anyway, so why should I tell you anything?”
I chuckled darkly. “I can make it easy or hard.” Wilson was no soldier; he was a number-pusher.
He didn’t have a high tolerance for pain.
Washed out of basketball in high school.
Graduated in accounting from Dartmoor. He liked cheeseburgers and fries, buffalo wings, and beer.
His high metabolism kept him skinny, but genetics didn’t bless him with thick hair, given his ridiculous comb-over.
Wilson cheated on his wife with a series of one-night stands.
Sometimes he kept a mistress. He didn’t, however, partake in the goods he transported.
Didn’t mean he didn’t deserve torture. Human trafficking was human trafficking.
His wife was banging the gardener. A Russian mail-order bride whom he had turned into a trophy wife.
They’d become a rich couple cliché.
Ivan sighed. “Stop playing with your food. I thought you needed to get a location.”
“Do you want to stay outside and wait?”
At seventy, Ivan had been out of the game too long. He’d also become grumpier and impatient. He’d forgotten the game of interrogation. He recently stepped down as pakhan, but he hadn’t gotten his hands bloody in years.
The anticipation of pain was mostly what made these fuckers crumble.
The woodchipper at the back of the warehouse was broken. Probably a good thing because I wasn’t in the mood to clean up the mess it produced. It was cathartic when I had time and the mark had pissed me off.
But Wilson was an easy catch. He didn’t have bodyguards around him, and I parked beside his car in his building’s basement and threw him in the van.
I walked over to my duffel of torture and donned an apron and gloves. Since I wasn’t sawing or hacking tonight, I didn’t need a face shield. I picked out my pliers for tooth extraction and shears for his fingers.
Wilson gulped. “What?”
I returned to stand in front of him like a snake slithering to taunt a hapless rat. Incidentally, I heard the rats on the shelves. I need to call a real pest controller so they wouldn’t chew up my plastic rolls and use them for bedding.
“Where are the children, Wilson?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice trembled. He was lying. I didn’t blame him. He feared the people he worked for, and hadn’t wrapped his mind around the fact that he wasn’t getting out of here to do business with them again. “Who are you delivering them to?”
“I’m just a businessman,” he yelled, but tears started streaming down his cheeks as he yanked on his bindings.
Ivan gave an audible yawn.
I glanced over my shoulder. “You’re bored?”
“You used to be more entertaining.” The first few years after I joined the Zahkarov bratva, Ivan came along to watch me work.
As pakhan, he decided whether I should go harder or ease off with my torture methods.
After nearly losing Aralina in the fire, he retreated from the brutality of the bratva business, preferring to become more involved in the organization’s legitimate side.
He supported Irina and her charities and concentrated on building up the Zahkarov name to make it synonymous with Russian royalty.
I suspected Ivan was afraid of karma. He’d already lost his eldest son, Roman, where, because of his ruthlessness, a rival mob kidnapped Roman and Kirill in retaliation. Roman was killed during the rescue.
“I’m not here for your entertainment.” But despite mellowing out, I suspected Ivan missed the thrill.
Ivan huffed. “Do you have vodka in the van?”
“Yes.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you people? I thought you worked for Orlov!”
My head swung back to him. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Are these children for Orlov’s sick operations?” Orlov was the head of the Chicago Russian mob, and he was the top human trafficker in the country, second to the cartels. Orlov’s clientele, though, were the global elite.
Grigori thought he could compete, but he needed the backing of the Zahkarov bratva. None of the brigadiers approved, especially Kirill before he took over as pakhan.
Wilson’s mouth clamped shut. I knew how to make him open it again.
I grabbed the shears.
Ten minutes later, with Wilson missing his molars and a few fingers, I disposed of the gloves and strode out of the room with an address, bumping into Ivan.
“You’re done?” he asked impatiently.
“Maybe. I’m calling Sato now. Signal is fucked in there.”
I walked near the entrance until I had full bars.
Sato answered on the first ring. “About fucking time.”
I gave him the address, not too far from where they were circling. It was another warehouse area in New Jersey.
“Don’t kill him yet,” Sato warned.
“It’s not my fault if he bleeds out.” I ended the call and stalked back to my torture chamber.
Ivan was talking to Wilson while taking a swig of the vodka. Meanwhile, Wilson was sobbing. The room already reeked of piss and copper. Blood poured from his mouth, and his fingers were dripping straight onto the plastic sheets.
“There were sleeves of tumblers in the van,” I muttered.
“This is easier,” Ivan replied. “What are you going to do with him?”
“Haven’t decided yet,” I said. “Are you all right there, Wilson?”
“Fuck you! You’re going to hell.” At least those were the words I deciphered from his mouth that sounded like it was stuffed with cotton.
“Been there and back,” I drawled. “Hell spit me out.”
Ivan held out a cigar.
“What’s this?” I asked.
He jerked his head toward the exit. I tossed a look at Wilson. The man seemed to be exhausted and was slumped over the chair. I guessed I had a few minutes.
“Might as well celebrate. You have a baby boy,” Ivan said when Wilson was out of earshot. “So, how did the arbitration go?”
I didn’t get this reception from Kirill or Maksim about becoming a father. All they saw was a problem and how it strained the Zahkarov and King relations. Ivan, meanwhile, had morphed over the years from fearless pakhan to gruff—or grumpy—old uncle.