33. Maksim
MAKSIM
Seeing Carina so upset and driven to do whatever she could to help the situation with her brother pushed me into action.
“She doesn’t need this stress,” I told Adrik a couple of mornings later as we waited for Elena and Carina to join us.
The rest of them would be here soon. We wouldn’t begin this operational meeting with my other brothers and both of my cousins until everyone was present.
Right now, with only my older brother here, the one I always synced with the most, I could be frank about why I was putting Arturo Garcia and the Cartel higher on our list of priorities.
He nodded at me. “Of course.”
“Not because she’s pregnant.”
He gave me a questioning look that prompted me to recall all the protective—and overprotective—things he’d done since learning that Elena was pregnant. It was in our nature to want to spare them any difficulty.
“Okay, it’s not only because she’s pregnant. Between you and me, this shit with her brother has gone on for too long. Ever since Miguel Garcia was killed, when they lost their mother too, Arturo has been dismissing her and making her feel like she had no role, no power, no purpose.”
Adrik rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“What a fucking moron. If she was just another Cartel princess who wanted to shop and lounge around the pool, and wait to fall on a dick and get knocked up to matter, then I could see his reasoning. But she’s not.
She’s got more experience than several of our runners. ”
“Several?” I shot him a dubious look. “More like most of them. Miguel Garcia trained her to be smart as a whip. He instilled so much wisdom in her to make her the strategist she is.”
“And we’re the lucky ones to have her on our side.” He patted my back.
“Very. But the damage he’s done needs to be over with. I don’t want him lingering as a threat or question mark while she’s getting ready to bring our child into this world.”
“You’re not worried about him trying to take him or her, are you?”
I smirked at him. “He wouldn’t get close enough to even try.”
“Then let’s wrap this up.” Before standing, he narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re positive she’ll be game for this, though?”
I nodded. I trusted her. I had concocted a master plan to trap him and trick him, but I wasn’t worried that she’d protest.
He paused before getting up. “When I went to kill John Morovov, Elena had no connection with him anymore to not want him dead. Do you think that Carina sees some hopeless path of redemption for her brother?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s the case.
” Even if she were struggling to come to terms with setting up her brother, I would force it to go through.
He’d show his true colors and prove to her himself that he isn’t worth her consideration or goodness ever again. We wouldn’t be stuck wondering forever.
“Just checking.” He got up to see what was keeping Elena and Carina.
I stayed in the conference room, determined to get this squared away.
Since we’d confessed our love for each other, it seemed like Arturo was the last problem to solve before accepting a path toward true happiness and commitment with my wife.
And I wanted the rest of my life to start now, not later.
Adrik returned with Elena and Carina, who sheepishly admitted that they’d gotten carried away looking at different cribs and other baby items that they’d been researching. Seeing them get closer was great, but watching them both embrace becoming mothers would be precious too.
Carina sat next to me as the rest of them all came in together.
Lev and Alexei had been working on something already, and Viktor had picked up Nikolai on his way.
They just so happened to arrive at once, along with Dean, who’d be a crucial part in the plans.
Igor, one of the bookkeepers who assisted Elena, showed up as well.
“Elena, would you like to start?” I asked.
She was the main researcher into my goals with Arturo.
As she scooted her chair closer and asked for the projection of the feed on Igor’s laptop to the smart board on the wall, I took Carina’s hand and held it.
While she didn’t look like she needed my support, as grim-faced and focused as ever, I wanted to offer it anyway. She clung to my hand and squeezed once.
“I tracked the records of where the Garcia Cartel money has been going and compared it with the transactions and actions from the Hernandez Cartel and others in the region who seemed to have similar patterns of funneling money into one of the main accounts that seems to be managed by Yusef Antonov’s team.
” She pointed to the screen with graphics of what was going where.
“Now, understanding what the specific shipments are that Yusef Antonov wants to obtain and redirect, it makes the most sense to trap Arturo Garcia with an expectation of the same… items.” She cleared her throat.
Items. I smiled slightly at how she refused to say guns or arms. She wanted to adhere to the motto of ignorance is bliss and avoid knowing details. She knew what we did, but she never discussed these matters with detailed terms.
“If we proceed with demanding a shipment from Garcia,” I said, taking over and pointing at the name of the firearms he’d “mistakenly” lost for us, “it will trigger him into either trying to procure them for us or admitting that he’d given the last of what he had to someone else, to someone under Yusef’s influence. ”
“And he won’t have any,” Carina said. “Those come from Argentina, and they would not have delivered any since the infighting they’d dealt with after the storms that destroyed so much of their land.”
“Pressuring Garcia to deliver will force him to either fess up to the shortage and why he’s short of those rifles or hedge and lie about it,” I added.
“And since the Hernandez Cartel have the rifles, as of a run, what, a week ago?” Viktor said, glancing at Carina, then Dean.
They both nodded.
“Then he’ll be outed,” Nikolai said, finishing for Viktor.
“It will ultimately confirm that the Garcia Cartel only has loyalty to serve Yusef Antonov and Gregori’s network.” I exhaled a long breath.
“What about the agents?” Stefan Rossi asked since he’d joined in via speakerphone from New York. The Italian Mob boss was an ally who was also interested in and vested in this fight against any shadow network Gregori formed.
“The presence of that new team of federal agents can compromise this,” Carina said, referencing the news that we’d all learned about from the Rossi end. “But that should put more pressure on my brother, not us.”
Either way, we’d stay far back enough that should any agents storm in and cause chaos at the handoff site, we wouldn’t be implicated in any captures or crimes.
I was adamant about staging this trap without risking any of our men.
“Dean has already selected the runners who will go on this pickup run.”
He nodded. “I have. And we’ve rehearsed the plan of getting the hell out of there when Garcia’s men show up with nothing but excuses.
” He glanced at Carina. “It’ll work.” He added that in deference to her input.
Because she knew this part of the Cartel land best, she could provide the best route to escape without a trace, relying on some outcroppings of rocky land to shelter our runners.
Later that night, as I waited in the control room with Carina and Adrik, watching the live feed of the handoff, I paced and prayed this would work.
“It will work,” Carina said, as if she were reading my mind.
“It seems too simple to be effective, but that’s the beauty of it.
Demand a shipment of weapons we know he doesn’t have and it will make him admit to why.
If he lies, we’ll know it. If he bluffs and tries to create some fictional version of what’s happened to the last of those rifles, then there’s no way to doubt his quickness to lie.
” She furrowed her brow, watching the live feed on the cameras.
“Anyone who wants to play games with us about being a trade partner can’t be trusted. It’s as simple as that.”
I glanced at Adrik behind her back, catching his sober and serious look.
That was the proof of whose side she would be on.
I just wondered if it was something that would plague her mind later.
When the Garcia runners showed up empty-handed, we all three watched in silence
The audio played clearly with the cams our runners were wearing, and the Cartel members’ excuses were picked up easily enough.
“Excuses,” Carina concluded bitterly when our men started to back up and leave. “He expected the men to show up with nothing but his lies and excuses. There’s no turning back from this.” She gazed at me with a look of resignation. “You can’t trust him.”
I nodded.
As she returned her gaze to the feed to watch our runners leave while the agents burst onto the scene, I once more looked at my brother.
He nodded. One time. An acknowledgment of the truth.
It was a truth I’d suspected already. The trade agreement made between our father and Miguel Garcia was dead. It’d been dead so long as Arturo Garcia wanted to call himself the boss of the Cartel.
Dead—but waiting for a bullet to end it completely.
Arturo Garcia was finished. I would see to it without a look back. I couldn’t look backward when I was too busy and dedicated to looking forward, with my wife and the rest of my family.