Chapter 13 - Konstantin
I raced to my nephew Aleks’s house, where there was a convenient and soundproof shed at the back of the property. Despite the late hour, Aleks met me at the front door and shepherded me toward the back of his palatial mansion.
All of my American family members had done well for themselves when my brother left Moscow to make his mark here before I was even born. Nothing was going to get in the way of their health and happiness if I had anything to say about it.
I breathed in the leftover aroma of a family dinner as we went through the kitchen, and smiled grimly at the toys strewn around the pool. It could have been any family home, albeit someone filthy rich. There was nothing dark about the place until we arrived at the shed.
An incongruous building deep in a copse of palm trees, a guard leaned against the wall until he saw us, then jumped to attention. Aleks waved for him to continue relaxing.
“That one’s not going anywhere,” he said, nodding toward the door of the shed.
I hurried in, worried that if he was too badly injured, I wouldn’t get anything out of him at all. There was a fine line between a prisoner wanting to live through the pain and just giving up and hoping it would end. Somewhere along that border was where we got our answers.
Mat was already in there, incongruously playing a game on his phone while the detainee dozed in the chair he was tied to. Mat greeted me and kicked the chair, causing the man’s lolling head to slowly shake.
After a moment, he looked up and stared blankly at me through eyes that were almost bruised shut. Then recognition had him trying to grin. So, he knew me, but I had no clue who he was.
“Who do you work for?” I asked.
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug that had him wincing. “Already told him that.”
Mat sighed and kicked the chair again. The man remained silent, so Mat filled me in. “He says he works for the Yakuza but won’t name names. Claims he can’t remember. He’s a tough little bastard.”
The man actually nodded in agreement at that until I pulled out my gun and sent it clanging against the side of his head. Not hard enough to knock him out, but enough to rattle a memory loose.
“Tell me about Riku,” I said.
“Doesn’t sound familiar.”
I hit him again. “How about now?”
He said something in Japanese that my rudimentary knowledge of that language couldn’t translate. It had the cadence of an old proverb, and didn’t involve any names I recognized. Then he started singing what sounded like a children’s song.
I turned to Mat, who tried to hide his frustrated laughter. “You had to capture the team’s nutjob?”
He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, you’re the one who just knocked his brains loose. I’ve been avoiding the head.”
“Yeah, looks like you did a great job.”
We both scowled at the battered man until he wore himself out and stopped singing, his chin falling to his chest. Mat apologized for wasting my time, clearly wanting to get back to his wife, CJ, who had come down to LA with him.
“Sorry to interrupt your vacation,” I answered drily.
“I know this is serious,” he said. “We’re not here just to visit, you know. Shit’s happening up in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, too.”
I clapped him on the shoulder and then decided to try something different. Leaning over the bound man, I spoke in a friendly tone. “You can leave here alive, you know. I’m the one you asked to see. Konstantin Fokin. What’s your message for me? Then we can let you go.”
Hey, even the police were allowed to lie during an interrogation.
He slowly raised his head again and spat out a mouthful of blood. Then he started laughing.
“Konstantin. A dead man,” he said through his cackles. “But not before you have to watch it all burn down. Dead, dead, dead.”
“He’s useless,” Mat said.
I had to keep trying. “Tell me what you know about Grigor. Grigor Kanatova.”
The craziness cleared from his eyes, and he stopped laughing. “He’s the reason you’re dead.”
What the hell did that mean? I asked if Grigor was still alive, if he knew his location, if he was working directly with the Yakuza or on his own. The man refused to speak, not even to annoy me with another nursery rhyme, no matter what kind of encouragement we gave him.
Mat was getting pissed off, and I finally called it. “We’re done here. You’re right. He’s useless.”
I followed him outside, where he told the guard to take care of what was left of the prisoner.
The lights from the back of the house and surrounding the pool area were welcoming and bright, and it didn’t seem right to go inside with so much blood on my hands. We paused at the poolhouse to wash up before dragging in the filth of what we did to maintain such a life, and I turned to Mat.
“Can you give this to CJ?” I asked, holding out Tati’s phone.
I had already scoured all the messages, but it didn’t seem feasible that the man who spoke or messaged with her every day had gone radio silent even before he disappeared. Either she had deleted messages, or Grigor had planned his disappearance instead of being grabbed without any warning.
“Sure,” he said, pocketing the phone. “What do you want her to look for?”
