Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Giovanni
The tea shop is quiet at this hour. I have taken the table at the back, against the wall, where I can see the door, and the door cannot surprise me.
Kirill comes in alone in a long coat. The bell over the door rings, and he does not so much as flick his eyes toward it.
He scans the place in an unhurried pass: the counter, the two exits, the table I have chosen, then comes over to me, pulls out the chair across from me, and lowers himself into it.
“Pakhan,” I say. “Good to meet you.”
“How did you get my private number?”
I grin and pour him a cup. The steam rises between us. He watches the tea fill the cup. He does not reach for it.
“What about Yana?”
I keep pouring. My grip tightens on the pot’s handle, but I make my hand loosen before it shows.
Why is he asking about her? Isn’t she just one of his many bodyguards?
He has a wife and a son. And yet one of the first things out of his mouth across a table sounds like I am holding a precious asset. A woman like her does not let a man stay neutral about her. It seems not even a man like Kirill.
Is this why her body struggles to accept me?
I set the pot down and made my face pleasant.
“She is fine.”
He sits back. His hands fold loosely on the table. He has not touched the tea.
“So why am I here? I’ll hand you the access in under two weeks. We have nothing to discuss.”
He came just because he was worried about her? Good gracious, Lupa, you seem to have your way with men’s minds.
I lift my own cup and drink. Through the window, I can see two of his men loitering near my car, a third further down the street with his hands in his pockets, and a sedan idling at the curb that is not mine. He came ready. I grin because I would have thought less of him if he hadn’t.
“Yana has been trying to cut a deal on your behalf,” I say. “Did you know that? Even with a gun to her head, she negotiates for you. She asked us to split the routes.” I let the smile widen. “She is very loyal. I wonder how to get that type of loyalty. I envy you, Pakhan.”
How do I make her loyal to me? Her body, her soul… her heart. How do I make it only me?
He studies my face line by line but says nothing.
“I need your help,” I say.
He laughs. It’s a short exhale through the nose.
“Why would I help you? You strong-armed me into a deal at gunpoint with my wife and son’s lives.” His voice doesn’t rise. “Do you imagine I don’t hold a grudge?”
I drink my tea.
“I think my second has been compromised.”
The air in the room changes. He doesn’t move, but something behind his eyes sharpens. He knows what those words cost a man like me to say out loud. For us, the second is the left arm. If the left arm has turned, you are already sabotaged, and the only question left is how much.
He shrugs, a slow roll of one shoulder.
“Why come to me? For all you know, I could be the one colluding with him.”
I nearly laugh into the cup. Fabiano would open his own throat before he sat at a table with a Russian.
Whatever he is doing, he is doing it with an Italian family power behind him, one of the old families or several, the ones who never forgave me for taking a seat I wasn’t born to.
He would never go against me without that backing, which makes Kirill, whom Fabiano holds in open contempt, the cleanest pair of hands in the city.
“You’re not,” I say. “I’m certain of that. Which is why I’m asking you.”
“And why,” he says, turning his cup a quarter-turn on the saucer without lifting it, “would I do you any favors at all?”
I set my own cup down.
“I was never meant to be Don,” I say.
His eyes come up off the cup.
“My family has no history in this. We are not blooded. There is no name behind me that any of the old houses respect. I clawed my way to this seat through a great deal of blood, and I held it by making allies of the families who could have crushed me if they had felt like it. I gave them favors. I did the dirty work, and they trusted me because I owed them; that arrangement has kept me standing for three years.”
I hold his gaze.
“I did all of it for one reason. One person.”
“My sister.”
He leans in, just slightly, his forearms settling on the table.
“Aren’t you anxious,” he says, almost gently, “that I might hurt her? You’ve kept her a secret this long.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I know you won’t.” I let the smile come back, smaller now. “You took an unfair deal to protect your family. You are not the kind of man who pokes the one person who could erase his own. You won’t touch my sister. You wouldn’t take the risk.”
He nods, conceding the read.
“I have no reason to target your family,” he says. “So why am I here, Mondi?”
“You may know this, or you may not,” I say.
“My sister is ill. She has been for years. Yana suspects the illness isn’t natural.
And I have come to suspect my second is making arrangements behind my back.
” I turn my cup on its saucer, the same gesture he made, and I see him notice it.
