Chapter 18
VLAD
Jersey blurs past the tinted windows—strip malls, billboards, the occasional diner glowing in the early morning light. I sip a travel mug of black coffee while Dmitri handles the wheel, knifing through traffic with his usual under-the-radar finesse. He glances at the dash GPS, then at me.
“So you’re really pulling the trigger on this place? Six months you’ve kept the cleaning-supply outfit on a string.”
“Time to yank,” I reply, rolling my shoulders. “We need a legit interstate warehousing license on this side of the river. Their footprint works.”
“And you just woke up this morning suddenly decisive.” Dmitri flicks his turn signal. “Something in the coffee?”
“Something in the math. Not to mention an email from the owner letting me know he was motivated to sell ASAP.”
“And the girl?” Dmitri asks.
“Teresa stays at the center of the circle, whether we like it or not,” I tell him. “The more fortified we look, the harder it is for Volkov to flank us.”
He grunts. “Full Bratva shield around a single woman. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Neither did I.”
Up ahead sits a beige warehouse surrounded by chain-link and nothing else. No delivery vans, no smokers on a break, just empty asphalt shimmering underneath the weak winter sun.
“Where’s the crew?” Dmitri mutters at the same time my phone buzzes with a text from Ralph Gambini, the owner.
In back loading bay. Door’s up.
That’s odd. It’s nine in the morning and weekday shipments should be rolling. I scan the lot—no tire tracks in the thin icing of salt dust. “Something’s off.”
Dmitri unclips his seat belt. “You want to reschedule?”
“Let’s check the place out first but be careful about it.” I thumb the safety on my SIG.
Dmitri releases the safety on his own weapon. We step out, the Jersey air hitting cold and sterile. The back of my neck prickles the way it does when my instincts are on high alert.
“Eyes open,” I say, moving toward the side gate. “If Gambini’s playing games, we end them fast.” The chain-link creaks under Dmitri’s push, and we slip inside, two shadows hunting answers in plain daylight.
The warehouse sits at the far edge of an industrial cul-de-sac, low and unremarkable—exactly the kind of place that should hum with forklifts and curse words at nine a.m. on a weekday.
Instead the yard is empty. We approach the bay door.
The air smells of diesel, and a forklift idles in the corner, engine still warm. Someone left in a hurry.
Boot prints track through the thin coat of salt dust—four sets, angling toward the pallet maze. I tap Dmitri’s elbow and point two o’clock. He nods, taking the near flank while I ease left. My finger rests along the side of the SIG’s trigger guard.
The trap springs in a screech of metal as the loading door slams down behind us. Lights snap off, emergency floor strips glowing blood-red.
Muzzle flashes strobe from the mezzanine. Bullets ping off pallet racks, shredding shrink wrap and powder detergent. I shove Dmitri behind a tower of bleach jugs, returning fire upward in measured bursts to keep their heads down.
“Four shooters,” Dmitri calls over the ricochet whine. “Two high, two low.”
“Copy.” I shoot out a hanging work light and glass rains down, giving us more shadow.
Dmitri crawls under the forklift chassis, popping up on the other side.
Two quick cracks from his pistol and one ground-level hitter folds, crimson blooming against white plastic drums. I switch to the catwalk, line up a silhouette framed in a red glow, and double-tap center mass.
The body topples through the rail, slamming onto cardboard below.
A pump-action roars from my blind side. Dmitri intercepts, wrenching the shotgun upward, the blast punching the ceiling tiles. He buries a knife in the shooter’s kidney, jerk-twists, and drops him.
That leaves one—their overwatch on the catwalk.
I sprint up the side stairs, boots hammering steel.
The shooter swings his sub gun and rounds tear into the guardrail.
One clips my vest, bruising ribs. Pain spreads, but I drive into him, shoulder first, both of us slamming against the railing. The gun skitters away.
Up close I notice the twin wolf tattoo curling up his neck. I pause. Where the hell have I seen such a mark before? Recognition flares white-hot. The gala. This mark was on one of the assassins.
I slam the man’s wrist into the rail until bone cracks and yank off his balaclava.
“Who paid you?” I snarl.
He spits blood. “None of your goddamn business.” His accent is Baltic. He sneers at me. Then he makes a mistake. He goes for a knife at his heel.
I snap his wrist. He tries to curse, but I squeeze the trigger. The shot is muffled in the cavernous dark.
Silence settles, broken only by distant drips coming through the roof. Dmitri drags bodies to one corner and checks pulses, but they’re all dead. He radios cleanup. “Black-bag team, four specials,” followed by the address.
Dmitri notes my shredded vest edge. “You’re hit?”
“Just a scratch.” I grin. The bruise is already blooming, but bone is intact. I take photos of the wolf tattoo, along with the shell casings with distinctive green primer.
Baltic supplier. Volkov’s favorite.
Evidence.
“What about Gambini?” Dmitri asks, scanning the area for more surprises.
“Either he sold us out or got scared off.” I pocket the burner. “Either way, deal’s dead. Burn his operations, transfer the DOT license to our own LLC. He wants to take it up in court, let him try. Otherwise, I’m considering this payment for trying to have me killed.”
Dmitri nods. We holster our weapons and step out to the dock.
Cleanup rolls in with clinical precision—three vans, no logos, men in charcoal coveralls moving like a pit crew from hell.
They lay plastic runners, photograph every shell casing, then start sealing bodies in black plastic cocoons.
A portable pump hisses, vacuuming bleach and blood into steel drums labeled “Industrial Solvent.” In twenty minutes the place will look like nothing happened but a pallet spill.
Dmitri stands beside me on the loading dock, sleet peppering his shoulders. “That wolf tattoo and the Baltic ammo. All roads point to Aleksander.”
“It’s looking that way. But then again, this could be bigger than one grieving psychopath.”
The coverall team wheels the last body past us, an antiseptic odor trailing behind. A tech snaps the overhead door back up, letting dawn light spill across the cleaned floor, the scent of bleach now the only proof of disturbance.
“I could kill him,” I say to the air.
“Severing ties won’t be simple,” Dmitri says. “Kill Volkov outright and every mid-level client starts wondering if we’ll turn on them, too.”
“Not to mention that I don’t know for sure if it’s him behind this bullshit.”
“You start assassinating, you start making people nervous. Not—”
“Good for business,” I finish. Dmitri chuckles.
I grind my heel on salt dust. “All the same, we need to know what the hell is going on, find out who just tried to have us killed. Might be Volkov, might not.” I nod toward the van door closing on the wrapped up bodies.
“But we need hard evidence—financial trails, message logs, anything that shows Volkov’s behind this. ”
Dmitri watches the vans pull away, taillights blinking through fog. “So we dig. Follow the money, follow the guns, follow everything.”
“And we keep Teresa locked down,” I add. “If Volkov wants revenge, I’m going to make it very, very hard for him.”
He smirks, the cool air turning his breath to smoke. “Never thought I’d see you playing white knight.”
“Survival,” I say, stepping down to the lot. “And maybe something more.” The wind cuts sharp, but purpose burns hotter.
The deeper we dig, the messier this will get, but credibility is a currency, and I intend to spend it only if it guarantees the Angeloff’s stay on top.
And Teresa stays breathing.