Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Harrison
I arrive home and call out, but there’s no response.
I go to Natalia’s office and see her hunched over her laptop. When I bend down and kiss her on the back of the neck, I see she has her earpods on and didn’t hear me. She startles and quickly closes her laptop like she didn’t want me to see what she was viewing.
“You’re home,” she says and turns around, slipping her arms around me. “I didn’t hear you. Was listening to a podcast.”
“I’m home,” I say and kiss her, wanting to ask her what she was reading and why she closed the screen so quickly, but another part of me thinks it’s none of my business.
She may not want me to see whatever it is yet, and I have to give her that space.
She might be reading a patient file, for all I know, and that’s covered by privacy laws, just as those in the FBI are not allowed to share information outside of work or their authorized work computers, if they are working at home.
“What’s up?”
She snuggles closer to me for a moment and then looks up, brushing my hair from my cheek with affection. “Just work. What do you want for dinner? We have those ribs leftover from the other night. I can thaw them and heat them up in the oven, make a salad.”
“Sounds good.”
We leave her office, and for the next hour, we spend together fixing dinner and then eating it. Everything seems fine, and I don’t feel the need to press her about the laptop. If she could tell me, she would, so since she said nothing, she can’t. I have to respect that.
We spend a pleasant hour after dinner sitting and watching the latest game, my arm around her shoulder, her knee leaning against my thigh.
I check my watch and excuse myself. I have some business to attend to and leave the living room and go to my office.
I need to meet with my uncles and lay the groundwork for some truth-telling. I call them both and arrange a meeting at Maxims the next afternoon. I’ll spend all morning preparing, and when I confront them with the harsh truth, I hope they realize it’s over.
We have to clean up the family business and go straight or to jail. Those are the only options.
The next morning, after our usual morning routine, I kiss Natalia goodbye and leave for the warehouse, where I’ll spend some time preparing for my meeting in the afternoon.
I’m going to lay it all out, piece by piece, evidence and all, and force them to reveal their position on extracting the family from the underworld.
I need to know if they’ll work with me to figure out how to save things or if they’ll revolt.
I go over everything I know about my father’s business, his intentional and unintentional connections to and work with the Russian mafia.
I’ll wait and see how they respond before I confront Tommy with what I know.
I want to give them both the chance to come clean and agree to go straight.
Depending on how they respond, I’ll tell them what I really know.
I’ll go over the betrayal and how both Tommy and Ryan conspired to prevent my father from carrying through with his plans to clean up the business.
They can try to lie to me, but it won’t work. I have rock-solid evidence from the FBI and from Stepan.
I know what they’ve done, and it breaks my heart.
The meeting will tell me everything I need to know about each of them and their loyalty to the Family, to me, and their hopes for the business.
It led to my father’s death.
It won’t lead to mine…
When the time comes, I take my vehicle to Maxims and go to the back room where Stepan and I met, and there, waiting for me, are both Tommy and Ryan.
“We got here early,” Ryan says and gets up to hug me. As usual, he’s the affectionate one, and Tommy merely nods. Now that I know about his debts, I have to keep my guard up and not accept his freindly uncle personna too quickly.
“Good. I had some traffic which delayed me, but I’m glad you’re both here. We have a lot to talk about.”
I sit down, and after the waitress takes my order for a coffee, she leaves us alone, the door to the private room closing behind her.
I exhale and open a file I’ve brought with me. It’s from my father’s office and lays out his plans for cleaning up the family business.
“What’s that?” Tommy asks, leaning closer.
I hand him a sheet of paper and give a duplicate of it to Ryan. “My father plans to clean up O’Connor Enterprises.”
Tommy looks it over and throws it onto the table dismissively.
“Your father was idealistic and naive if he thought we could just get the business out from under the Russians.”
The door opens, and I wait while the waitress puts my cup of coffee down in front of me. When she’s gone once more, I turn to him.
“He was idealistic, but he wasn’t naive. He had a plan, and it seems to me to be a very smart plan. He knew he was in deep, and that it would be hard to get out, but he thought it through. Did he not come to you with this plan before he,” I say and pause pointedly, “died?”
Across from me, Ryan looks away almost guiltily. He knew what I meant by the emphasis on died.
“Yeah, he passed a few ideas by us,” Tommy says, “but I told him he was a fool if he thought he could keep the business operating and not work with the Russians. There’s no way.
It’s not possible. The only thing to do is go somewhere else, move to some other location and start over. Good luck with that.”
“My father seemed to think it was possible,” I reply, my gut in a knot, because I expected Tommy to disagree, but a part of me hoped I was wrong. I wasn’t. “Sell off the part of the business that the Russians rely on to one of them and focus on the other parts. Other routes.”
“You don’t think that hasn’t been tried?
” Tommy replies, angered now. His fist clenches, and he hits the tabletop.
“It won’t work. The Russians want us to assume the risk, and they get the reward.
Not gonna work. I tried to tell Ronan this, but he was stupidly stubborn and so concerned with looking legit.
” Tommy is really angry now and moves his head in a mocking way.
“Ask anyone with any law enforcement experience. The Russians control shipping in New York. Period. You work with them, or you sell and get the hell out. That’s it,” he says and makes a slicing motion with his hand.
“The Feds have been completely unable to do anything about it. Even thinking they can is a joke.”
With that, he gets up and grabs his jacket. “I’m outta here. You two can discuss this and waste your time, but I’ve got better things to do.”
I stand up and hold up my hand. “Stop,” I say, not wanting the dinner to end this way.
