Chapter 20
Sean
Chapter Twenty
I’m going to hurl.
I’m going to kill her.
I’m going to?—
I don’t even fucking know at this point. All I can do is keep swallowing down this bile. I’m awake, so why won’t my eyes open? What the fuck happened to me?
Fucking hell. That stings.
My eyes are finally open, and I see the needle in my arm. It’s attached to nothing, but it has the same clear tape cover that was on the back of my hand while I had an IV in the hospital. I’m bound to this fucking chair.
My premonition. Thank God it’s me and not Lina.
Lina?
I’m frantic as I look around in the dim light. I can’t tell where I am, but I can see enough to know I’m alone. Lina’s not here. At least, she’s not where I can see her. Did they go to our place? Did they hurt or take Shane when they went for her?
I’ve never hurt a woman before, but I’m going to kill Lucy. Fucking cunt. And not the type I like—not Lina’s. This is her fault. It’s all coming back to me. Why I ended things with her and what she did.
I knew something was off when she was at the club. Ever since we ended things, she’s avoided me. She never worked at 4Play, but she was there tonight. Normally, she hides in the dressing room if I’m at either of the other two places she dances. She only makes an appearance when it’s her turn on stage.
We met at one of the BDSM clubs I’m a part owner of. No one outside my family knows we all own various clubs where we’re silent investors. Comes in handy for work and for pleasure. She and I were masked, so we didn’t recognize each other. When I scened with women, my voice was always deeper and rougher than it usually is. It wasn’t until four months later, after meeting each other three times a week, that I spotted a birthmark on her left hip while she was performing.
I confronted her, and we created a new arrangement. We still met at the club when we wanted that environment. I had a studio I’d used with previous subs and was between renters at the time, so I made it a place where we could go when we wanted more privacy or just something different. She never came to my home. I never went to hers. We never went on dates. We didn’t talk or text beyond confirming our rendezvous.
But she started hinting at more. She wanted a more permanent arrangement. One that involved us seeing each other more than two- or three-times week. It was when it started falling down to only twice a week that she hinted we should see each other outside the club and studio to be sure we had time. She didn’t hint at a romantic relationship, but it became clear she wanted a 24/7 dynamic. One where we would go to each other’s places and go out on what would appear like dates to most people, but they would be scenes.
It didn’t interest me. I didn’t want a commitment to her of any kind. Letting her come to any place I owned was as close to her coming to my home as I would allow. I didn’t want to go to her place. I wanted to fuck. I wanted to bang. I wanted to tie her up, edge her, spank her, toy with her, and make her come. I enjoyed that, and she was good at being a sub. But that was purely in the sexual sense.
I ended it when she pushed too hard and told me—told her Dom—that we would go to the movies together, so I could edge her then make her come in public. I punished her for it. That didn’t deter her. That same week, she showed up at 4Play when I was running payroll. No one thought it unusual for her to go to the office. She told the bouncers she needed to see me about a problem with her paycheck. She slipped into the office, locked the door, and stripped. I watched her.
When she was naked, I stood up from where I sat behind my desk. I walked over, reached past her, and opened the door. I told her she could get her arse on stage, or she could leave and never come back to any O’Rourke establishment. That if she tried that shite again—taking control and backing me into a corner—I would make sure no club or bar would hire her.
She had a key to the studio, so I changed the locks. I made sure the desk staff knew she was no longer allowed anywhere past the building’s front door. Inevitably, she pitched a fit. But she never pushed the issue again and accepted we were through. We enjoyed our arrangement for more than a year. It was good while it lasted. But it would have ended the moment I met Lina if it hadn’t already been done.
“You’re awake.” I don’t know the voice.
It’s piped in from speakers in the ceiling. I sweep my gaze around the space again, and I realize I’m in a gymnasium. It’s not a vacant school; it’s obvious students have been here recently. Why the fuck would this person bring me here? Because it’s so unlikely?
“Thanks for the nap. I needed the sleep.”
“Because you’ve been so busy fucking your new subby that you haven’t gotten any rest. You even moved her into your place.”
