14. Demin
DEMIN
In all my years, I've never had to deal with an insider selling me out. It's enough that Bart and Mishka know. If it's one of them, I'm fucked. But if it's not and whoever is doing this finds out they know, they could have targets on their backs.
When someone on the inside is moving against you, you can't take any chances.
It's why my phone rings through to a number I haven't used in years.
An old friend who was once in the inner circle and walked away when it was time to retire.
Some people, including my uncle, had their doubts about his loyalties, but I never did.
And today, that confidence in him might just save my ass.
"Demin Roshin." Sergei Kalenov sounds amused already. It's been years since we've spoken, but I'd never forget the tone of voice he uses when he's at ease. "Either someone's dead, or someone's about to be. Which is it?" He chuckles, but this is no laughing matter, and he'll soon find that out.
"Neither. Yet." I lean back in my chair, keeping my voice quiet so the men outside my door don't hear me. "I have a situation, Sergei. The kind I can't hand to anyone inside my own house."
The amusement drains out of his voice immediately. "You're saying you've got a leak?" Sergei was the best enforcer my family ever had. When he set it all down and walked away, some men never forgave him for that. Maybe he's the exact person I need to hire to help me with this little problem.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying we ran a job two nights ago and they knew we were coming…" It still sits wrong with me, but I'm actively taking steps to fix this issue before Sebastian finds out and I have to own up to the shame of it.
Sergei whistles quietly. "So you have a mole?"
"I need your help."
He sighs and I hear his knuckles cracking. "That sounds like a lot of shit to be shoveling, Dem…"
"That's why I can't use my own people to fix it.
Whoever it is sees me looking, they go underground, or worse, they make a move I don't see coming.
I need a man with no stake in any of it—someone I can depend on.
" Sergei has to get my point now. The people around me aren't credible. Everyone is a suspect at this point.
"I'm retired, Demin," he says. "I got out of that game a long time ago… I have new life now, man."
"I know."
"I fix boats now. I have a dog." He chuckles again, though I highly doubt a trained killer like himself hasn't dabbled a bit. Once sin is in you, you never get rid of it.
"Bring the dog."
He laughs at that, and I know I have him. "Berlin," he says. "That's where you are now?"
The amount of relief I feel is ridiculous. I'd like to think Mishka or Bart could help me root this out, but on the chance they're a part of this, I can't take the risk.
"So you'll come?"
"You know you're my brother, Dem. I've got you."
"I'll have a car meet you at the airport, no names on it, nothing that ties back to the family.
You'll come in as private security I hired off a recommendation, somebody to tighten up the house.
Nobody needs to know what you really are or what you're really doing here.
" I lean forward. "How fast can you move? "
I'm no fool. Mishka and Bart may well remember him and they might know exactly why I've hired him, though they’ll never know he's doing countersurveillance.
"I can be there day after tomorrow." He pauses, clearing his throat. "Demin, if I find it, and it's high up, you understand what that means. I'm not gonna soften this for you because you don't like who I find."
I've thought of that, and I'm not fond of that idea, that one of my most trusted men may be double-crossing me. But a traitor is a traitor. As much as it may hurt to see them put down, I'll have to do it.
"If I wanted it softened, I'd have called someone else." I close my eyes a moment. "Find me the truth, Sergei. Whatever it costs. I'll deal with it once I know."
"Day after tomorrow," he says, and the line goes dead.
With that worked out, I know my next order of business.
Sebastian wants this new operation up and running in just over a week and I've not gotten anywhere with my new chemist. My gut tells me Isabela is just being soft on him, and I want to test what his limits are.
I know as well as anyone that it's sometimes necessary to apply pressure, but I have to be careful or that old man will snap.
Octavio's room is dim when I let myself in, the old man sitting up in bed with the tray still mostly untouched beside him.
He watches me come in warily, fear in his eyes while I assess him.
