Chapter Forty
Cal
Forty-two hours.
That’s how long she’s been gone when Mick pulls the black hood off the man zip-tied to the chair in the basement of one of our warehouses on the east side.
In the first twenty-four hours, we pulled camera footage from six blocks in every direction of the café, cross-referenced three partial plates, traced a stolen car back to a garage in the meatpacking district that we’ve had eyes on before. It’s a known front for the Volkovs' lower operations.
We picked up a few of their street guys yesterday. They knew nothing useful. Disposable, the kind of men who are handed a job and an address and told not to ask questions.
Nico had a conversation with them anyway. I stayed upstairs.
This morning, one of our guys spotted a Volkov lieutenant—mid-level, old enough to know things but stupid enough to be eating breakfast at the same diner he’s eaten breakfast at every week for four years—and they picked him up before he finished his pancakes.
His name is Dmitri. He’s forty-three, heavyset, with a scar that runs through his left eyebrow and a gold tooth that catches the single bulb hanging above his head when he blinks against the light, eyes adjusting.
He’s scared but not scared enough. His breathing gives it away.
Shallow, through his nose, controlled like a man who’s been in a room like this before and is trying to remember how to survive.
And that’s fine.
Scared men talk.
I pull out the chair across from him and sit down. I set nothing on the table between us, just fold my hands in front of me and look at him without speaking. It reminds me of the way I look at a witness before I ask them something I already know the answer to in court.
Behind me, I hear Nico shift his weight. He’s standing by the door with two other guys and Mick. I know he will stay there unless I tell him otherwise.
“Dmitri,” I say it conversationally, easy.
“I’m going to be straightforward with you because I think you’re a man who appreciates directness.
You were picked up this morning. You haven’t been harmed.
You’re sitting in a chair. Those are the nice choices I made.
” I let that sit. “I’d like to keep making those nice choices.
Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
He says nothing. His jaw is set.
“I’m looking for a woman. She was taken from an alley off Fifth Street two days ago by men you probably know.
I know it was your family because I watched the car.
I know it was coordinated because they were waiting in the alley before she went out there.
And I know she’s alive because if she wasn’t, you’d be dead.
” I watch his face as I tilt my head towards Nico.
“Because we would’ve killed you. So, she’s leverage.
Which means someone above you made a decision to take her and is waiting to see what I’ll do about it. ”
Still no response, but his breathing slightly changes.
“Here’s what I’d like to do for you,” I continue, tapping the table with my knuckles.
“Your life for a location. That’s all. One location and this conversation ends and you go back to your day.
I’ll even have the guys drop you back at the diner and buy you a new plate of pancakes, on me.
And then we never see each other again.”
He looks at the table.
“Dmitri.”
He looks up.
“I went to law school.” I sigh. “And I know your family knows that, because you’ve all kept tabs on us just like we’ve kept tabs on you.
I know how to build a case. I know how to sit across from someone and find the crack in their story and work it open with patience and time.
I have patience.” I lean forward and tilt my head side to side and drop my voice.
“For now. But what I don’t have is time. ”
Something flickers across his face.
I lean back again and smile. “She has this dimple; it’s in her right cheek.
It only shows up when she smiles all the way, like a real smile.
Brown hair, and these great blue eyes and she orders the same coffee every morning.
But the day your family took her,” my voice is low.
“She ordered something different because she was having such a great day. And then your family held a gun to her head and dragged her down a street, took the shoes right off her feet, and drove her away.”
The room is quiet. And my mind is, too. Imagining her in that café, in my arms the morning before. And I feel my heart swell and break all at once.
“And that really pisses me off, you know? Because she’s everything to me, which clearly you Volkovs had an inkling of, and there’s nothing I won’t do to get her back.”
I see his jaw working and his silence pisses me off.
“So, I’ll ask you again—” My voice is going somewhere I don’t fully recognize, somewhere past the lawyer and past the careful and past every line I drew for myself a long time ago, “where is she?”
Dmitri meets my eyes now and smiles, showing off his gold tooth for the room. And he laughs.
Something inside me—the part that has been holding the line for over forty-two hours, the part that stood in front of forty men and said we do this my way, the part that walked out of rooms like this one and stood in hallways, kept his hands clean—that part fractures, splinters into a thousand pieces.