How does this stranger know that? I didn’t get the sense Lucy believed I’d replaced her. Just the opposite. She spoke as though we’d pick things up where we left off because I’d had time to miss her. She’d been fine with the distance because I’ve been traveling a lot during the past six months.
“What do you want?”
“To have a little fun. I won’t kill you. But I am going to make your family search. I am going to make them frantic. I am going to make the skinny bitch believe it’s her fault you’re missing. It’ll be a few days, but once I’ve tormented them and you enough, I’ll knock you out again. Then I’ll dump you in the Bronx. Mott Haven most likely. We’ll see how long a white guy with red hair lasts.”
Mott Haven isn’t a good area. None of the Bronx boasts the best of New York City. But Mott Haven has been among the poorest neighborhoods in the poorest borough for decades. He’s not wrong that I probably wouldn’t last long if I’m drugged or hung over from them.
I glance at my arms again. Nothing makes me think he gave me heroin or meth. It was some type of anesthesia or heavy sedative. It’s wearing off faster as I continue to speak. I need to keep the conversation going, not just to learn where I am and why but to recover sooner.
“You’re a friend of Lucy’s.”
“Hardly. That bitch is the last person I’d trust enough to call a friend. I know you two used to fuck, and she’s pissed you aren’t anymore. She was happy to help dick you over. Don’t you remember?” There’s a pause, then a laugh. “She let me in through the back door. She kept you occupied, arguing with you while I checked out the best way to get to you and get you out of the place without any questions. She left an hour before we did, so people won’t guess she was part of this.”
“My ex-sub comes to see me, and we argue. You think no one noticed. I remember that part. She confronted me near the bar. I didn’t take her to the office but down the hall toward it. We were in front of cameras the entire time. My family has already reviewed the footage and will know Lucy was part of it. Why take an interest in me?”
“Why not? You were the easiest person to get to this week. Your injuries meant you were more susceptible to the sedative hitting you harder. You aren’t moving as fast as you usually are. You tire more easily. I picked off the runt in the pack of antelope.”
“What do you want with my family?”
Silence.
I didn’t expect an answer since that would clue me in on who this is. But I hoped it might be someone na?ve enough or prideful enough that they told me something that could help me figure this shite out.
I wait, but this person says nothing more. Instead, I hear a door slam in the distance. It surprises me when no one appears. If I’m in a school gym, then those loud doors likely led outside. I strain to hear anything, but it’s silent again. I suspect what woke me was the door slamming when whoever this fucker is came into the building. The dose is wearing off, but not completely. Something had to disturb me.
I spot the doors that appear to lead into another part of the school and the ones that lead outside. I move my ankles and wrists to see how my circulation is and to figure out what’s keeping me tied to the chair. Zip ties have my wrists restrained behind my back. My arms pulled tight is why the needle in my elbow stings. Duct tape is around my ankles and the chair legs.
I test whether I can stand. It’s fucking awkward, but not impossible. I shuffle my feet a few steps forward. This will take forever, but I can cross the gym. I may have to rest because the shitbag is right. I’m not at full capacity yet. But I’m stronger that he realizes. Strength of mind and strength of body.
I need to find Lina.
Nothing matters more than getting free right now because making sure Lina is safe is my only priority. I can reflect on what I heard later. I can consider whether this is connected to the shooting and whether this is connected to Ewan’s attack. I can plan revenge once I’ve touched Lina and am convinced she’s okay.
I don’t know how long it takes me, but I’m drenched in sweat. My incision prickles. I want to throw up. But I’m at the doors that lead outside. There’s a vertical rectangular window in each door, so I look both ways. The parking lot is empty. Good. I press the metal bar that opens the door but don’t push. No alarm sounds. I open it a crack. The brick exterior has rough edges. I’m likely to rub off seven layers of skin, but I can twist enough to work the plastic zip ties until I cut through them.
The moment my arms are loose, I move back inside. I keep a chair leg propping the door open. I peel the clear tape off my arm, taking half the hairs on my arm with it, then ease the needle out of me. I’d love to toss the needle aside despite the biohazard that would leave for someone else to clean up, but it’s biohazard. It has my markers on it. I use my teeth to hold on to it while I lean forward to get the Duct tape off my ankles. Once I’m free, I pick up the plastic chair. Not ideal, but it’ll work. I carry it with the legs out in front of me. It might protect me from a bullet, but it’s a battering ram or sword if I need it. I’d just need to buy myself time to run.