“Just sit down and let’s talk it out. Seriously.
My father — your brother — wanted to go straight.
We owe him at least to try to get O’Connor Enterprises out of the Russians’ grip. Wouldn’t you sleep a lot better?”
Tommy stops his motions for a moment and looks at me, his gaze moving over my face like he isn’t able to believe me.
“Are you that naive? Do you really think we can just walk away?” He shakes his head and finishes pulling on his jacket. “If you are, you’re gonna be really disappointed. I’m gone.”
Then, he turns and leaves the room.
I turn to Ryan, who is sitting there, watching the door.
“Well?” I say, sitting back down with a sick feeling in my gut. “What do you think? Are you with me or with Tommy?”
Ryan shrugs. “He’s got a point. It won’t be easy to clean up O’Connor Enterprises. Maybe we could move the operation out of New York. Go to California. Go to Washington State. We could sell off what real estate we have and just ship all our equipment out west. Start over, but it will be hard.”
Part of me feels a little better. He’s actually considering it, whereas Tommy was so upset that he actually left the restaurant.
“Do you think Tommy would agree, or do we have to buy him out?”
Ryan shrugs. “You got me. He seems pretty hostile to the very idea. Me? I’m game. It will be hard, but maybe it’s our only option. You’re the boss, after all. If this is what you want, that should be what happens. I guess Tommy thinks it’s unrealistic.”
“It may be, but it’s also necessary. I want out. I want O’Connor Enterprises out. Period.” I place my fist on the table to emphasize my decision, and Ryan merely nods slowly, like he’s accepting my decision but with hesitation.
“Do you want me to buy you out, too?” I offer.
He shrugs. “I’ll wait and see how it goes. I don’t want to give up on the business just yet.”
“Good,” I say and stand. “It’s time to leave. I’ve got a meeting back at the warehouse with the business manager to go over some details.”
Ryan gestures to the door. “I got a thing with some contacts in supply. I’ll brief you later.”
“Sounds good,” I say, glad to get out of the place.
I leave the restaurant and step into the afternoon sun, which is a nice break from the colder, wet weather.
Ryan puts a hand on my shoulder affectionately and then walks the other way towards his own vehicle, which is waiting at the curb, with a driver at the rear passenger door, holding it open.
I watch as he steps in, and the driver closes the door and enters the driver’s side.
Ryan likes things the way they are and, honestly, I can understand why. He’s a partner in the business, and he has lots of money and personal power. Why would he want things to change?
Sure, his two nephews and his older brother were killed by various Mafia thugs over territory and money, but that’s just par for the course.
I watch his vehicle drive away and glance at my own ride, which is waiting a few cars down the street.
Unlike Ryan, I don’t expect my driver to wait on me, and I get in the rear seat of my own vehicle.
“Where to, Mr. O’Connor?”
I sigh, wishing things were different between all of us. “Back to the warehouse, thanks.”
He pulls out from the curb, and we drive through the streets back to the warehouse. My little meeting at Maxim’s has told me two things that I already knew: Tommy does not want out, and Ryan is hesitant, but will at least hear me out.
In other words, my plan to extricate O’Connor Enterprises from the grip of the Russians is not currying favor with my uncles.
I had better watch my back in the meantime unless I want to meet the same fate as my father and brother before me…
I arrive back at the warehouse, and enter my office, saying hello to my admin assistant as I do.
“Can you ask Clint if he can come speak to me? Thanks.”
She nods, and I close the door behind me.
After I remove my jacket, I sit behind the desk and lean back, closing my eyes for a moment before I have to talk to Clint about my plans to sell off parts of the business.
Just as I’m feeling a little less stressed, a knock comes to my door, and I blink my eyes open and sit up straighter.
“Come,” I say and watch as the door opens and my business manager Clint enters. He’s a middle-aged man with thinning greying hair and glasses. He looks every bit the accounting nerd, rather than a smooth operator, and I like that.
“What can I do for you, Mr. O’Connor?”
I point to the chair in front of my desk. I tell him about my meeting with my uncles to relay the information to them, along with my father’s own plans.
He frowns. “You know, I saw Tommy meeting with someone the other day just by chance. I was on my break and was heading to the hardware store to pick up something for my workshop, and I saw him talking to some Russian guy in the pub nearby.”
I lean forward, eager to hear more. “What did this Russian guy look like?”
Clint takes in a deep breath, like he knows he’s betraying Tommy. “Weird scar over his left eye and a greying beard. Maybe late 50s.”
I know who it is immediately.
Yuri Andropov.
I exhale and a sense of sadness fills me.
It’s better than anger. I’m sad that my uncle has betrayed my father. And me.
If he was meeting with Andropov, it had to be because he was actively conspiring with the man.
I thank Clint and ask him to keep this between the two of us, and he leaves me alone to stew in silence.
Now what do I do?
Both Ryan and Tommy have been actively fighting to keep my father and me from taking the business out of the underworld. To go clean.
Ryan has his own reasons, tied to his gambling debt and what he owes to Andropov. Tommy seems to have also been conspiring with Andropov.
It must mean too much money for them even to consider going clean.
My heart almost breaks from the knowledge of the betrayal, but the anger I feel overrides it momentarily.
I glance at my watch and see that it’s almost six.
Natalia will be home soon, and there’s nothing I’d love more than to spend the evening with her in the apartment.
This business with my uncles demands that I figure out what I’m going to do with this information, but I decide to call Fillmore first thing in the morning.
Natalia comes first. Only she can truly ease this pain I feel…