Chapter 20
Dimitri
SONG: TEARDROPS BY brING ME THE HORIZON
The blood pooled around Maxim's body in patterns that reminded me of Rorschach tests. Abstract and open to interpretation. Except there was nothing abstract about the three holes in my best friend's torso or the way his breathing had gone shallow and wet.
I knelt beside him and pressed my hands against the worst wound just below his ribs. The blood pulsed hot between my fingers. Arterial. Which meant he had minutes. Maybe less.
"Stay with me," I said.
"Trying." His voice was a rasp. Unfocused eyes found mine. "Apolena?"
"Safe. You got her behind cover in time."
"Good." He coughed. Blood flecked his lips. "Dimitri. They knew. They fucking knew we'd be here."
Yes. They'd known. Someone had told them. Someone with access to our schedules and our movements and our private fucking lunch plans.
The rage that had been simmering since the first shot fired kicked up several degrees. White-hot. Incandescent. The kind of fury that made rational thought difficult and violence inevitable.
I looked around the scene. Five bodies. Six counting the one Giulia was checking. All wearing masks and carrying weapons that spoke to professional training and serious funding. This wasn't street-level opportunism, this was coordinated. Planned. Expensive.
Someone had paid good money to kidnap my sister.
Someone was about to discover what happens when you touch my family.
Apolena sat against the concrete planter where Maxim had shoved her. Her clothes were soaked with his blood, and her hands shook so violently she couldn't hold them still. She stared at nothing, eyes wide and unseeing. Shock settling in like frost.
Giulia was with her and had somehow crossed the kill zone while I'd been focused on Maxim. Now she knelt beside my sister, speaking softly, and trying to coax some response. Anything to indicate Apolena was still processing reality.
Nothing. Just vacant staring and silent tears.
The ambulance arrived. Paramedics swarmed and started the mechanical process of keeping Maxim alive long enough to reach an operating table. I stepped back to let them work. My hands were red to the wrists.
Maxim's blood. My best friend's blood. Spilled because someone had sold us out.
Because someone in Giuseppe's family couldn't let ancient grievances die.
"Sir?" One of the paramedics. Young. Competent. "You should wash your hands. There are facilities inside the restaurant."
I looked at my hands, at the blood drying in the creases of my palms, the visceral proof that today had gone catastrophically wrong.
"No."
"Sir—"
"I said no." My voice came out flat and cold. The paramedic took a step back. Smart. "I want to remember what this looks like. What it feels like. So when I find the person responsible, I can make them understand exactly what they cost me."
The paramedic nodded and retreated. Probably thought I was in shock. Trauma manifesting as delayed response. He was wrong. I was perfectly clear-headed. Perfectly focused. Every drop of Maxim's blood on my hands was a reminder of what needed to happen next.
They loaded Maxim onto the stretcher. Apolena tried to stand, but her legs wouldn't hold her. She collapsed. Giulia caught her before she hit the pavement.
"I need to go with him." Apolena's voice was broken, raw. "Please. I can't let him go alone."
"You'll ride with him," I said. "Yuri will follow in a car. He stays with both of you at the hospital."
Yuri appeared. Silent and efficient. He helped Apolena into the ambulance. She looked at me before they closed the doors. Her face was a mask of trauma and terror and something else I'd never seen on my baby sister before.
Rage. Pure, concentrated hatred for whoever had done this.
Good. She was a Morozov after all. We processed grief through violence.
The ambulance pulled away, sirens screaming, taking Maxim to either surgery or a morgue. Fifty-fifty odds at this point.
I turned to Giulia. She stood among the bodies looking small and lost and covered in my sister's trauma. Her eyes met mine. Searching for something. Direction maybe. Or reassurance that this nightmare had an endpoint.
I had neither to give her.
"You're covered in blood," I said.
She looked down at herself. At the red staining her clothes. Maxim's blood. Apolena's blood transferred through contact. The visceral evidence of violence she'd only read about before today.
"I'm okay."
"You're not okay. Nobody here is okay." I pulled out my phone and called the driver. "Car's coming. You're going back to Silverleaf."