I sweep my gaze over my surroundings. I look up at the building. I’m already in Mott Haven. But it’s daylight. Probably around seven or eight. My family doesn’t panic, but they’ll be in full-blown war mode by now. I’ve been missing for four or five hours. I need to get in touch with them somehow. I head toward the street and keep watching my surroundings. I don’t have a phone, so I can’t order an Uber or Lyft. I don’t have my wallet to pay for a cab.
When I get to the edge of campus, I put the chair down. Now’s the time to blend in and not look—questionable—with a plastic chair that clearly comes from a school. There’s only one place you find this specific shaped and uncomfortable chair. I know where I am. It’ll be a walk, but I can get to our place.
The abandoned train station hasn’t been in use for over a decade. The city’s done nothing with it except send an inspector around occasionally. We’ve made the entrance to our hideout practically invisible. If you don’t know where to look, you won’t find the door we cut out. We have a satellite phone that we only use for absolute emergencies. I think this counts.
I already noticed I don’t have my watch. I can’t send an alert. I also don’t have my belt. Whoever this is must know those are two things syndicate men almost always wear no matter where they go. It’s where we hide our trackers. The Diazes and my family favor the watches. The Kutsenkos and Andreyevs along with the Mancinellis favor the belts.
My suit coat is gone. I still have my tie on—surprised they didn’t use it as a noose—so I pull it off, wrap the syringe in it, and shove it in my pocket. I unfasten the top three buttons, including the collar, and untuck my shirt. I roll the right sleeve up to match the left where the fucker injected me. Probably more than once since they left the needle in. I don’t blend in, but I don’t look as suspiciously out of place.
Fuck. I spot a liquor store we do business with—extort. I could use their phone, but then they’d know something happened to me. Why else would I need to use it? Who doesn’t have their cell with them every day all day?
It’s worth the gossip. I duck inside and look around.
“Hey, Manny.”
“Sean?”
He gets uncomfortable real fast. His gaze darts around. Is he hiding something? Or is he afraid I’m here to do a random collection?
“Yeah. My phone died, and I need to make a call. Can I use yours?”
I could say please. I should say please. But manners aren’t what I’m known for here. At least I asked.
“Sure.”
I know where it is since I’ve seen the clerks on it enough times. I definitely am not using his personal cell phone. I walk around the corner and pick it up. I prop it against my shoulder and use my knuckle to dial.
“Sean!” Dillan’s so loud I nearly pull the phone from my ear after I greet him.
“Yeah. Aguardiente.”
“Ten minutes.”
That means he’s at the station. There’s no way it would be that fast if he wasn’t in the Bronx already. Aguardiente is a distilled spirit that, ironically, the Colombians favor. The name’s what got our attention when Finn and I were checking out the area to see who needed “protection.” Mott Haven is heavily Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Mexican. Not a Colombian hang out. If only. That would have pissed the fuck out of Enrique.
I hang up and roll down my sleeve enough to wipe it over the receiver and keypad. I step around the counter and glance up at the security camera. No erasing I’m here. I listen for Manny and whoever else is here. Someone’s talking in the stockroom. I get closer.
“Yeah. He’s here. I thought you had him knocked out. You said I wouldn’t have to be involved beyond getting you into the school. If my dad finds out I swiped his keys to let you in, he’ll kill me.”
Interesting. Manny’s dad is a custodian at the school. That solves one mystery.
“How’d he get out?” I don’t recognize the voice.
“I don’t know how he escaped. That’s not my problem.”
“It is now that you let him use your phone.”
“What else was I supposed to do? Say no? Not likely.”
I slip back behind the counter. I know where Manny keeps his gun. Definitely not in a gun case or the safe. I grab it, check that it’s loaded—full clip—and take off the safety. No silencer. Inconvenient.
I creep closer to the door that’s ajar. I listen for a little longer.
