Sweet Terms, Bratva Rage

1. Kane

KANE

The smoke follows me home.

It's in the wool of my jacket, in the cuffs of my shirt, in my hair. I drove the whole way back over the bridge with the windows cracked and it did nothing to erase the stench. At this point, I think it might be soaked into my bones.

Anton has the door open before I reach the top step.

He's holding a clean black coat. I know what he's thinking: that I look like I slept in an alley, which I didn't, and that the lawyers are already here, which they are, and that his boss should not walk in on his attorney looking like this.

He's right. I don't give a fuck.

"I'll take that, sir."

"No."

The jacket stays on. I'm not giving it to him. He'll have it cleaned by noon because that's what he does, and then it'll smell like nothing.

If smoke is all I have left of Lilah, then smoke is all I want.

"Where's Gershon?" I ask.

"In your office, sir."

I pass him. My shoes leave pale crescents across the black marble, ash from Lilah’s shop collecting in the seams. Anton looks down at the marks, then follows me without mentioning them.

Niko catches up to me. If I look half as bad as he does, then I know we're both having one of the worst nights of our lives.

"Kane," he says. "I—"

"Bring the photograph."

He wants to say something else, but instead, he sighs and falls in step at my heel. Even he knows better than to push me right now.

When I enter my office, I see that Gershon is in the chair across from my desk, briefcase open, a laptop humming in front of him.

That's her chair. She sat in it once, on New Year's Eve, when she came to give me her answer.

She wouldn't sit even though she'd been on her feet since four, so I walked over and took her elbow and put her in it.

She looked at me in amazement. Nobody had ever pulled out a chair for her in her life. I could tell.

Gershon stands to greet me. "Kane. God. I don't even— I'm sorry. That's all. I'm sorry."

"Sit down, Gershon."

I put my phone on the desk and turn it toward him. The text gleams on the screen.

EVERY WATERFRONT DEED IN SEVEN DAYS. OR SHE DIES.

Under it, the picture. Cinderblock. A wooden chair. Rope over her shoulder, over the apron. Soot down one side of her face. Blood at the corner of her mouth.

Her chin's up, though.

I know that look. She isn't scared—she's pissed off. She's looking straight into the camera because she knows who's going to see it, and she's telling me, Do not lose your shit, Kane. I'll kill them long before they kill me.

I haven't lost my shit. Not yet.

But I'm getting dangerously close.

"Prepare the transfer of every parcel in the corridor." I keep one finger on the phone. "Thirty-Ninth to Forty-Fifth. Third Avenue to the water. All ninety-one companies."

Gershon looks at me in horror. His hands stop. "Mr. Makov—"

"I didn't ask you for your fucking opinion, Gershon. Do what I pay you to do, or get the fuck out so I can have someone else do it instead."

He takes his glasses off. Rubs them. Puts them back on. He's buying time, trying to find a way to defuse the ticking time bomb I've become.

But that's a lost cause. I have made up my mind and I'm not going back. If my life's work is all it takes to ensure Lilah is safe and unharmed, then that's a small price to pay.

Vetrov can have it. Have it all.

Just give her back to me in one piece.

"When do you intend to execute?" Gershon asks at last.

"As soon as possible."

"He gave you seven days," he counters.

"And if you do your job right, then we won't need more than one of them." I drop into my seat. "So the real question is, why are you giving me shit instead of typing?"

The lawyer pulls out a handkerchief and starts to dab at his sweating forehead. "This is too much work for even me to pull off that fast, Kane."

"Then call in whatever minions you need to get it done.

I don't care what they cost, I don't care who's at a christening or a funeral or their wife's goddamn birthday party.

Call them, get them here, and get this done.

I won't let her stay in that basement for a second longer than necessary. Have I made myself clear?"

Gershon nods.

In the corner, Niko sighs again.

Then my attorney picks up his phone and starts to make some calls.

By ten, there are six of Manhattan's priciest lawyers at my dining table.