I am on my feet before I know what I’m doing.
My hands find the front of his shirt across the table and his chair tips back as he makes a sound and the light above us swings. I lift him towards me and hear him gurgle as my knuckles push into his throat.
I am somewhere I never let myself go, somewhere dark and airless and beyond reason.
I hear my voice, but I speak without thinking.
“I’ll fucking kill you and every Volkov left in this goddamn city, do you understand? I’ll do it with my bare hands, one after the other, making each of you watch as the others take their final breaths. And maybe I’ll save you for last, Dmitri.”
His smile is gone and his eyes are bulging, like he didn’t expect the words out of my mouth. And I’m as shocked as he is, but I know my face doesn’t show it.
And I think I mean every word. No. I know I do.
Because my mind is considering every way I might go about getting this sack of shit to tell me what I want to know.
Before I can get too deep into planning, there’s a solid hand on my shoulder.
“Cal.”
One word. Nico’s voice, quieter and calmer than I have ever heard it.
I let go of the shirt. The chair rights itself. Dmitri slips down into it, breathing hard, eyes wide and fixed on me like I am something he needs to keep his eyes on.
Nico’s hand moves from my shoulder to the back of my neck for just a second—the way our parents held on to us when we were small—and then he steps around me.
“Go upstairs,” he says calmly to me, without looking at Dmitri.
“Nico—” My words are a growl.
“I got this.” His eyes hold mine and there’s nothing in them I’m used to seeing—no edge, no humor, no calculation, just steadiness. “I’ve got him.”
I look at Dmitri.
I look at my brother.
I turn and start climbing the stairs two at a time, anger rushing out of me in heavy breaths.
Before I make it up to the top, I hear Nico let out a maniacal laugh and say, “Never thought I’d get to be the good cop—don’t look relieved, Dmitri, this is gonna hurt.”
The kitchen of the warehouse is empty. Someone left a cup of coffee on the counter. I stand at the window and look at nothing and listen to the city outside and try not to think about what’s happening below me.
I think about Max instead.
I think about the way she argued with me on the plane like she wasn’t terrified, making Godfather references.
The time she walked into my study full of men at the penthouse in fuzzy socks without fully knowing what it meant; eyes going wide and reminding me of just how beautiful she is in every moment, even the little ones.
I think about the way she said today feels different, like the world had finally decided to let her have what she wants.
I count the minutes without meaning to and after seventeen, the door behind me opens.
I shift to look.
Nico leans against the doorframe, one ankle crossed over the other. His sleeves are rolled up, and he has a rag between his hands, rubbing at red stains on his knuckles. His face is composed, even giddy. He looks like he always does: completely fine.
He stares at me for a moment and sighs.
“She’s alive,” he says first, before anything else, leading with the only thing that matters.
“She’s alive and she’s being held in a restaurant in Red Hook.
Old place, been shut down for a few years.
Dmitri said they used to make the best stroganoff, which is a bummer because I actually quite enjoy a good stroganoff…
” His eyes light briefly. “Anyway, Volkovs own the building through a shell company we didn’t know about, that’s why we couldn’t find it when we looked for buildings. ”
He reaches into his pocket and sets a folded piece of paper on the dirty counter between us.
I look at the paper, stained with Dmitri’s blood, then glance back up at my brother.
“Address.” He lifts his brows in the direction of the counter, but there’s something on his face, a tiredness, that I didn’t notice before.
“You didn’t have to take over, I would’ve—” I start.
“Yeah,” he straightens with a low laugh rumbling out of him. “I did have to take over.”
He throws the rag on the ground and starts rolling a sleeve back down, buttoning the cuff before continuing, “That’s what I’m here for, Cal. You hold your lines. I’ll cross them when they need crossing. I know what it did to you last time and you know it doesn’t bother me. I got it.”
I nod, appreciation for him written across my face. He’s always been ready and willing to cross every line—and I’m more grateful for that now than I ever thought I would be.
He watches me as I pick up the paper and claps his hands together, the look of glee returning to his face.
“Let’s go get your girl, brother.”