CJ was the child of a computer genius who’d thankfully only inherited his ability with code and not his greed. A greed that landed her with Mat, and since they were both stupidly happy together, he could probably be forgiven.
“Anything she can find. It’s Grigor’s daughter’s phone, and something useful might be hiding on there.”
He raised his brows. “How did you get her phone?”
“Never mind about that,” I told him in a tone that had him dropping the subject.
We were both tired from the workout of trying to extract nonexistent answers from a man who’d long ago decided he had nothing to live for and was just out there having fun. He didn’t have any now, if the guard hadn’t already finished him off.
Maybe he went out singing.
“Do you believe what he said about Grigor?” Mat said.
“I don’t know. But I need to find out.”
He looked somewhat sympathetic as he walked with me to the front door. He had only recently come to the US, so he knew Grigor and, like me, thought he could be trusted. He knew what a blow this was. How seriously I was taking it.
Aleks was nowhere in sight. The days of hanging out over a bottle of vodka to discuss our most recent fights were long gone, now that he had a wife and kid. He probably had to drive Alina to school in the morning, since both he and Katie were completely hands-on.
Hell, I used to do the same thing, so I couldn’t blame him. And I had things of my own I needed to get back to.
I thanked Mat for the help and promised a dinner when things were calmer, making both of us laugh. Things were never calm in the Bratva.
As I drove through the hills toward the apartment in the city, I mulled over what the prisoner had said.
Was Grigor the reason I was on the Yakuza hit list? Did the missing messages on Tati’s phone mean she was in on it from the beginning? I meant to get to the bottom of that, but was surprised at the trepidation that was keeping me from not actually wanting to know.
I should have been a lot more angry with her, so why wasn’t I? It was obvious she was hiding something, but what?
With a sigh, I turned up the radio to loud rock music, hoping to drown out my circling thoughts. Trying to ignore the pain of betrayal that I had once vowed would never happen to me again.
There was a time I would have believed my oldest friend through anything, and up until now, I still held a shred of hope that Grigor wasn’t involved.
But after that crazed maniac looked me straight in the eye and told me Grigor was the reason I was a dead man, there wasn’t much room for doubt anymore.
Fuck. It was one thing to steal, but now I didn’t have much choice but to believe that Grigor was responsible for getting me on the wrong side of the Japanese mafia in the first place.
I always thought it was odd that the brief affair with the official’s mistress, which was already over, came to light the way it did.
It certainly wasn’t from her, but Grigor wasn’t the only one who knew about it.
He definitely would have prospered from having me out of the way. All the easier to take over the business we started there?
“Enough,” I said, shutting off the racket from the radio. My head was beginning to pound from the noise and not having any concrete answers.
Yet. It was only a matter of time. If I didn’t want to wait for CJ to dive into Tati’s phone, perhaps I could get answers from Tati herself.
I turned down the back lane that led to the apartment parking garage.
It was still dark out, but the warm edges of dawn were already glowing between the breaks in the closely clustered buildings.
I should storm into the apartment and tear her out of bed to demand answers. I was sick of waiting and wondering. No more nice Kon, the man whom she should have been able to trust. That was a two-way street.
It was only the memory of how afraid she’d been after waking up from her nightmare that had me discarding that plan.
She could sleep in, but I’d be waiting with coffee and questions.
Hell, I was so tired it was going to be hard staying awake in the elevator on my way up.
Let her wait until lunchtime, then, so I could get some sleep as well.
She was mine now, not going anywhere. There was plenty of time to get answers.
Tati consumed my thoughts as I warred with being too soft with her and never wanting to see that look of abject terror on her face again, all because of me.
Hell, I could wait for whatever CJ found and leave Tati alone.
Better for my equilibrium not to get distracted by how damn cute she looked in her homey clothes.
What was happening to me? It didn’t matter fuck all what Tati wore.
As I paused at the security gate at the garage to punch in my code, I let my eyes close for a moment as the door slid slowly open. When I opened them, the guard I had stationed on the inside raised his hand to wave me in.
Before my foot could move to the gas pedal, a shot rang out, and he dropped, but not before I saw a spray of blood and brain go flying out behind him. Wide awake and alert now, I jumped out of the car with my gun drawn, swiveling in the direction of the shooter as two more of my guys came running.
Another shot rang out, and searing pain ripped through my shoulder. I hit the asphalt as bullets flew in every direction.