They've brought gear with them. Rolling cases. Monitors. Extension cords along the baseboards. Anton floats among them silently, refilling their coffees again and again.

It's like going backward in time to watch them slowly unravel my empire. One by one, they work through each parcel.

I used to shade each acquisition green on a map, corner to corner, as soon as it became mine. I did it myself. Niko was never allowed the marker.

The plan was always to assemble an ocean of green ownership, then sell it to Monroe Fletcher, the real estate developer with grand plans for this patch of the city. I'd have walked away with billions in cash.

But as of Easter, those plans were gone.

I burned the map after I released Lilah’s property back to her. The complete development sale ended with it. So did twenty years of dreaming.

When I first sent men to research Lilah, I wanted to know what would make her sell. They brought me her purchase history, her husband’s debts. Every sordid little detail of her life.

I exploited it all.

Ruthlessly.

Cunningly.

But where has that gotten me? I reek of smoke and the wet grime of the street is still clinging to my clothes. And her? She's gone. She's gone in every fucking way that matters.

Gone from my bed.

Gone from my life.

Gone from her bakery, the last thing she had left that was hers and hers alone.

It's all my fucking fault.

So this is how it looks to fix it. I'll bleed myself dry if that's what it takes. Vetrov can have every drop.

But what if he takes every drop of her blood first?

I can't stop picturing her in that basement chair every time my eyes close. The soot on her face… the blood on her cheek…

My fists curl up under the desk. I've never felt rage like this before. White-hot and overwhelming. I wonder idly if enough anger can kill a man.

If Vetrov tries to fuck me on this deal, then we're all going to find out.

But in the meantime, I can't sit here and let it consume me. I lurch to my feet and go to the bathroom. Ripping open the faucet, I stick my hands under it.

The water runs red and gray for a long time, but even once it's clear, the soot under my fingernails won't come out.

Tonight's scene replays in my mind's eye.

How I brushed past the fire marshal and went charging toward the source of the fire. I laid down in the street puddles in my suit and fished her phone out from underneath the makeshift plywood loading dock.

That call log. An outbound call to 911 lasting four minutes and eight seconds.

The blood.

The tire tracks.

The paths where they dragged her heels.

The anger starts to surge up again, hotter and more intense than ever, like a fire of its own spreading in my chest, taking me under, into the heat of the—

"Ahem."

I hear a throat clear at the door and look up to see Anton.

"There's food in the office for you, sir."

"Take it away."

"I think you should eat, Mr. Makov."

I turn the water off.

He puts a clean towel next to me. He's been doing this since I was a kid. He was my father's man before he was mine, and he stayed when he could've gone. I've never asked him why.

"You can send me away after you eat," he adds.

"Don't do this now."

"Then I'd humbly request that you feed yourself, sir. We can't have you running on fumes."

With that, he bows and steps away.

I dry my hands. Even after all that washing, the towel still comes away gray.

There's a sandwich waiting for me at my desk when I return to my office. Before I can get to it, Gershon knocks on the door.

He's got a stack of documents under his arm that could stop a bullet. Ninety-one companies. Ninety-one signature blocks. Twenty years of my life, reduced to ink and signatures.

"It's ready," he says. "Or at least as ready as it can be in five hours. There's a signature tab on every page you need to sign. I've highlighted—"

"Give it to me."

He puts it on the desk, then he hands me a pen.

I look down at the first page.

V Haven Holdings, LLC.

Of course it's first. The universe really does have a vicious sense of humor.

I sign it.

The next one. Brightline Marine, LLC. The shipping warehouse at Forty-First, the first parcel I ever bought. I was twenty-six years old. I paid cash and stood on the roof afterward as I looked at my mother's old street and felt like God.

I sign it.

Kittiwake Properties. The two-story brick on Third with the tailor's shop.

Sunset Yards Group.

Corridor Nine.

Harbor & Fourth.

Sign. Flip. Sign. Flip.

