4. Rashid
RASHID
Nobody in this building wants to be near me tonight, and that's the smartest decision any of them have made in weeks.
I'm on the warpath, and I may very well bite off the head of the first person who speaks to me. Things have gone very wrong, and I am very unhappy.
Igor is the first one I see when I come up the stairwell from the club floor, leaning on the wall near the landing with a cigarette he's not supposed to have inside.
The second he clocks me he straightens and drops his eyes.
I scowl at him as I pass by his cloud of stench, and watch him put his cigarette out in whatever drink he has on the small table next to him.
If I wasn't so out of control already, I'd have a word with him, but I know if I open my mouth one of my best men will take the brunt of my anger for something he didn't do.
Mikhail is posted outside my office. He steps aside before I even get close, and I watch his Adam's apple bob as he swallows hard.
These men are scared shitless and they well should be.
Three hundred kilos of opium left Kunduz eleven days ago and never showed up where it was supposed to be. That's seventeen million rubles, just vanished.
The warehouse outside Kolpino was empty when my men arrived yesterday, and the driver hasn't surfaced either.
That means someone stole from me. No one steals from me if they want to keep breathing.
I haven't figured out who to be angry at yet, and until I do, that anger has nowhere to go other than at whatever poor unfortunate soul stands in front of me.
I push through my office door to see Devid, standing with his arms crossed over his chest and a stern look on his face.
His teeth are clenched, judging by the tension in his jaw, probably because he understands what a hit this is to my infrastructure.
We can't afford to flush that much product down the fucking toilet, and without a steady output, other sources will rise up.
When that happens our credibility diminishes and our authority is all but lost.
I won’t let that happen.
"Where is Daniil?" I stalk to my desk and sit down.
We've only just gotten the news of what happened.
My hunt is just beginning.
I'm not sure where it will lead me—-but hopefully to my product, or someone is going to have a very bad day.
"Downstairs. I told him to stay put, boss." Devid knows me well enough to know what I want and need, but he also knows when I'll need a moment.
This foresight on his part is frustrating, but needed.
If I had that man in front of me right now, I'd tear him limb from limb.
Devid has the wisdom to allow me a cushion, long enough to allow my rage to simmer to boiling anger rather than murderous intent.
"Bring him up," I order and my right-hand man turns and leaves.
My mind spins around the facts—that three hundred kilos of product just vanished into thin air.
I've been in this business a very long time, and we've had people attempt to steal from us before.
But never so brazenly—in the middle of the day in broad daylight.
And never three hundred kilos, worth more than two hundred fifty thousand dollars.
It's a lot to move in the first place, but pulling off a heist of that amount is ludicrous.
Dangerous, even.
When Devid returns, he has Daniil in tow, shaking like a leaf. He has no reason to fear me if he isn't part of whatever went down.
But I know why he's shaking.
He's seen me lose my temper before.
"Sit," I order. He ambles over and parks his ass in the chair across from me.
Sweat beads on his forehead as Devid shuts the door behind him, closing out the thump of bass from the club downstairs.
Daniil is a smart kid; he’s done a lot of good for me.
But he was running point on this; he should have protected this shipment better.
Whatever went wrong, there's a weakness and I need to get to the bottom of it.
"You knew the full route of that shipment," I tell him—as calmly as I can, but my anger bleeds through. "Can you explain to me how three hundred kilos of my product disappears?"
"I ran my end clean, boss." He's not flighty as he speaks.
He holds my gaze, though the sweat on his brow is getting worse.
"We did everything by the book. I don't know who found out it was on the truck, but it left the place clean like always.
" Daniil looks tired too. It's not an easy trip from Kolpino to St Petersburg, even by plane.
For a man like him with so many eyes watching, I bet he hardly slept.
He had to be looking over his shoulder every step of the way.
"And yet my warehouse is empty." I purse my lips and sit back, knowing this is going to get me nowhere. If the truck left clean, it happened out on the road, and without a two-man team, who knows what happened. There are no witnesses.
"How will I make money, Daniil? How will those poor lonely souls wanting their drugs get what they need?" I lean forward, narrowing my eyes. “Three hundred kilos, Daniil. That’s not a couple of bricks that fell off the back of a truck. That’s a hole in my supply chain big enough to drive a fucking tank through. And you’re telling me everything was clean? ”
Daniil’s mouth opens, but nothing smart comes out.
His face is pale, sweat rolling down his temples.
I can see the fear in him, and part of me enjoys it. The rest of me just wants blood.
“Get out,” I growl. “Get the fuck out of my sight before I stop being reasonable and let Devid take you downstairs for a real conversation. Move.”
