Chapter 2 #5
He sat in an Adirondack chair and watched the fire in the pit.
Three days. No drama.
Simple.
Except nothing about Britta White was simple, and West had the sinking feeling that his carefully constructed system—the one that kept him free and uninvolved—had just developed a crack.
A small one.
Barely noticeable.
Probably wouldn’t cause any problems at all.
THREE DAYS AFTER THE NEW YORK UN ATTACK, SIX OR SO MONTHS AGO
The room reeked of stale cigarettes and somebody else’s mistakes.
Not his.
How the Petrov Bratva could botch job after job seemed… Well, he didn’t want to point fingers, but it wasn’t how he did business.
If you wanted something done right…
Alan Martin stood at the window of the Liberty Hotel, third floor, watching the Manhattan skyline glitter across the Hudson. So close. The One World tower caught the last gold of sunset, and for a moment it looked like a monument to everything he’d lost—his patriotism, his family, his future.
Sixteen years of not knowing the family he’d lost.
Behind him, Tomas Smirnov sat on the sagging bed, scrolling through his phone as if they were old friends catching up, not coconspirators in a failed kidnapping that had blown up spectacularly three days ago.
“You need to calm down,” Tomas said without looking up.
Alan’s reflection stared back at him from the grimy glass—graying hair, lines carved deep around his mouth, a ghost of the man he used to be. Below, the turnpike thrummed with evening traffic, all those people heading home to families who knew their real names.
“Calm down?” Alan turned from the window. “We had Secret Service shooting at us, Tomas. The operation was a disaster.”
“A setback.” Tomas set down his phone, his accent thicker when he was being condescending. “The operation served its purpose.”
“We didn’t get the girl.”
“We got chaos. We got attention. We proved the system is vulnerable.” Tomas stood, straightening his jacket as if he were heading to a business meeting instead of planning the next atrocity. “There’s a bigger plan, Alan. You know this.”
Alan’s hands curled into fists. “No.”
Tomas raised an eyebrow.
“I’m out.” Alan heard his own voice crack. “I’m done. I want to see my family.”
“Ah.” Tomas moved to the dresser, examined his reflection, adjusted his collar. “Now we come to it.”
“I’ve done everything you asked.”
“You’ve attempted everything.” Tomas turned, his expression mild, which was somehow worse than anger. “The difference matters.”
“I’ve given you sixteen years.”
“And we’ve kept your wife and daughter alive for sixteen years.” Tomas stepped closer. “Would you like us to stop?”
The threat hung in the air between them, casual as smoke.
Alan forced himself to breathe. “I want to see them. I don’t do anything—anything—until I see them.”
Tomas studied him, head tilted, like Alan was a puzzle with pieces obviously missing. Then he smiled. “Fine.”
Alan blinked. “What?”
“Fine. Lay low, let the chaos from New York settle, and we’ll arrange it.” Tomas checked his watch. “Two months, maybe three. We’ll be in touch with details.”
Hope flared in Alan’s chest, bright and painful. “You’re serious.”
“I’m always serious.” Tomas picked up his phone from the bed, pocketed it. “But Alan? You don’t get to walk away. Not yet. You finish the job—the real job—and then you’re free. You, Timea, Fia. All of it.”
There it was. The hook, same as always.
“I’m done with this,” Alan said, but his voice had lost its edge.
Tomas moved to the door, one hand on the handle. “You’re going to finish it if you want to walk away from this. That’s how freedom works for men like us. We earn it. One last job, and you get your life back.”
“One last job.” Alan laughed, hollow. “You’ve said that before.”
“This time it’s true.” Tomas opened the door. Light from the hallway spilled in, momentarily washing the dim room in pale gold. “Stay here. Don’t contact anyone. I’ll send instructions when it’s time.”
Then he was gone, the door clicking shut with the finality of a cell lock.
Alan stood in the quiet, listening to Tomas’s footsteps recede down the stairs. A siren wailed somewhere in the distance. Car horns. The endless white noise of a city that never stopped moving.
He turned back to the window.
Manhattan blazed in the gathering dusk, close enough to swim to, far enough to be another planet. Somewhere out there, Timea was alive. Fia was alive. Sixteen years old now. Did she know he existed? Did Timea tell her stories about who he’d been before?
Before he became this?
Alan pressed his palm against the cold glass. There was no way out. He’d known it for years, but some part of him—some stubborn, stupid part—kept believing the lie. Kept thinking that if he just cooperated one more time, played along for one more job, they’d finally let him go.
Foolish.
But maybe, Alan thought, staring at the lights of the city, where people lived real lives, maybe being a fool was his only hope.
He pulled the blinds shut and sat on the bed in the dark, waiting for instructions that would drag him deeper into the abyss.
Just one more job.
Always just one more.