Chapter 37
VLAD
An hour earlier…
“Ten minutes,” Dmitri says.
Snow needles the windshield in thin white diagonals, the wipers keeping time like a tired metronome.
Dmitri drives with one hand, the other loosely covering the weapon on his thigh, eyes in constant motion.
Midtown is a grid of wet neon and slush, cabs hissing by, their taillights smeared into red commas.
My phone sits face-down on my knee. No reply from Teresa. No ping from the shadow team upstairs at the penthouse.
Anger moves through me like a cold current—steady, controlled, lethal. I cap it and press down hard. As much as I want to cut a bloody swath across the city to find her, rage won’t do me any good. I need information.
Our destination is the Reynolds Hotel, one of those discreet places with doormen who pretend not to see things, where the flower arrangements are always perfect and no one asks for a last name if you tip well enough.
Our contact is exactly where he said he would be, at the back corner of the mezzanine lounge, a drink in hand, luggage at his feet. Volkov’s money man. I’ve seen him behind Aleksander’s shoulder during quarterly meetings and at charity balls drinking champagne bought with blood money.
Tonight he looks tightly wound, like sleep hasn’t found him in weeks. Good. Fear encourages honesty.
He's one of my few contacts in Volkov’s empire, always willing to trade a little intel for a little kickback. And I just so happened to catch him on what appears to be his last day in the city.
Dmitri peels off to sweep the room while I cross to the corner. The money man’s eyes track my approach. He doesn’t stand.
“Angeloff,” he says dryly. “Part of me wondered if I’d merely be the first casualty in what appears to be an imminent war.”
“Nothing that dramatic. Just here for information.” I sit.
“In person,” he says. “This is unusual.”
Up close, the tells of his anxiety are apparent. A micro-tremor in his hand. A deep breath that fails to land. His watch is an old Patek—family piece, not flashy. Everything about him is quiet but expensive.
He’s nervous.
Dmitri takes the neighboring table as I begin our discussion. “You’re leaving New York. Why?”
He lifts his glass then sets it down without drinking. “War means Volkov is going to close ranks, applying scrutiny that he hasn’t before—scrutiny I won’t pass.”
“Well then. You’ll miss your flight if you dodge my questions,” I say. “You’ll miss more than that if you lie.”
“And if I tell you the truth?”
I nod to Dmitri. He opens his coat just a bit, enough to expose an envelope stuffed with hundreds. “A little traveling money.”
A sour smile touches his mouth. “Good. Going to be hard to start over.” He sighs.
“Then get to it. Tell me what you know about Teresa, where I can find her.”
He exhales, a clipped, tired sound. “I warned him. Repeatedly. About the girl.”
I say nothing.
“The fact of the matter is that the Bureau has been looking for leverage on Aleksander for years,” he continues. “You know this. His legitimate revenue has bled into his other streams. He’s sloppy when he’s angry. Teresa…” He hesitates, frowning.
“Go on,” I say.
“You go after a woman like that, an innocent, they have reason to look under every floorboard. I’ve told him this. I’ve told him a dozen times. He wouldn’t hear it.” He flinches.
“He never hears anything he doesn’t want to.”
“True,” he says. He glances at Dmitri, then back to me. “He’s also not the one running the show anymore.”
“And you know who is.”
He goes very still. He did not expect me to accept the premise so quickly. “I do,” he says quietly, as if ashamed, “Because I was her fool.”
“Her?”
“Trina.”
“Trina.” Of course.
“For over a year. Maybe more if you count the flirtations that masquerade as business. She told me I was essential. That I understood the numbers better than anyone. She called late. She called early. She asked for my counsel and then ignored it when it conflicted with her plans.” He laughs once, short and sharp.
“And she offered more than just a position in her new empire.”
The implication is clear. “Charming.”
“Can you blame me?” He shrugs. “She’s a beautiful woman. Smart, too. And—”
“Ambitious,” I finish.
He nods. “This war, it’s her making. She’s planning on using it to knock a few pieces off the board, take control.
And it just might work if all goes according to plan.
Me? I’ll be watching from a comfortable distance someplace where gray isn’t the dominant color.
” He gestures toward the window, toward the slate sky and dirty slush on the city streets.
“Go on.”
“Turns out, I wasn’t the only one she’d been charming.
She’ll sleep with anyone who moves the needle,” he says simply.
“Inside the family, outside it, across the river, across the ocean. It isn’t about sex.
It’s about leverage. She promises a slice to one, a future to another, and the satisfaction of revenge to a third.
She’s getting everything in order so when she takes power, it’s legitimate.
Or, it’ll at least look that way.” He’s quiet for a beat.
“And then she tried to kill me. Almost succeeded, too.”
“And now you feel sorry for Teresa,” I conclude.
“She doesn’t deserve any of this,” he says.
“But Trina’s been playing her for years, using her loneliness and isolation to create a false friendship.
For all our sins, there are lines. A murder like that is not only going to bring war, but it’ll also bring the law.
I told Aleksander the girl would bring the Feds through his doors.