When Isabela spoke to him in that compound, she spoke in Spanish, and Dr. Weber says he doesn't speak a lick of English or German, so I can assume he knows no Russian either.
It's good for him that from working deals out with the Solanos, I know a good amount of Spanish now.
"We haven't spoken properly," I say, pulling the single chair around and sitting where he can see me. "You and I…" His face shows only a hint of surprise, probably at my Spanish. "So I'll do you the courtesy of being plain, which is more than Solano ever gave you, I'd guess."
The man is a mute, stoically watching me. Though his eyes darken a little, like he's hardening his resolve inwardly to resist my requests.
"Two nights ago, I sent eleven men into a Cartel compound to pull you out of it.
I spent money most men never see in a lifetime.
I took a bullet in my own side." I tap my ribs once.
"I did that so you and your daughter would no longer belong to Javier Solano.
That part is done. You're out. He'll never touch either of you again. "
"And now," Octavio says quietly, "you'll tell me the price." He lifts his chin indignantly, the same gesture I've seen on his daughter dozens of times already in the two weeks I've known her. She looks and acts so much like him.
If he has half the fire she has, I'm probably going to end up at a loss here.
"Now I tell you the price." I meet his eyes without flinching.
It's always obvious when a man has worked with men like me before.
He's got a spine, but he understands the costs.
He's not negotiating with me. He's testing his chain, like a pit bull who runs to the end only to be jerked back.
Octavio Cruz wants to know where the chain ends and the beatings start.
"You cook for me the same way you did for Solano, except you'll be fed properly, housed properly, and treated like a man instead of an animal. Your daughter stays safe and comfortable under my roof. You grow old somewhere warm with the knowledge that your family is protected."
"No." He doesn't even wait a full second before answering me, and his eyes lock on the only window in this room, as if he's escaping the prison I'm keeping him in by simply seeing the sky.
"Think carefully before—"
"I have thought." He may be a frail old man physically, but he is one stubborn son of a bitch.
"All my life, since the day Solano found out what my hands could do, I have belonged to someone.
I have made poison for men who beat me. They threatened my daughter and took everything I was and ground it down to a recipe.
" He lifts his chin again. "I am an old man.
I have not many years left, and I won't spend them doing the only thing in my life I am ashamed of, no matter how soft the bed is. "
Sitting back, I study his defiance. I'd be lying if I said some part of me didn't respect it. It's the same iron that runs through Isabela, a refusal to bend that's been making my life difficult since she snuck into my life.
"I admire the speech," I tell him. "I do. But admiration means nothing in my world. I need a chemist, and you owe me a great debt." When I sit back, folding my hands carefully over my lap, he stiffens. "And perhaps your daughter will be the real victim here if I don't get payment."
Something flickers in his eyes, fear for the first time, but it isn't fear for himself. I see exactly where it goes, and I file it away. This is useful information.
"You would threaten my daughter," he says, but his voice is more of a growl. As if he can actually do anything to me right now. Some frail old man is the least of my worries.
"I'm telling you that everything in this house has a cost," I say, standing, "and that refusing me has one too.
I'd rather it didn't come to anything ugly.
That's up to you more than it's up to me.
" I push the chair back where it was. "Eat your food, Octavio.
Think it over with a clear head. The offer stands a while longer, but I won't wait forever. "
When I leave his room, he's still staring out that damn window, watching the sun set over the Moskva River.
One way or another, he's going to be useful.
If he won't cook, his formula can easily be given to another chemist and Octavio disposed of.
I really would rather avoid that, since my zeal for his beautiful daughter would certainly be hindered.
But it is what it is. I don't have an emotional attachment—or at least not one I can't easily get over if she has to be removed too.
Isabela's already at the table when I come down to dinner, sitting stiffly in the chair to my left with a plate in front of her she's barely touched.
She's wearing the dark dress Danya laid out, her hair down, the bruises on her face nearly gone now.
She looks up when I come in and then quickly back down at her plate with indignation in her eyes.
