Chapter 20
What Jade Knows
Alex
Jade emanated heat and fire. Her energy wrapped around me, and I simply marveled at how composed she was.
She asked Olga for a pen and a piece of paper, then drew a pyramid right in the middle, beginning her story about how much her father knew about us. A fucking lot. He knew way more than we had thought.
"Your crew—your guys; there are informants at every level.
" She divided the pyramid into three. "I have a whole list on our shared drive, but I can't access it.” She doodled on the page, but then I realized it wasn’t a doodle, it was a number.
“But to be honest, even if you know them all and start to slowly take them out, that will set off all the alarm bells. "
I reminisced about a few days ago—maybe we should have listened to Vasily for a bit longer.
"How many approximately?" Andrei was now incredibly cooperative, listening intently.
Jade pursed her sweet lips and pointed to the doodle. “Nine."
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
"Nine?!" we both shouted in disbelief. "That's a huge fucking number!" Andrei added while I descended into hell.
Nine guys among our ranks were snitching to the cops about our every move. Fucking hell.
"Yes. A few have been with you for a very long time. One of them came to us voluntarily last year. I think his last name is...Voronov or Vontov or something?" Jade asked, and Andrei and I both knew exactly who that was.
"Ilya Vorontsov," I confirmed, and Jade nodded. Andrei and I exchanged glances, knowing how much of a stab in the back this was. Vorontsov was a little younger than us, but he'd been with us since the beginning. We personally trained him when we brought him in.
"Yes, yes, his first name started with an I!" Jade spoke enthusiastically, but then continued on. “He’s provided a lot of information. He explained how he works, your process, and what’s behind your massive success, but…never gave us your names.” Jade pointed to Andrei and then turned to me.
“No one has. None of the informants have been able to tell us who runs it all.”
I noticed Jade’s little mysterious smile, but she quickly turned back to her notes.
“Anyway. All this has made it much easier for the detectives to predict your next moves.
Not always of course, but I'm sure you've noticed that there have been a good number of botched attempts this year, way more than at any other time? "
Damn. We’d been stupid and blind.
"Yes. We noticed," I admitted.
There really wasn't much to say—she knew so much already. Poor Olga sat there quietly and listened to this nightmare just like us.
"I can look through some old emails to find more names for you of who else is working for u—" Jade was about to say us but then stopped herself. "Working for my dad.”
My girl.
"How did you know about the early shipment?" Andrei asked, his arms crossed and eyebrows furrowed, all of him now business-oriented.
"Great question." Jade’s eyes sparkled. "Whose idea was it to send the shipment earlier? And how many cars did you have in this one?"
"Alex's idea,” Andrei responded immediately, but that wasn't entirely true. "We had about six hundred. More than usual."
"It wasn't this Alex's idea." Jade pointed to me and confirmed my thoughts. "It was Alex Slater's idea—to send the shipment earlier and to send six hundred cars."
"Holy shit, Jade, do you guys have ears in the walls? What the fuck?!" I was astounded. She knew so many details.
Andrei stared at her, eyes wide and thinking the same thing I was: we were fucked.
"I need a sedative," Olga spoke weakly and stood up to get herself a glass of water. At this point, we all needed something to help us through the nightmare.
"You guys should've just asked me this shit right away!
" Jade accused us. "You kidnap me to make my dad drop the case, but you made a huge mistake!
You don't even know him! This case is incredibly important to him.
I bet he's willing to leave me missing and kidnapped forever, as long as he gets to solve this. "
Olga froze mid gulp, all of us taken aback by that sentiment.
"Come on, you don't mean that." Andrei's uncomfortable tone spoke for everyone, but Jade smiled wistfully.
"I do.” She nodded confidently. “His work is very important to him. He’s been building this case for a very long time. He’s crossing all professional boundaries to get this done. It’s like a lifetime achievement for him—to lock you guys up.”
Jade looked back to her drawing, writing something down before adding slowly.