“Look. You made me help you. You said you’d let Josue go if I did.”
Josue is his nephew. The kid’s like ten. Who the fuck held him hostage?
I shift to see a different angle as I stand outside the door. I spot Manny. I can’t tell who the other person is. It’s unlikely Manny’ll notice if I open the door wider. I use my shoulder, easing it open a few millimeters at a time, waiting for someone to sound the alarm. Nothing happens, and I can slide through the doorway.
It’s not like this is a warehouse. There aren’t stacks of crates to hide behind, but there are some boxes piled up that I crouch near. It puts me in the right place to see who Manny’s chatting with.
Surprising, but not entirely shocking. How’d I not know his voice?
Mikhail Agopov. He’s one of the Kutsenko brothers’ most trusted men. He’s usually one of their wives’ bodyguards. I don’t know why he’s in charge of this operation, but there he is.
It’s a shame because I like Manny.
I put a bullet through his left temple. Mikhail swings around, but I fire off four rounds. One in each shoulder and one in each kneecap. I don’t want him dead yet. Just disabled.
I prowl closer, making sure he sees I’m taunting him by taking my time. He’s on the ground, trying to stretch for his gun, but neither shoulder allows him to raise his arms high enough to reach where it fell. I kick it out of the way and kick him in the gut. While he’s gagging, I check him for his other weapons. He’s Russian, so I know he has at least three. Their training is still Soviet era paramilitary. I find a knife in each side pocket, a small can of mace in his left pocket, and brass knuckles in his back right one. The image would be complete if he carried cyanide tablets.
“Which one sent you?”
He clams up.
“I was the easy one to get. Who did they really want?”
Still quiet.
I assess him. The Russians are the hardest to break because of their training. Especially the ones the Kutsenkos’ age. A psychopath who got his rocks off torturing people trained them and their Andreyev cousins. He was KGB and bratva back in Russia. Once again, my family knows shite no one else knows we know. We witnessed some of their training—the kind that emotionally scarred them enough that those eight men show no emotion to pain. It’s how they survived.
No one knew Dillan, Seamus, Cormac, Finn, Shane, and I used to spy on them. We found a way into the place Vlad used. It wasn’t the same warehouse they use as their torture palace now. They still use the abandoned grocery store where the meat department used to butcher their fresh meat but for other stuff. If Upton Sinclair hadn’t died in the sixties, he could have written The Jungle about the unsanitary conditions in that meat processing place. The grocery store wasn’t abandoned when they first started using it. Vlad forced the owners out.
Thorough as they were securing the place from the outside, they didn’t think about the tunnel that led out near the Flushing River. It was how the blood drained. I dared Shane to go in there. The thing about anything I dared Shane was it meant I had to be willing to do it too. We did nothing like that shite alone.
We all saw shite we never should have. We pitied the now bratva leaders back then. But it didn’t stop us from giving as good as we got, even when we were teenagers. It just meant we prepared for how they fought. It’s going to come in handy now.
I put my foot on his chest and slowly transfer my weight to it. My heel is over his sternum, and I’m certain it feels like it’s about to snap. I’m slow to increase the pressure, not wanting to snap his xiphoid process, the bit of cartilage that could break off and lacerate his diaphragm or even puncture his liver. That would—hopefully—lead to him bleeding to death internally. That’s what I’ll aim for at the end. I’ve already left a mess that’ll need cleaning.
“Who sent you?”
I lean forward and put the muzzle of the gun to the bullet hole in his right shoulder and press there, digging it into his wound. He groans, unable to remain entirely silent.
“Your funeral.”
I twist and put a bullet in his groin. Not quite his junk, but so damn near it, he can’t help but try to coil to protect himself. I press harder on his chest. Rolling into a ball just makes it easier for me to put a bullet in his arse. I pull my foot back. If I do too much more right now, he’ll pass out. That’s not what I need. He just needs to understand I’ll torture him. I might have finished Manny quickly, but that’s because he was useless. Mikhail might wind up at the house we have on Staten Island where we hold people until we’re ready for them at the station. It would give us time to round up some more of his associates.