Niko stands at the window with his back to me. He won't watch. He was there for all of it, driving me around at two in the morning while I looked at buildings I didn't own yet.

Gershon watches every signature. I keep going, even as my hand cramps and my frown deepens.

Vetrov must know that it was always going to go down like this. He believes I'll do anything to get her back, and he's right.

What he doesn't understand is that I'll do anything to get her back and anything after that.

He'll figure it out soon enough.

When I'm finished, I put the pen down on top of the stack. I look at the whole mountain of documents.

Twenty years to compile this empire.

Forty minutes to sign away.

I shove the stack across the desk toward him. "Hold these until I order you to release them," I tell Gershon.

He blinks. "Hold—?"

"You heard what I said. Every one of these is to stay in your possession until she's standing in front of me. Then—and only then—you hand them over."

"Kane, I thought you said—"

"Do you understand me or not?"

He winces. "Yes. I understand. I'll lock them in the vault at my office."

"Good," I say. "Sleep there if you have to."

With a nod, he leaves.

Niko barely waits for Gershon's footsteps to finish fading down the hall before he turns with a sour look on his face.

"Give me two days to hunt for her before we give everything away."

I'm quick with my answer, because I've been waiting for the request all morning. "Absolutely the fuck not."

"Kane." He comes to the desk, plants his fists on it, and gives me a serious glare.

"C'mon. Give me forty-eight hours. That's all I'm asking.

Vetrov's got maybe a dozen places he'd stash someone.

Cinderblock basements, that's what's in the picture, right?

That's a warehouse or a garage or one of those old bathhouses off Brightwater.

I can put Yuri on the docks and Stepan on the—"

"No."

"I haven't even finished."

"You don't need to finish. The answer's the same."

He straightens. His jaw works. My brother's a calm man, mostly. It's why he's my second. Someone in this family has to look at an issue and not want to set it on fire.

"You're going to give him everything," he says. "Every parcel. Mom's—" He stops. Doesn't say it. "And you won't even let me try?"

"Try what? Kick down doors in Brighton Beach until you kick down the right one?"

"For lack of a better description, yes."

"And when you kick down the wrong one first, and Vetrov hears about it, and he gets nervous, and he decides she's more trouble than she's worth?" I get to my feet. "Then what, Nik? Then I bury her, and I still hand over the deeds, because I'll have nothing left worth keeping."

"You're assuming he'd—"

"I'm not assuming a fucking thing. That's the entire point of all this bullshit. I'm taking him at his word, because the cost of being wrong is Lilah's life."

He looks at me for a long time. Behind him, the window is fading to pale gray. It's going to be dark soon and she's going to be in that chair another night. I can't stand the thought of it, but I can't do a single thing about it except this.

"You've never played by anyone's rules," Niko says. "Not Dad's. Not the Feds. You're the guy who reads the rulebook and then shits on it."

"I know."

"So why this? Why now?"

I think about how to say it. I've never been good at explaining myself. It's a family trait and I've made it a doctrine, and the one person who ever cracked it isn't here.

"Because I've never had anything I couldn't afford to lose," I say. "Now, I do. Vetrov built a plan around that, and I'm going to play by his rules. I'll hand it over, and say thank you. Whatever gets her out of that basement without a single new mark on her."

"And after?"

"After is after."

Niko's eyes narrow. "Two days," he says again. "I'm begging, brother."

"No."

He takes his hands off the desk, turns, and retreats to the door. But he stops with his hand on the knob.

"For the record," he says without turning around, "she'd tell you to let me look."

"Too bad she doesn't get a vote from a fucking basement."

He nods, just once, and leaves.

I sit back down. I pick up my phone and turn the screen on, and there she is. Chin up. Eyes straight at me. The blood, and the soot, and the apron she was wearing when they took her, still tied around her waist.

Do not lose your shit, Kane.

"Working on it, Lilah," I tell her.

Outside, the last of the daylight goes.