“My father is even more determined to figure this out because all the informants are only half cooperating. They’re revealing information but not the right kind, not enough,” she spoke passionately, her whole personality distracting me from the problem at hand.
I wondered what she was like at work. Bossy?
Wrong time.
“He’s doing everything he can to trap The Nightcrawlers. He’s threatened all the informants, but I guess…they’re not as scared of him as they are of you?”
It was a mystery—why Sebastian Moretti personally hated us so much. Didn’t he have bigger fish to fry? At the same time, we were the big fish. We were the whales.
"He doesn't want to accept that your arrests won't stop the crime.” Jade scoffed, throwing the pen down. “If it's not you, it’ll be somebody else. He just wants to make an example out of you two."
I mulled over her words. He just wants to make an example out of you two. Fucking great. Sebastian Moretti was possessed with an idea, and those were notoriously difficult to break.
Jade caught sight of something on her piece of paper and straightened her back.
"Anyway, about Slater,” she restarted with renewed vigor.
“He came to Alex a few months ago and suggested that before summer ends, you should consider speeding up the shipment since it would be easier to sell overseas before winter starts.
Especially since prices have increased so much where you're sending the cars.” She tapped on the paper with her pen and settled back in the chair. “We gave him that idea."
"Why do you care about sending the shipment earlier?" I asked, realizing that something sinister was about to be revealed.
"Because that would contain only your cars and..." Jade paused, picking her words. "Every single car is about to be...or has already been ruined. While it's in shipment."
Whoa. This, we didn’t see coming.
"How?" Andrei spat out.
"Each container on the ship has been outfitted with something like a smoking device.” Jade made a little box out of air with her hands.
“Instead of your luxury stolen cars travelling in a climate-controlled environment, they’re all being filled with smoke that will seep into every crevice.
My father really wants to fuck you guys over.
He’s descended to another level. I’m the only one he’s shared this information with. The detectives don’t know.”
Andrei gasped, his anxiety having a fucking field day.
“Upon arrival, each car will have a distinct stench of smoke or whatever the hell that thing smells of, and it’ll be impossible to clean.
No way to air it out. These cars take approximately two weeks to get to Belgium?
" Jade asked, but I knew she probably had those details too.
"Imagine what two weeks of sitting in a closed, smoky environment will do to the interiors. "
God damn. Sebastian was not fucking around.
"He considered ruining the cars with paint, but that was too hard to arrange for every vehicle. Plus, smoke is non-traceable.” Jade just kept dropping one bomb after another. “He has someone working the ports. It took him a long time to find someone to work your shipment.”
"Fuuuuck," Andrei drawled. “And Slater pitched us this idea because it would ensure we filled up the entire ship with just our shit? And it would ruin more cars than what we usually send?" He confirmed, and Jade nodded without hesitation.
"The shipment's been in transit for a while now," I stated the useless fact, not sure what to contribute. "It's too late now to do anything about it."
Fucking great. Not only were we at the gates of prison, but we also just took a huge financial hit.
"I'm sorry." Jade looked full of regret. "I wish I clued in sooner to who you were but...my father has a lot of enemies and…I was distracted." Jade shot me a most devious look that ignited a raging fire of excitement inside me. Me. I was the distraction.
"It's not your fault,” Andrei spoke easily, like he hadn't been doubting Jade every second. "How much money did we lose, do you think?" He turned to me with his arms crossed.
Ugh. A fucking lot.
"This shipment was almost all new luxury and one-of-a-kind vehicles. If we can't sell any at all, we'll lose a few million on expenses, but overall…fifty? Fifty-five million? Give or take." I calculated the number, such frustration flowing through me.
We worked overtime to bring the number to six hundred, find the specific cars, get the right guys to steal the vehicles, store them correctly, pay off the local cops to turn a blind eye, and do everything in a reasonable time frame. All down the drain.
Jade's eyes widened in disbelief. "Fifty-five million?