“I think the two things are one thing. Yana saw Fabiano at the gallery, walking a man out to a car. A doctor I have been trying to reach for a long time. Fabiano was taking him away without my knowledge.”
“What doctor?”
I tell him the name.
“He takes five consultations a year,” I say. “By gift. You earn his attention with art. It is the only door in.”
Kirill shakes his head slowly. Something close to amusement touches his mouth and does not stay.
“No,” he says. “That isn’t how he works.
He takes patients by invitation. He reviews the case and decides.
No gifts or auctions or paintings.” He picks up his tea now, at last, and drinks, watching me over the rim.
“He set my arm once, a break I took on a job, and there was no gifting involved. I paid him well; he is one of the best.”
I look at him for a long moment.
He is not lying. Which means everything I have ever been told about reaching that doctor — the art, the auctions, the five a year, the impossible little rituals — every word of it reached me through one set of hands. The same hands that have managed all the correspondence.
Fabiano. Fabiano has been lying to me about reaching the doctor.
“It’s settled, then,” Kirill says, setting the cup down. “Your capo is playing you for a fool.” A pause. “Yana doesn’t lie. If she saw him, she saw him.”
I sit up straighter.
“I need your help to protect my sister.”
His eyebrows lift a fraction.
“If Fabiano has turned on me,” I say, “he has not done it alone. He has families behind him. I have some support, but some of them have wanted me out of this seat from the day I took it, and now, they have found a man on the inside who will help them take me out.” I keep my voice level.
“I cannot fight all of them. I have allies, and I have my men, but the moment Fabiano declares war openly, with powerful backing, half of those allies will look at the math and step back. They will not die for me.”
I knew a day like this would come; that’s why I stayed useful to the families. I expected it five or ten years down the line, not so soon.
“They will not let my sister live, Pakhan, as long as I am breathing. They know that as long as she is in the world and I am in the world, I will come for them. So, they will come for her first.” I drink.
The tea is cooling. “I need her safe and hidden somewhere they cannot reach. If they take me out tomorrow, I will go down fighting to the last man, and I will take as many of them with me as I can. I can swallow many things, Don. What I cannot is my sister being touched. But I need to know, before any of that happens, that she is somewhere your name protects her.”
He sits very still.
“And in return?” he says.
“I will give you access to the Italian priority routes.”
His thumb stops on the rim of his cup.
The priority routes are not cargo routes or territory routes.
They are the channels for the specialized ammunition, the manufacture of which the Italian families have kept sealed behind their own walls for generations.
No Russian house has ever been permitted near them.
Many families let Russians in for cargo, for cash, for political cover, but no Russian in living memory has ever been given priority routes.
That is the line. I am offering to cross it.
I knew before I said it that he could not let it walk past him.
He is quiet for a long moment. His thumb moves once along the rim of the cup.
“Yana,” he says. “Is she all right?”
I stiffen before I can stop it.
“I am offering you a once-in-a-lifetime arrangement,” I say, “and you ask after your staff?”
He looks at me.
He looks at me for a long second, the kind of look that has a shape to it.
“I see the question you are not asking, Don.”
My jaw tightens. I do not move.
“Yana is a loyal worker,” he says, “but a worker, nonetheless. I have a wife. I have a son. I have no such designs on her, nor have I ever. She is not in my bed and never has been. Whatever you have built up in your head, lay it down.”
Something inside my chest unclenches.
I keep my face exactly where it is.
“I have no idea what you are saying, Pakhan.”
The corner of his mouth lifts.
The grin settles in. He is enjoying himself.
“Of course, you don’t.”
He drinks the last of his tea. He sets the cup down with a small click.
“All right. Your sister. Done. The priority routes for the trouble.” He spreads his hands.
“And one more thing,” I ask.
“What?”
“I need some of your men to track Fabiano. He must have compromised most, if not all, of my men.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trap, Don? I hear your ways are…” he pauses, “interesting.”
“You don’t,” I say. “You take the bet.”
I stand. I button my jacket.
“Think it over. Let me know.” I let the smile return. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”
I stand to pass him.
He lifts his cup, finds it empty, and sets it back down. Then he stands, and he is at my height.
“How could I resist such a deal?”
He puts out his hand.
“Che questi affari siano piacevoli,” he says in Italian. May this partnership be pleasurable.
The Italian is rough in his mouth; it’s a courtesy and a small flex at once.
I take his hand. His grip is dry.
“Sì,” I answer.