Chapter 3 #2
“The beginning, obviously,” Maksim deadpans as he grabs a beer from the small fridge just under the bar. Leon snorts, shaking his head in mild amusement at the large Russian. For an Italian, he’s not half bad.
Most of the time.
Leon is the more refined of us all. Minus Matthias. While the rest of us sport jeans and T-shirts half the time, maybe a polo here and there, he wears a suit.
Downtime? Suit.
His first camping trip? Suit.
Fuck, I’m ninety-nine percent sure the pretty boy came out of the womb in a suit.
He drinks wine and eats at upscale restaurants whose names I can barely pronounce. Unlike the rest of us, Leon grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. Doesn’t make him any less our brother, but it certainly makes for good entertainment.
“Insightful as ever, my friend,” Leon chuckles under Maksim’s glare. Even from across the table, that shit makes my skin crawl. Maksim is no teddy bear wrapped in bulking muscle like Dima.
He’s a killer. End of story.
The fact that his glare, which I’ve personally seen reduce grown men his size to tears, doesn’t bother Leon tells me how much of a psychopath the posh Italian really is.
“Children,” Nikolai admonishes with a smirk, dragging out what Matthias dubbed his professor voice. “Settle down so we may listen to our fearless usurper.”
Fucking old-timer.
“All hail Vasily the Fearless.” Maksim holds up his beer in mock salute.
“I thought it was Vasily the Fearful? Running from the seat of power since 1993,” Leon cracks as he takes a sip of his wine, eyes gleaming.
“No, no,” Dima crows. “Vasily the Drama Queen.”
Har-fucking-har.
“It’s going to be ‘Vasily with his boot up your asses’ in a moment,” I threaten, but there’s no real heat behind my words, and the three men howl with laughter. They all know how much I loathe being in this position. “Now, report.”
“Spoilsport,” Dima mutters somewhat petulantly, still chuckling under his breath as he lifts his beer to his lips. After taking a long swig and a deep breath, he sets the bottle down on the table and pulls up a map on the small screen that sits nestled in the middle of the table facing upward.
“We’ve been tracking all of Ward’s known associates, including the Romanos,” Dima begins as a slew of red dots pops up on a map across Seattle.
Each one of them is a tracker of a targeted individual.
It’s late, just past midnight, and most of the dots are inactive, but there are a few still moving along the streets.
“The Romanos have been the most active since the wedding, but as far as I can tell, they haven’t strayed outside their normal routine. ”
“Are we sure they don’t suspect they’re being followed?” I ask. If Ward’s people have a suspicion they’re being tracked, they’d be more careful to keep their movements the same. But even that’s a pattern we’d be able to detect. No one does the exact same thing each day, every day.
“We’ve come up with some…creative ways to ensure they remain unaware they’re being followed,” Dima assures me. Not that it helps. Dima’s plans, although solid most of the time, usually end up with me paying someone off.
Or murdering someone.
Or disposing of a body.
“Do tell,” I encourage him with a raised eyebrow. Maksim and Leon chuckle. I could have sworn I heard Maksim mutter something to Leon about paying up.
“Well, those we have following them are less likely to be noticed than most,” Dima hedges. All I can do is blink at him stupidly.
“Less noticeable?”
“They’re small,” Dima continues. He’s hedging around giving the full answer.
“Like children,” Maksim butts in happily. My eyes narrow at Dima.
He wouldn’t.
The motherfucker.
“You’re using the children for surveillance?” I roar. “Are you fucking kidding me, Dima?”
The man before me shrugs unapologetically. “They wanted to help get their boss out of jail, and I needed a group of people who could surveil without drawing attention. Hence, children, or more technically, young adults.”
“Matthias is going to kick your ass when he finds out you sent some of the students on an unsanctioned surveillance mission.”
“Pay up,” Maksim whispers to Nikolai, who hands him a crisp hundred-dollar bill just like Leon had. Jesus, I’m working with toddlers who have gambling addictions.
“We’ll be coming back to that later, Dima,” I warn the still smiling Russian. “Did you happen to find anything useful while using our students to do your dirty work?”
“You make it sound like I wasn’t doing anything at all,” he feigns hurt. “I’ll have you know I am your hardest worker.”
“Bullshit,” Maksim coughs under his breath.
“You call sitting in your pervert van sipping Fanta, doing something?” Leon snorts at the same time. Dima growls at the man but remains silent as he drags the screen feed to the side, the map rushing from view, replaced by a photo of a man I’ve never seen before.
“This is Marko Cane.” Dima narrows his eyes at Leon, ignoring his jibe. “He was a low-level hitman for the Romano family. Since Dante took over, he’s more of a runner than anything else.”
“And we care about him, why?” Niko cocks his head to the side.
“Well, before the wedding, Marko was in debt up to his eyeballs,” Dima informs him, pulling up the man’s financial records on the screen. “The Irish, the Greek. Hell, he even owed the Lords of War.”
“And why do I care about the finances of one of Romano’s hired thugs?” I’m beginning to sound like a broken record.