I pull his wallet out and thumb through it. I don’t expect to find photos of his family. I don’t need to. I already know he has a seven-year-old daughter and four-year-old son. He’s been married for nine years, and his wife works at one of the bratva’s casinos. I find what I want.
I pull out the tiny disc and turn it over in my hand, rubbing it against my palm.
“Was that loud, Sergei? I hope it didn’t hurt your ears.”
I lean over and put the bug in front of Mikhail’s mouth, so his labored breathing surely comes close to blowing their eardrums if they’re wearing headphones.
“Too bad you can’t see with this thing. Your man’s on the way to looking like Swiss cheese. How many bullets have I put in him? I’m certain you’re keeping count since you can hear me. But it’s time for a private conversation, so I’ll bid you adieu.”
I stomp on the listening device, crushing it. It’s in tiny pieces, but that’s not enough for me to believe it’s broken. It just reveals the inner workings. I grab a bottle of vodka—intentionally, so it’s not really ironic—and unscrew the lid. I drop the device in there and close it. I put the bottle in front of Mikhail, who’s still curled into a ball. The toe of my shoe nudges his left shoulder where the bullet wound is. I push him onto his back.
“They can’t hear you anymore. You’re going to die. You know I’ll have a team in here to clean up so well no one will know you’ve ever been here. Not today. Not ever. I can keep putting bullets into you until you bleed to death. I can use your knives to fillet you until you bleed to death. I can peel skin off you and pour this cheap arse vodka all over you. Or you can tell me what I want to know, and I put a bullet through your brain. Which sounds most appealing on the menu?”
He stares at me mutinously. That’s fine. I flip open the knife from his right pocket. The blade’s longer than either of the ones I carry. I cut the hem of his shirt along his right ribs. I tear the material apart, leaving his arm in the sleeve. It’s not in the way. I start the incision in his arm pit and draw the blade downward.
“This is sharp, but not as sharp as I expected. It’s your shite knife, not my unsteady hand that’s making my handiwork so jagged. Such a shame. I pride myself on my work.”
He can’t help the tears that stream down his face. I’m standing behind him because I’ve done this enough times to know. He pisses himself.
“I will keep going. You know that. I will crack your ribs and pull them apart using the crowbar I know Manny has. Then I will slice along your lungs and kidneys to butterfly them. Then I will cut that fillet like I said and send it to your wife with a nice bottle of wine. Hell, I’ll cut and section you, then send you one piece at a time, once a month, like those steak subscriptions. I’ll be sure to pick a different date, so it’s stays a surprise. What would she do? Run to Maks? Let him come. You’ll already be dead, and not even he can stop the U.S. Postal Service. Rain or shine, snow and sleet. However that goes.”
I’m working as I speak. I grabbed the crowbar from near the back door. I’m not worried about Mikhail getting to his gun. When I line up the crowbar with the wide cut I’ve made, he sobs. He knows I’m serious.
“All right. Don’t do that shit to my wife. She doesn’t deserve it.”
“She knows exactly who you are. If she didn’t deserve it, she wouldn’t have married into the bratva. She knew the man she was getting. I’ve known both of you since we were in second grade. She used to pick on Colleen.”
It was a good thing my cousin could defend herself. There was nothing any of us could do against Mikhail’s wife when we were kids. Hurting a girl would have been indefensible, no matter who she picked on. I’ll fuck with her mind now.
“That was twenty years ago.”
“And the Soviet Union fell more than thirty years ago. It doesn’t stop the bratva from using their old tricks. Who do you think I learned this from? Vlad the Impaler didn’t just teach the Elite Group. I learned plenty from watching. Your security was shite back then, and it’s shite now. I’ll send whatever the fuck I want to your wife, and no one will know how to stop me. Speak.”
There are things we learned from watching Vlad train Maks and his family. They were fucked-up and gruesome. But that wasn’t our only training. Dillan and Finn refuse to speak about the training our family gave us. They may use the skills, but they categorically will not say aloud what we were forced to do. Speaking of it makes it too real, even if we do exactly as our grandfather and uncle taught.