He doesn’t care. The only thing he gives a shit about is revenge. ”
My jaw flexes. “You know what’s happening to her now?”
He looks away. Not in denial but out of guilt. “I know enough.”
“Say it.”
“Teresa’s the match,” he says. “Trina will strike her against Aleksander’s temper until the powder catches. And when it does…” He raises both hands, spreading his fingers. “Everything burns.”
Dmitri shifts at the next table, adjusting his knife sheath beneath his jacket. He doesn’t interrupt.
“Your timing is convenient,” I say.
“I’m not here to beg forgiveness. I’m here because I told the old man not to do this. He’s going to die anyway. Someone should try to save the girl.”
“Someone. Not you.”
“I’m not built for your kind of rescue,” he says. No shame in it. Just fact.
“Your affair with Trina,” I say, “was what? An intellectual exercise?”
“A professional miscalculation,” he corrects. He looks away and shakes his head, as if he realizes it was merely one of many small decisions that have led to this moment. “And let’s be honest. I wouldn’t mind seeing you take her down. Surviving an attempted murder will have that effect.”
“Then let’s cut to the chase. Tell me everything you know.”
“The plan is not just about Teresa. It’s also about Aleksander.”
“To kill him.”
“To make room,” he says, his hands now steady.
“She’ll kill him, which will leave nearly everything to her.
No Maxim, no heir, means she’s next in line.
But there’s still the matter of the Winslow holdings.
He was only ‘taking care of them,’ even though he had no intention of giving them back.
But if he dies, that complicates things. ”
“Meaning, the holdings go to Teresa and her brother.”
“Exactly. But with no Teresa and Jack on her side, she’ll be able to conquer it all.”
“And take the throne,” I finish.
The money man nods. I sit back, letting the geometry redraw itself in my head until the lines straighten and the angles make sense. The park ambush. The gala. Everything’s been about either trying to kill me, Teresa, or setting up a war.
“Why tell me all this?” I ask. “Why not just leave?”
He shrugs. “I haven’t led a very good life. But if I can give you a little information that saves the life of an innocent young woman and prevents a bloody war… maybe that’s something.”
“A little absolution on the way out the door.”
He grins. “And a little revenge. Listen, I don’t expect my soul to be cleansed. But maybe I’ll sleep a little better.”
“Proof,” I say. “Give me something to go on.”
He taps his phone and angles it toward me. Messages. Calendar entries. A photograph, grainy and dark, of an ambulance idling by a side gate. A location pin. A note with one word: tonight.
“The fact that they’ve kidnapped her means the plan’s already in motion,” he says, his voice quiet but sure. “That girl? She’s not supposed to live past midnight. Neither is Aleksander. Both are to be erased in one stroke.”
Dmitri leans forward. “Where?”
The money man exhales. “The Volkov mansion. Aleksander’s already there. They’ll call it a family purge. Tie up the old man’s grudges, crown the new heirs. They both die.”
For a moment, all I can see is Teresa’s hand on her stomach, the way her thumb traced slow circles over a life not yet born.
My attention returns to the man when he says, “They’ll play it smart, too. Make it look like Volkov died while trying to kill Teresa, a misfired gun, perhaps. It’s all bullshit, and the board will likely know it. But they’ll swallow the lie in order to keep things running.”
The money man gathers his bag and checks his watch.
“Whatever’s coming, it gets decided tonight,” he says.
“If Trina gets her way, Aleksander will be dead. Teresa too. And you… you might be left alive. Left to watch the Feds and your enemies eat away at what you’ve built until there’s nothing left. ”
He rises and extends his hand to Dmitri, who flicks his eyes toward me. I nod, and Dmitri hands the money man his envelope. A small price to pay for information that could save Teresa’s life.
The man pockets the envelope with no pretense of shame. At the door, he pauses, glancing back one last time. “Good luck, Angeloff,” he says. “You’ll need it.” He turns and walks out.
Dmitri’s eyes find mine, cold steel under dim light. “Trina.”
He doesn’t have to say more.
Dmitri scrapes his chair back and drops into the seat across from me, passing me a small piece of paper filled with numbers he jotted while the man talked, dates, the outline of a shape we both recognize.
“You think he’s lying?” Dmitri asks.
“Not tonight. Tonight he wants a clean getaway.”
Dmitri grunts. “Trina lit the fuse, not the old man.”
“Trina handed him the match and the powder,” I say. “He supplied the blind rage. Trina couldn’t have done it without him.”
Dmitri studies my face. “We move.”
“We move,” I agree, standing. The heated anger from earlier is gone; what’s left is colder and more useful. “Gather the men. I want an army. Our target is the Volkov mansion.”
We head for the lobby. Out on the curb, the doorman raises a hand to signal the valet to bring our car around. It quickly arrives.
Dmitri at the wheel, we pull into the river of cars, headlights ghosting through snow. Somewhere across the city, the woman I love is being fitted into someone else’s plan. Somewhere else, a girl I once watched grow up is planning to make a king bleed so she can sit in his chair.
Aleksander thinks he’s in control. He has no idea.
I take out my phone, typing one word to the team leaders, the only word that matters now.
War.