20. Demin
DEMIN
I've waited long enough. Mr. Cruz has been insolent and stubborn, refusing to do anything I've asked him nicely to do, and using Isabela is the only way to get at this fucker and make him work.
He insists that all he wants is to get out of here, which will never happen, and I have to report in to Sebastian soon to let him know where we're at.
So this morning, as I walk toward the basement lab, I'm spinning ideas of just how to make my guest understand the position he's in so I don’t have to do anything I'd rather not do.
I burst into the lab where he sits on a chair with his arms crossed.
Mishka stands in the corner watching the stubborn old fool and nods at me as I walk past. Neither of them says a word, but the tension in the air is palpable.
Mr. Cruz sure knows how to ruffle feathers.
But to his credit, Mishka hasn’t laid a hand on him yet.
Following orders as he's been instructed.
"Mr. Cruz, I expected to see you working by now." He glares up at me as I hover over him speaking his native tongue. By now he's surely picked up a few phrases in Russian, but he has yet to speak in anything but Spanish.
"Go to hell," he grumbles, but I sweep my eyes over the lab. It's all new, pristine condition, the best tech money can buy.
"You've seen the room," I tell him. "There's nothing here Solano gave you that I haven't given you better. Glassware, reagents, ventilation, a chair if your legs get tired. All of it yours. Pick up the work."
"No."
This cocksucker is going to piss me off and when he does, Isabela is not going to like my reaction to it.
When she asked me to promise I wouldn’t kill him, she meant in times like this—when I get angry and he's being stubborn.
She has no clue the cost of business, the pressure on me to make this happen.
"I built this room for you. Do you understand the cost of a room like this? The men I paid, the things I imported, the eyes I bribed shut?"
He doesn't even glance at the bench. "I did not ask you to build it. I want to go home."
"Your daughter—"
"She asked you to free me. Not to move my chain to a colder country." His chin stays up, his jaw set as he glares at me. "If you think better tools can buy my soul, you've wasted your money, Roshin."
I've been patient with this man longer than is even reasonable. He should've had a week's worth of supply made by now but he's pissing me off. My patience is wearing thin.
"You can't keep refusing to work, old man. I could end you, you know?"
"Que te jodan." I’m not fluent enough to know exactly what he means, but I get the picture when he spits on the floor by my boot. "I told you the first day. I will not cook for you. You can stand there until you grow old, Roshin, and you will never make me yield."
He sweeps his arm across the corner of the bench, and a tray of clean glassware slides off the edge and shatters across the floor, beakers and stir rods and a graduated cylinder splintering on the concrete.
I don't even flinch but I do look down at the mess then back up at him. "That was expensive," I say. "If you can't follow my orders, I may have to be unpleasant."
"Then be unpleasant. What is left to take? My freedom? Gone. My country? Gone. My name, my work, the only thing my hands were ever good for, you want to take that too." He's breathing hard, his thin chest heaving. "Shoot me. Go on. A dead chemist makes no poison."
I take him by the front of his shirt and turn him, pinning him against the edge of the steel table. And the message arrives on his face as he begins to understand just how serious I am. His eyes grow wide, and his hands wrap around my wrists.
"You keep talking about what I can take from you," I say, so close to his face, I'm sure he can feel the heat of my breath. "You're thinking about the wrong person. I don't have to touch a hair on your head to make your life unlivable. I have your daughter."
His jaw goes slack as his eyes draw in, and sweat sheens on his forehead.
"Every time you refuse me," I go on, "she's the one who pays for it. Not you. You think you're being a martyr, but she's the one at risk of death."
"You touch my daughter—"
"I've already had her." I smirk at him as he realizes what I'm saying. But I don't let him get a word in. I keep talking so he gets the point. "She's in my bed every night," I tell him. "I own her body, Octavio, and she moans my name. You keep refusing me, and I'll own her soul too."
For a second I think I've broken him. Then he comes off that table with more fight than a man his age should have, twisting in my grip. His hand finds a beaker on the bench behind him and hurls it across the room where it shatters against the far wall.
"?Hijo de puta!" he shouts, now raging mad.
"You are no different! You hear me? You are no different from Solano.
You are worse, because Solano never touched her.
" Tears streak down his cheeks as he batters my chest, though he's so weak he couldn't hurt a fly.
"You are the same animal. The same. You have only learned to smile. "
I pin him back against the table and hold him there. He fights me, but there's no strength left in him, just the rage of an old man's body spending the last of itself. It's humorous for a moment, but something raw drags across my conscience as he screams her name and I shove him back.
What the fuck is happening to me? Isabela is leverage to force this tired old man to do exactly what I want him to do.
Feeling guilt isn't something I do. I use force to get what I want and I don't back down for anyone.
But this man… my God, the way that just stabbed my heart as if I actually fucking care.
"She's safe as long as you cook," I growl, angry with myself for breaking before he did.
"You pick up the tools and do the fucking job, and I don't harm a hair on her head.
" What he doesn't know is that I've just had some stupid revelation myself.
I won't harm her. Even if he refuses to cook, I can't. I don't know why, but I know I can't.
Octavio straightens and turns to the bench.
He sets his shaking hands on the cold steel to steady himself, but he doesn't look at me.
He picks up a flask then sets it down while he ducks his head.
I can see he's going to start moving but it's torturing him.
When he picks up another and starts laying out the things he needs, I know he's finally caving in.
I watch the first careful steps of it, the old motions coming back into those famous fingers, and I should feel nothing but satisfaction.