Declan was as fucked in the head as Vlad. My mother’s and aunts’ iron wills are unbendable. There were things they could control because they could control Donovan when it came to their children’s early training. But they didn’t know—don’t know—the shit Declan put us through. Our grandfather sanctioned it. My brothers, cousins, and I swore we would never let our parents know. It would make them feel useless and like failures because they couldn’t protect us from it. Our dads know now because they’ve seen us. Our moms might have a clue, but they will never know the extent of our depravity. Or at least the extent we’re capable of.
“It was Bogdan. He ordered this. He wanted you drugged then left out there tonight. He wanted you to get jumped.”
I’m only half listening to Mikhail as I think back to our own training. Dillan turned some of that training on Declan when he leered at Colleen one too many times when we were teenagers. Declan got off on mistreating women. He wasn’t like my generation. We enjoy BDSM and the things we can do in a controlled environment with consenting partners. Declan wasn’t like that. The less consenting a woman was, the more he enjoyed it.
Colleen told Dillan how uncomfortable Declan made her when she was fifteen. He was livid. The rage we saw terrified all of us. No one threatened his baby sister. I believe there can be platonic and sibling soulmates, not just romantic ones. Colleen and Dillan were the former. They may as well have been identical twins, like Shane and me. Dillan’s not an empath. That would be laughable to suggest he was. Except for where Colleen—and now Mair—was concerned.
He felt her fear, and he made Declan pay. He got our moms’ cousin drunk off his arse at McGinty’s until he blacked out. He dragged him into the alley behind the bar and stripped him. Dillan didn’t fully castrate Declan, but he cut out one of his balls. He took his time and stitched it up. Not neat and tidy like our doc does. He made sure it never healed right. Declan could still get it up, but he never came again.
He carved a D and an O on the inside of Declan’s arse crack. Not for Declan, but for Dillan. He wanted Declan to know he was Dillan’s little bitch.
“What does Bogdan have against me right now? What’s worse than usual?”
I pay attention to this answer. “He knows you’re with Ewan’s sister. Ewan’s still useful to them, but they want him to understand that if they can manipulate your family into blaming him, then they can make Ewan do anything they want.”
“And if we retaliated and killed Ewan?”
“You won’t because of his sister.”
Ewan isn’t Dillan. He doesn’t love Lina the way Dillan and the rest of us loved Colleen. Dillan’s warning to Declan worked until Donovan got himself killed. Dillan was so pissed that Donovan didn’t listen and stay away from Laura Kutsenko, he took the only vacation of his life that our parents didn’t organize. He came back to discover Declan seized power and put hits on our moms. Our dads made sure he was at the warehouse when the bratva struck back.
But not before we had a go at him. He went to our Staten Island house. He’s the only one ever to leave alive and not go directly to the station. Hours before Declan died, I slashed two vertical slits down his eye lids. Shane cut deep grooves from each side of his mouth to his chin. Cormac connected his collarbones with his own slice. Seamus cut from hipbone to hipbone as close to his junk as he could get on the fucker’s manscaped groin. Finn cut from ear to ear along his hairline and would have scalped him if there’d been time.
“Does Bogdan believe we won’t retaliate against him and his family? He has to know we’d find out it was them one way or another.”
“By then, you and Ewan might have killed each other. Or Ewan would be so indebted to Bogdan for the bratva keeping his ass alive, that Bogdan could make Ewan take the fall for something else. Whatever it was, it would keep the peace with you. Then you’d owe them.”
One of the things our grandfather taught us while he was the boss was lingchi, or death by a thousand cuts. That was the plan for Declan, and we started it. But we planned a twist. None of the cuts were deep enough to kill him. After each one, Dillan got out his needle and thread. He sewed up the other wounds as well as he did the time he semi-castrated the fucker.
But we had to cut our torture short—that pun intended—when we found out the bratva was going for our dockside warehouses again. It wasn’t hard to guess and put extra guys there to watch. When they went after the warehouses the first time, we moved what we could out of them and stopped storing shite there. That’s when we used a storage unit. It’s not our place like the other syndicates think. But we keep contraband there.