"No. I'm staying with you."
"That wasn't a request."
"I don't care." She moved closer. Stubborn even covered in blood and shaking from adrenaline. "You need me. Someone has to keep you from doing something stupid."
"Something stupid is exactly what I'm about to do. Which is why you're leaving."
"Dimitri—"
"Giulia." I caught her arms, held her still, and made her look at me. "Someone just tried to kidnap my sister. Maxim might die. And whoever is responsible is about to discover what happens when you declare war on the Bratva. You don't want to see what comes next."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"You should be." The words came out harsh, sharp. "Right now, I'm barely holding it together. The only thing keeping me from burning this entire neighborhood to the ground is the knowledge that you're safe. So, get in the fucking car and go home before I lose what little control I have left."
She stared at me for a long moment, reading something in my face that made her decision. Then she nodded. "Okay, I'll go. But, Dimitri, don't do anything you can't come back from."
Too late. I'd crossed that line the second bullets started flying.
The car arrived, and I watched Giulia climb in. I watched the taillights disappear into traffic, then I turned back to the scene. To the bodies and the blood and the evidence of systematic betrayal.
Giuseppe approached. His face had gone gray. Aged ten years in ten minutes. The don processing that his family had just become collateral damage in someone else's war.
"The police want statements," he said.
"The police can wait."
"Dimitri, there are witnesses, cameras. We need to handle this carefully."
Carefully. He wanted careful while Maxim was bleeding out and Apolena was traumatized and my entire organization was compromised by someone Giuseppe had vouched for.
"Carefully died when bullets started flying. Now I need answers. And I'm going to get them." I looked at the gut-shot Albanian still breathing against the odds. "Starting with him."
"Not here. Too exposed."
"Then we move him somewhere less exposed."
Boris appeared. My third in command and built like a brick wall with the personality to match. He assessed the situation in seconds. Bodies. Blood. Boss vibrating with barely controlled violence.
"Orders?" he asked.
"That one." I pointed to the Albanian. "Still breathing. I want him alive long enough to tell me who paid him."
Boris nodded and moved to secure the target. The Albanian tried to fight. He lasted about three seconds before Boris had him subdued and loaded into a van that appeared with suspicious timing.
Giuseppe watched this happen without comment. The Don understanding that some situations required less diplomacy and more direct action.
"The restaurant has a basement," he said quietly. "Soundproofed and private. The police don't have jurisdiction there."
I looked at him. Really looked. Giuseppe Rossie, my father-in-law, the man who'd given me his daughter in exchange for peace, now offering up his own property for what was about to become very loud and very messy interrogation.
"You sure about that? Once we cross this line there's no going back."
"Someone tried to take your sister and nearly killed your best soldier. They destroyed any illusion of safety this alliance was supposed to provide." His voice was ice. "I'm already past the point of going back."
We moved to the basement. Boris dragged the Albanian down stairs that were never meant for transporting bleeding prisoners. The man left a trail of red on concrete. Abstract art made from arterial spray.
The basement was exactly what Giuseppe had promised. Soundproofed, private, and equipped with a drain in the center of the floor that suggested this wasn't the first time it had hosted activities the police wouldn't approve of.
Boris dumped the Albanian in a chair and secured him with zip ties, then stepped back and waited for instructions.
I pulled up a second chair and sat facing the man who'd tried to take my sister. Who'd shot Maxim. Who'd followed orders from someone too cowardly to pull triggers themselves.
"I'm going to ask you questions," I said. "You're going to answer. If I like your answers, you live. If I don't..." I gestured to the drain. "Well, Giuseppe maintains excellent plumbing."
The Albanian spat blood. Defiant even dying. "Fuck you."
"That's what your friend said right before I shot him in the face. Very unoriginal."
I stood and walked to the wall where tools hung.
The basement was fortunately well equipped.
Hammers, pliers, various implements that had no business being in a restaurant basement unless that restaurant regularly needed to extract information from unwilling sources.
Maybe the place I had chosen wasn’t as neutral as I thought. But that was a problem for another day.