! Jesus! Your house makes perfect sense now.
" She tried not to laugh. "Anyway.” She composed herself again, switching into professional mode with a snap of a finger. "Now that the shipment’s ruined, the hope is that one: you will panic.” She raised a finger and nodded, absolutely sure of the information she was delivering.
“Two—” she raised a second finger, all of her so dainty and delicate and a fucking smart beast at the same time, “—that you’ll begin a thorough cleanup of your crew, and three—” another finger popped up, my eyes trying to take in all of her “—that this won’t stop you.
On the contrary, he's hoping that you’ll double down and do everything in your power to make up the lost time and money.
And that's when he’s planning to catch you.
He’s predicting that you two will get personally involved. ”
Jade was such a pleasure to listen to. Sure, she was delivering abysmal news, but the way she spoke, her confidence in her words, the tone of her voice…I could have listened until the end of time.
“He’s set up traps. He has his own crew working on this. Out of nowhere, specific vehicles that you are looking for will start falling into your hands. You’ll think it's a blessing that you’re making up what you lost so quickly, but really...it's all a setup."
I closed my eyes and tried to work through the information. We were actively and blindly walking straight into prison. If it wasn't for Jade...
Her eyes dead serious, Jade looked up from her paper and continued, "After your shipment arrives, you should pause and clean up your crew, but not in the way my dad predicts."
Clean up our crew. Fuck. I was ready to kill every single one of them. Nine men snitching? Our operation was huge; we had so many guys involved. To cherry-pick those nine would be a loud declaration that we had insider information.
“What do you suggest?" I was curious to hear Jade’s take on all this. Having her on our side, contributing her thoughts and advice, was not only luck. It was a godsend.
"I think you need to let him know that you know something. Not everything, but that you're aware of what's going on. And you need to get rid of Slater and the other guy, first and foremost."
Get rid of? I sat there and admired her. What exactly was Jade suggesting?
"There are two more names that are very involved with the investigators; they need to go too.
I'll find them and you can make it...just an accident that they are receiving less information.
Is it a coincidence that the Voronstov guy left for Russia a few days ago?
Right before you figure out what happened to your shipment?
He was responsible for triple-checking every car before sending it off, wasn't he?
" Jade asked, already knowing all the specifics.
Jade's story about how incredibly ignorant we’d been continued on into the night. She revealed everything she knew and provided advice and ideas on how to circumvent the troubles we found ourselves in. She also suggested we lawyer up, which was essential at this point.
Sometime around two a.m., Jade dozed off on the couch while Olga had been in bed for hours.
Andrei and I quietly discussed our next steps, both of us realizing that at some point, we’d become too relaxed and cocky.
The strict vigilance of our business faded, and we took a back seat, just collecting the money instead of staying on top of it all.
"First thing we should do is get rid of Slater. While Ilya’s at home, I'll get one of our guys there to take him out." My thoughts were rambling on in my head, and I was spewing out instructions that I had no idea would even do anything at this point.
My mind was spiraling as Andrei and I sat at the dinner table, looking over Jade’s makeshift diagram.
This was way worse than we’d thought, and both Andrei and I had a lot of self-reflection to do, but there wasn’t any time for that. There was only time to disappear. Barely.
I glanced at my Jade peacefully dozing on the couch, and somehow, that didn’t seem like a bad idea.
In the middle of the night, I carried a sleeping Jade inside our little beach house. She opened her eyes just as I was placing her on the bed and, with a look of deep worry, she grabbed onto my neck.
“Oh, you're here,” she whispered as if waking from a bad dream and pulled me into her. "Don't go anywhere, okay?" she spoke through her veil of sleep. "I want to be with you. Just with you."
I lay in bed wide awake with her head on my chest and her hand in mine, and slowly, this whole ordeal began to look insignificant.
Fuck it. I'd leave it all and run away with her.
I had enough money to never have to worry about it.
As long as we were together, not much else had any other meaning in my life.
I would never let her go.