Declan could barely move on his own. He could barely stand. Our dads took him down there. They tied him up in Shane’s office since it was his shipping company they hit. When the warning went up that the bratva was a mile away, we sent out cars to slow them down. We knew it wouldn’t stop them. It just gave us time to get our arses out of there and leave Declan and his most loyal men behind. One of them freed him.
When the bratva rolled up, they thought they were such hot shit for killing Declan. Shot him from behind a couple times. More than one shooter. Bully for them. He couldn’t get away because he was barely conscious. No one in our family had to live with the guilt of killing a family member, and it wasn’t technically a mutiny since we didn’t kill him. Dillan assumed the throne.
Death by a thousand cuts isn’t fast enough for Mikhail. I figure I have about six or seven more before he’s done.
“What does Bogdan want from me? What does the bratva want from my family?”
“They don’t want your alliance with the Tremblays to be anything more than a pleasant business relationship. If you’re with the Tremblay boss’s granddaughter, then it’s more than an agreement. It’s family.”
And nothing means more to the bratva’s upper echelon than family. I get that. We’re all like that. I won’t get Bogdan without getting everyone who comes with him, and he knows he can’t get me without everyone who comes with me. They’re willing to go to war.
“Sean!”
“In the back.”
Shane barrels through the door, slamming it wide open. He takes in the scene. I have the crowbar under Mikhail’s ribs, but I have done nothing with it yet. I’m standing in the pool of blood he made. I have some splattered on me, which was inevitable.
Finn’s right behind our brother. He assesses the situation the same way Shane does. “I’ll get your clothes and the bag.”
The bag. It’s our go bag, and in it we keep all the essentials. Fresh clothes, fake passports, a few thousand dollars’ worth of foreign currency, three extra handguns, four knives, camo paint, a balaclava, a beanie, NVGs, and preoperative wipes that have a few extra chemicals in them to remove blood, brain, and whatever other bodily “stuff” that winds up on us.
“Lina? Where is she?” Finn spoke before I could, but she’s the only person I’m thinking about. I don’t even look at Mikhail as I step away. I haven’t decided if I’m done with him yet, but he’s easily forgotten.
“She’s at Mom and Da’s. Mair and Ally are there, too. She’s all right.”
“Does she know I was missing?”
“She guessed as soon as I woke her. I didn’t lie.”
“Good.”
“She knows about Lucy.”
I stare at my twin. Our expressions are not identical.
“What the feck did you tell her about that bitch?”
“That you had an arrangement with her that lasted a while, but it was nothing like what you have with Nikki. That you have a relationship with Nikki.”
“Wonder-fecking-ful. All I want is to see Lina, and she’s probably halfway to Montreal. Are you sure she’s still with Mom and Da?”
“Yes. She’ll have questions, but she accepted my explanation.”
“You truly couldn’t maneuver around that part of the truth?”
He’s contrite because he knows he could have. There were plenty of ways he could have avoided mentioning my last sub. One who I was with longer than any other.
“I need to get clean and get to Lina. Bogdan did this. He wants Ewan to know he has no shot against the bratva. That he can manipulate us into thinking Ewan’s at fault for this. They don’t want us getting closer to the Tremblays.”
“A bit late to keep them out of bed with us.”
I step closer to my twin, and he realizes he’s about one word away from his easy-going baby brother exploding. He puts his hands up and shakes his head. He steps back.
“I was just trying to lighten the mood. Believe it or not, but I’m about two seconds from losing my shite too. They took you. Until you’re checked out—I see that puncture wound in your elbow—I don’t want you more worked up.”
“Then you shouldn’t have told me that Lina knows about Lucy. But there was no way around that. You’re really certain Lina’s all right? Not just safe from this shite storm, but with finding out about Lucy.”
“Yeah. She wasn’t pleased, but she accepted it.”
Finn comes in with my bag, and it doesn’t take long before I’m clean enough to be presentable. A shower wouldn’t be remiss, but I can see Lina now. I have fresh clothes and shoes. Finn’s taking care of getting Mikhail to the station for more questioning, and Shane’s driving me to our parents.
I don’t like seeing them rush out of the front door to greet us. The look on my mom’s face isn’t relief.
“Nikki’s gone.”