He nearly trips over his own feet scrambling for the door.
Devid steps aside just enough to let him bolt, then shuts the door behind the man so we're plunged into silence again.
Daniil is lucky I didn't carve my seventeen million rubles out of his flesh.
I drag in a breath, trying to shove the worst of the fury down so I can think straight.
"Have we heard from Farid?" I flick a glance up to meet Devid's eyes, but he's stoic. He’s probably afraid of what I might say to him about this, or how I might bite his head off.
But I'm starting to calm down and think more rationally.
"Farid is dead, boss," he says. "I reached his wife this morning. Three Russians showed up at the house five days ago, took everything out of his office, and then dragged him outside and shot him."
Five days ago?
That's before the shipment even hit the corridor, which means this wasn't some random grab on the road.
Someone mapped out my entire supply chain and started dismantling it from the source.
The thought of it makes my blood boil so fast I can feel my pulse throbbing behind my eyes.
We've never had a hit like this.
Farid was careful—meticulously so. He has a wife and child to think about.
One little slip up and he knows our enemies would come for him.
"There's more," Devid adds, because of course there is. As if my product being stolen and Farid's body turning up isn't bad enough. "The wife saw one of the men when they threatened to come back and kill the whole family."
"Did she get a look at him?" I ask, suddenly curious to know if there is an eyewitness.
"She couldn't describe his face, but she remembered his neck," he tells me. "She says he had a tattoo behind his ear of a black scorpion with its tail curving up."
My mind instantly drifts—I know that tattoo.
I saw it years ago at a card game in Vyborg, on some drunk fool who couldn't stop bragging about the jobs he'd done.
I thought back then what an idiot he was showing off that tattoo, but now I know where to trace the source.
The Gusevs brand every man who works in their ranks with that black scorpion.
Devid was at that game with me, and I can see from his face he's already connected the dots too.
"Tell me you found it," I growl, sitting straighter. If we find the man who put that ink on our killer, maybe we can identify him and trace him back.
I don’t see how the Gusevs would even be strong enough to pull something like this off.
How the hell did they get good intel?
"It's a tattoo parlor on Sadovaya that does custom gang work," he says, pulling a folded printout from his jacket and setting it on my desk. "I'm sure this guy will remember who it was. With enough persuasion..."
I unfold the paper to see a whole gallery from the artist at that studio, and every single piece is a known Gusev symbol.
Stars, eagles, chains.
This parlor is basically a branding station for Gusev's soldiers.
They're hiding in plain sight, and the fuckers are too stupid to know better.
Gusev has his idiot soldiers out doing his wet work and leaving clues behind.
The problem is if I storm the gates, they'll think Farid's wife gave them up.
I have to give her time and passage to get away safely, and then I can start this hunt.
"Get a plane ready. Farid's family needs safe passage out of Afghanistan before we move." I stand, leaning over my desk as I suck in a breath to relieve some of the pressure on my chest. "And then we need to know how Gusev got that intel."
"Got it sir," Devid says, already turning for the door.
"How did he get the route?" I ask, stopping Devid in his tracks. "The guy with the tattoo."
Devid pauses with his hand on the doorknob.
"Our best indication is that some man by the name of Oleg Rostov has been digging around.
We knew about this, but he seems harmless.
He's just an accountant." Devid squints at me, like he doesn't see how Rostov and our killer could be connected.
And how would an accountant know the first thing about planning a heist?
Gusev was in on this somehow if his men were after Farid. So how are Gusev and Rostov connected?
"I know that name," I tell him, shaking my head. It's so familiar, but I can't place it.
"Sir?" Devid stands there while my brain runs through the inner file I have, trying to jog my memory, until it lands on one I'd rather not bring up in such a negative light.
"Emory?" I breathe, turning to glower at Devid. "Rostov, does he have a daughter?" I move to my desk and sit down, pulling out the few images I have of her from surveillance I had done early on. Ms. Emory Rostov has been a weakness of mine for years now—three to be exact.
"Yes, sir. He does, and?—"
"My God..." It's all coming together. "Oleg is her father... get me his picture now. I need to see it with my own eyes. And then fucking find him." The anger gives way to morbid curiosity. Why would Emory's father sell secrets about me to the Gusevs? And how did he get them?
When I look up, Devid is gone, leaving me to my thoughts.
I left her alone because of her age and because the mess of my life made it too challenging to attempt a relationship.
But if her father really is involved in this, and our paths are about to cross, she'll have a lot of explaining to do.
Especially if she leaked anything she knew about me to him.