"You spoke to him," she says coldly. Someone must've told her where I was and why I've been delayed.
"I did." I sit, shaking out my napkin, nodding for Danya to pour the wine.
"He turned me down… The stubborn old mule.
The Cruz family sure has a knack for that.
" The food smells delicious, but my thoughts immediately go to her.
I've been craving her again, letting my thoughts linger on how amazing that shower encounter was.
"Because we know right from wrong." Her hands are knotted in her lap.
"What happens now?" Still she doesn't look up at me.
I can see the same beaten-down expression on her face that Octavio had.
Both of them have been mules for so long, they don't know what true freedom is.
It's easy to push them, though they fight back, but like lambs to the slaughter, they will follow the path of least resistance.
I wait while Danya finishes pouring and slips out, and then I give it to her straight. She seems to appreciate being blunt with me, so I can return that favor. Besides, I'm not playing games anymore.
"Now we have a problem," I say. "Your father's the only thing that made this whole venture worth the time and money it cost. Without him cooking, I've spent a fortune and bled my men to bring a stubborn old man across a border for nothing.
On top of that, I've made an enemy of Solano in the process.
That's not a position I can afford to sit in.
" I take a slow sip of the wine. "Your father needs to be convinced.
And the person who can convince him isn't me. It's you."
"I already told you I won't—"
"I know what you told me." I set the glass down and give her a stern look.
"I'm telling you what happens if you don't." Isabela's eyes flash with fire, but I continue.
"First, he will be tortured, and then you will be tortured in front of him.
And then you will die, and if that still doesn't work, he will be forced at gunpoint to deliver his full formula, and then he will die. "
She's gone pale, her breath coming faster. It really sounds harsher than it will be. Octavio will fold the instant I raise a knife to her in any way. He'll never let her be taken, but it's honestly easier for me if she does this.
"There's another way," she says, quietly.
"Let me talk to him. Not to make him cook—to give you the formula.
He could write it down, every step, every measurement, and you find another chemist—someone who already does this for a living.
He's spent thirty years perfecting it, but it's just chemistry, Demin.
Another set of hands could follow his notes.
He'd give me that. I know he would. He could be free, and you'd still have what you actually want, which is the product, not the man. "
It's a good try. It's clever, and it's exactly the kind of thing she would land on, looking for the door that lets everyone walk away whole. For half a second, I almost wish I could give it to her.
"No," I say.
"Why not? You'd have the formula—"
"Because a formula on paper is worth a fraction of the man who wrote it.
" I won't even bargain with her. "Solano had your father's notes.
They had the formula and they still couldn't let him go because the difference between his hands and another man's reading his notes is the difference between product I can sell at the top of the market and product I can't move at all. "
"Then take me… Keep his formula, let him show you how to do it…
Keep me and let him go." Her lip trembles.
It's so sweet of her to offer herself to me, as if I don't already own every part of her, including that body she's trying to trade.
I'd take this trade in a heartbeat if it wouldn't be showing weakness, which my men would shun.
God, do I want to. It's tempting, but I can't.
"No." I say it bluntly, so she gets the point. I'll have her anyway, and this way, I get the chemist I want too.
The hope drains out of her face, and rage takes its place.
She pushes back from the table, scraping the chair legs on the flooring.
"Then we're done talking," she says, standing.
"I'm not going to terrorize my own father for you.
Find another way, or don't, but I won't be your tool to do it.
" She turns as if she'll walk away, and I rise to my feet.
"Sit down. We're not finished."
"We're finished," she spits, glaring at me. "And don't fucking talk to me again."
When she storms off, I let her go, knowing Mishka stands outside the door ready to escort her the rest of the way to my bed where she'll be waiting for me when I retire.
And when I sit to enjoy my dinner, seeing she hasn't touched hers, I know eventually, I'll break them both. I just have to be patient.
And I have to hope Sebastian will be patient with me. Because it might take longer than the eight days I have left to meet his deadline.