Dima smirks. “Because less than twenty-four hours after the wedding, his debt of more than 1.5 million is cleared, and he’s been spending like a high roller every night at Club Mezzanine.”
That’s news to me.
“And tell me, Dima,” I tilt my head, eyeing him curiously, “how does a member of the Italian Mafia know about one of our super-secret, super-secure strip clubs?”
“Pay up,” Leon mutters to Maksim with a smile.
Toddlers.
We have several legit businesses around the city that clean up our dirty money. Ones that are open to members of the public and ones we keep hidden in the shadows. The fact that one of Romano’s hired thugs manages to gain entry means he’s been led there.
“You invited him, didn’t you?” The urge to groan and throw my head back is fucking strong right now.
So is the urge to strangle him with Leon’s tie.
“Yep.” Dima pops the p like a fucking douche.
“Why?” I grill.
“Why else?” Dima raises an eyebrow at me like an idiot. I resist the urge to throw my fist in his smug little face. “Information. Men talk when they’re drunk and horny.”
“And you found out…”
“Well, nothing from him directly, but I did manage to break into his accounts.”
I’m going to kill this motherfucker.
Fuck the code.
“Jesus,” Maksim snorts. “Stop being an ass. Three million dollars was wired into his account less than twenty-four hours after the sniper hit the wedding. Do I need to spell the rest out for you?”
Choosing to ignore the insult, I turn my gaze back to Dima. “Why would Romano pay one of his men to kill his own niece?”
The Italians have a code. Family doesn’t kill family. Dante Romano made that code after the death of his father. The father he killed. He wouldn’t break it.
Unless something within the Romano organization has changed.
Pizdets. Dammit. How could I have missed that?
“You think Christian hired Marko to kill his own sister?”
The three of them simply stare at me as if it’s the obvious conclusion. Conflict smacks across their faces, shining from their eyes like fucking beacons, but they all know better.
I don’t need their pity.
“Why?” I ask, somewhat dumbfounded. “What would Christian Ward have to gain from killing her?”
“Nothing,” Leon answers simply. “From what we can tell, killing Libby wasn’t part of any grand scheme. She didn’t have any insider knowledge or passcodes. Libby was sharp, and her insights into how her father behaved were helpful, but from what we can tell, nothing worth killing over.”
“So why do it?” No one has an answer to that. “Do you think we could use Marko? Shake him down?”
Dima shakes his head. “Marko has been on the outs since Alfonzo Romano’s death,” he informs me.
“Maybe he wasn’t aiming for Libby,” I surmise hopefully. “Maybe he was aiming for me.”
None of my brothers looks convinced.
“You said he was a low-level hitman,” I remind Dima. “He could have just missed the shot.”
“No, brat.” Leon frowns. “Evidence on his computer testifies that he was aiming for Libby. And he may be a low-level thug now, but he wasn’t always. Not until Dante took over for his father. Before that, Marko Cane was his top hitman. Marine sniper. Top marks.”
Damn it all to hell. Why did it have to be Libby? Sweet, na?ve, innocent Libby. The only woman in the world who managed to knock me off my high horse and get my blood boiling. I can still taste her on my lips from our first kiss.
Cherry Chapstick.
She fought it at first, but by the end, she was meeting my passion with her own. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. There’d been women before Libby, but I doubt there will truly be any after her.
Libby was fireworks and confetti. Now, she’s nothing more than flesh to rot away beneath the dirt.
“Do you think Romano knew about the hit?”
Leon shakes his head. “No,” he replies assuredly. “Christian knows what would happen if anyone found out. He likely chose Marko because of how isolated Dante made him. Not to mention, if Romano found out about his debt, he’d be dead. Christian saved his ass.”
“We don’t think anyone knows he killed Elias either,” Nikolai speaks up.
That makes sense. Christian would be a dead man if anyone did. Patricide is looked down upon in the Italian Mafia. Even if Elias wasn’t part of the mafia itself, he was still kin. The only one to ever pull it off successfully without repercussions is Dante Romano himself.
His father had been a right douche though. No one misses him.
The question is, who helped Christian manipulate the footage of Matthias killing Elias?
It has to be someone with access to the FBI.
Or millions of dollars, because Christian sure as hell doesn’t have all that money lying around.
Not since the raid on the port. Mark confirmed that all the Ward assets are frozen.
Someone is funding the little bitch.
“What do we do about Ava?” Maksim approaches the elephant in the room. He knows I went to talk with Matthias about his wife to try to put together a rescue plan.
“Nothing.”
The three of them stare at me, mouths open, eyes blinking. It’s as if they’re having a hard time processing what I just said.
“Beg your pardon?” The shocked look on Leon’s face sends a pang of guilt rippling through me. “I might’ve just gone stupid, because I’m pretty sure you just said we weren’t doing anything.”
Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I nod. “Matthias has branded Ava a traitor. We aren’t to utilize any of our men to rescue her. Our focus is to get him out of jail and make these false charges disappear.”
The men don’t have time to protest what I’ve told them before a low, unhurried voice speaks up from behind me.
“I can help with that.”