The thing needed to happen is finally happening.
The investment pays out. Sebastian gets his independent production, and the Roshin Bratva stops bleeding money to a Spanish thug.
It's about fucking time, and I'm glad I don’t have to keep saying her name like a curse in front of this man.
Somehow, it's more confronting to my sense of morality than the idea that I have a mole here betraying me.
She has no clue what torture I've gone through to make myself spit her name like venom, but it's over.
I don't have to hurt her, and I don't have to pretend to her father like I even could. I back away, turning to Mishka, who has watched the whole scene unfold, and feel like things are finally turning the right direction.
The phone in my pocket buzzes before I can chase the thought any further, and I step away from the bench to take it. It's Bart, talking in a clipped tone. He sounds flustered.
"Boss, they hit the Lichtenberg warehouse. Definitely Cartel. Maybe twenty minutes ago."
"How bad?" I'm already moving, gesturing to Mishka to follow. I need to find someone else to stand over this old man because I need my best soldiers on this with me.
"Bad—two of ours dead, Yuri and the new kid.
They torched the product too, Boss. Whole stock, up in smoke.
The crew that did it was gone before the fire crews even rolled.
" He's as angry as I am, and only seconds after I thought I'd be able to rest for a moment.
"This wasn't a warning, Boss. They came for revenge because we took what they want. "
I look back at Octavio, head bent over his work.
"Double the men on the lab," I tell Mishka. "Now. Nobody in or out of this basement who isn't on a list I write myself. The chemist doesn't stop and he doesn't leave that room. Then meet me in the armory."
I take the stairs up two at a time and head for the back of the house, where the armory runs the length of the wall with the racks down both sides.
Mishka comes in behind me a minute later, and Sergei's already in there, checking the load on a rifle when I walk through the door.
I'm still not pleased with the man, but I have no choice but to use him now.
"Lichtenberg's gone," Mishka says, pulling a vest off the wall and tossing it to me. "I've got men headed over to hold what's left, but Bart says there's nothing left to hold. They burned it down to the slab."
I pull the vest on and start working the straps. "We've been a step behind these bastards since Madrid… They're out for blood now and we aren't going to put up with this shit."
Sergei sets the rifle down and looks at me. "You want to hit them back."
"I want to lock down." I take the weapon Mishka hands me and check the action while I run the map of the city in my head. "Every safehouse gets extra men before midnight. Every route changes. I want this whole network shut so tight, the Cartel can't find a soft spot to lean on."
"That's a lot of men spread thin," Sergei says. He's acting smug, like he knows how to run this better than me, and I'm already feeling charged. I have to bite back my temper so we can stay unified.
"Then we spread them thin."
"There's a smarter way." He leans a shoulder on the rack as if he's got any say in this.
"You leave one site light. Make it look easy, like a gift they can't pass up.
Then you pack the building behind it with your best shooters and you wait.
They come for the easy one, you close the door, and you take a dozen of them off the board in a single night.
Beats running yourself ragged, bolting every window in Berlin. "
It's a clean plan, and it would work too, on paper. It would also put most of my best men in one building like sitting ducks. All it would take is one bomb and boom, we're halved.
"No," I tell him. "We don't bunch up. Not while I've still got a leak in this house I haven't found."
I’m no fool. I see the disdain in his eyes as he hears my refusal.
I'm starting to see why this life isn't for Sergei.
He thinks he's better than his leadership, and men like that don’t play by the rules.
It makes my shoulders tense as I wonder how well he'll follow my directives regarding Isabela and whether I need to put more guards on her specifically to keep him away from her.
The fear in her eyes when she told me what he did…
"Your call, Boss." Sergei turns away, but not before I see the glower on his face.
I lock a magazine in place and reach for a second to put in my pocket. "I'm not gambling men I can't replace on a clever idea while I'm half blind to who's selling me out."
Mishka's loading a vest of his own. "I put Tim and Gregov on the lab, Boss." Mishka is quickly becoming the only one in this place I trust fully. I should have always had him playing the role Sergei is playing now, but I had my doubts. Now I have regrets.
"Yeah, the lab is the one place that doesn't get thinned out.
Whatever else we strip down, that basement stays heavy.
" I sling the rifle across my back. "That old man is the whole reason any of this is happening.
If the Cartel ever works out we've got Solano's chemist sitting under my roof, Lichtenberg's going to look like kindness.
Nobody outside this room knows he's down there. Nobody—and I'm not asking."
"Understood," Mishka says.
Sergei nods too, reaching past me for another magazine.
I watch him now with skepticism swelling in my chest. The man's been useful since the day he landed, feeding me intel and working hard.
One simple fuck up and now I'm doubting him. But it wasn’t a small thing he did.
He touched my property. I'm not sure how to feel about that.
"We move in ten minutes," I tell the two of them, pulling a strap tight across my chest. "We're not letting Solano walk away thinking they're winning."
Mishka racks his weapon and gives me a short nod. Sergei rolls his shoulders and pulls a vest down for himself.
"The Cartel thinks we're slow," I say. "They think that because we're new here, but we'll show them—new is not weak. We're going to remind this whole city that we're the ones in charge."
I check the last buckle and turn to walk out.
Two of my men are coming home in boxes tonight as a result of what I did to help Isabela.
Sebastian had to know this was going to happen.
No way in hell the Solano Cartel was going to let us steal their chemist and walk away clean.
We made the first strike in a war we have to fight, because if we don't, Solano's crew is going to wipe the Roshins off the face of the planet and all my hard work will have been for nothing.