I selected a pair of pliers, tested the grip. Solid. Well-maintained.
"Who paid you?" I asked.
Silence.
I grabbed his hand. He tried to pull away, but Boris held him still. I positioned the pliers around his pinky finger.
"Last chance. Name. Now."
"Go to hell."
I squeezed. The finger broke with a wet crunch. The Albanian screamed. High-pitched. Primal. The sound echoed off concrete walls and probably carried through three floors of restaurant above us.
Hopefully the owner had invested in soundproofing.
"Who paid you?" I asked again.
Sobbing. No words. Just pain and terror and the dawning realization that defiance had a price.
I moved to the next finger. "I have nine more of these, then we start on toes. Then we get creative. Or you can save us both time and tell me what I want to know."
"Geraldo!" The name came out choked. Desperate. "Geraldo Rossie! He paid us! Said the girl would be alone! Said it would be easy!"
There it was. Confirmation. Geraldo had set this up. Had sold out the alliance and tried to kidnap Apolena. Had nearly killed Maxim.
Destroying any possibility of mercy.
The rage that had been building exploded, white-hot and incandescent. I grabbed the Albanian's throat and squeezed. I watched his eyes bulge, watched him struggle, watched him understand that cooperation didn't guarantee survival.
Giuseppe's hand on my shoulder. "Dimitri, we need him alive. For testimony."
He was right. I needed the Albanian alive to confirm Geraldo's guilt. To provide evidence Giuseppe couldn't deny. To make this official instead of just personal.
I released him. He gasped, choking, and probably regretted not dying in the street when he had the chance.
"Keep him alive," I told Boris. "But make him comfortable with the idea that alive is negotiable if he stops cooperating."
Boris nodded. That smile he got when work involved making people regret their life choices.
I climbed the stairs, emerging into the restaurant proper. Police were still processing the scene outside. Taking statements. Photographing bodies. The mechanical bureaucracy of violence.
I pulled out my phone and called Viktor.
"Status?"
"Maxim's in surgery. Critical. Doctors say it's fifty-fifty." Yuri's voice was tight. Professional. But I heard the worry underneath. "Your sister is sleeping, lost her mind crying, and they gave her something. Giulia stayed with her until she went under."
"And Giulia now?"
"On her way to Silverleaf like you ordered. I have men on her. She's safe."
Safe. For now. But safety was an illusion when people you loved were bleeding and enemies moved with impunity.
"I'm coming to the hospital. Have someone bring me clean clothes."
"Already done."
Of course it was. Viktor had worked for my father and knew the protocol after violence. Fresh clothes. Clean hands. Plausible deniability.
I hung up and looked at Giuseppe. He stood behind the bar pouring two glasses of something expensive. Offered me one.
"To family," he said. "And the difficult choices they force us to make."
We drank. The liquor burned. Cleansing. Or maybe just numbing. Hard to tell the difference anymore.
"I need to talk to Giulia," I said. "About her family. About Geraldo. About what happens next."
"What does happen next?"
"Tomorrow, I take custody of your nephew. I verify everything the Albanian told us. Then I kill him slowly enough that he understands exactly what he cost us."
Giuseppe nodded. No argument. No plea for mercy. "My sister will never forgive me."
I set down the empty glass. "I'm sorry that you have to make this choice. Geraldo forced your hand."
"Don't be sorry. Be thorough." Giuseppe refilled both glasses. "When you take him. When you make him pay. Remember he tried to take your sister. Nearly killed your best soldier. Destroyed what your wife sacrificed everything to build."
"I'll remember."
I would. Every second. Every drop of blood. Every scream. I'd remember all of it and make Geraldo understand the cost of his choices.
But first I had to tell Giulia that her cousin was a traitor. That tomorrow I'd kill him. That the alliance she'd believed in was rotten from the foundation.
That conversation would hurt her more than bullets ever could.
But it couldn't be avoided. Not anymore. The bubble we'd built in Silverleaf was about to pop spectacularly.
Reality had come calling. And reality demanded blood.
I just hoped our marriage could survive what came next.