Chapter 13

Chapter 13Viktor“Ihate to be the bearer of bad news, sir,” said the senior police detective, as he sat across my desk from me. “But they’re going ahead with the investigation.”I sighed and leaned back in my padded chair, staring at him. He was a small man for a cop, with flat, shiny blond hair clinging to his skull and a round head that sat directly on his shoulders. He also looked nervous, which told me he was relatively new to his rank.I had cops in my office at least twice a week now. It didn’t bother me, just part of doing business in Boston. I remembered seeing them in my uncle’s office during my early twenties and being astonished. Now it was just another chore to get through.“I see. Well, that’s not really a surprise. Though I do appreciate that you brought the news to me in person.” It showed respect.With the press attention and two dead men, missing security tapes—which I had arranged to be conveniently lost, and a mystery killer—or mystery to them at least, I knew exactly where to find Boris—at large, it was inevitable that Cambridge PD would start nosing around.“What do you want the guys down at the precinct to do?” he asked tentatively.I eyed the notebook in front of me. Chicken scratches in Cyrillic. He wouldn’t be able to read them—with a surname like Jorgensen I guessed he was of Scandinavian heritage through and through. “I have a man looking for an associate of Ivan’s murderer. Once we are done questioning her, you can have her. I only want the head start.”“It’s the Pueblo, then.”I nodded curtly.“Fuck.” He ran a hand back over his glued-down hair pointlessly. “Are you going to war? In the middle of Cambridge?”“I did not wish to. But two of our people are dead, and El Luchador won’t meet.” I turned a page in my notebook. “It is the opinion of the Brotherhood that they should be driven out.”“We can lean on them. They might be hiding out, but they have friends, family…” He hesitated when he saw my expression shift.“I’m willing to go a long way, and take a great deal of personal risk, to avoid a war in my town,” I told him quietly. “But I refuse to involve innocents unless we are left with absolutely no choice. Unless they actually break the law, I don’t want you and yours leaning on anyone who is not a direct Pueblo member.”His expression was an interesting mix as he nodded frantically, relieved, surprised, afraid. “U-understood.”“That said…” I hesitated. I didn’t want to go behind Boris’s back, but he had yet to produce any information on the woman who had seduced him the night before Ivan’s murder. And I needed to make sure he wasn’t hiding anything. Alcohol wasn’t the only intoxicant that could put a man off his game, and I wasn’t sure that this Maria wasn’t still playing with his head. Or other parts. “This Maria woman.”“Yeah, about her. I can’t exactly have the boys put out an APB on Puerto Rican women named Maria, but what I can do is send you data on who we bring in with that name.”That was worse than useless. I didn’t even know what the damn woman looked like. The only one who could verify her face was Boris…“I want one of your men to watch one of mine for a while. He’s the one who had contact with her, and I want someone to watch for her if she approaches him in public again.” I gave him Boris’s details without a single lick of guilt about it. I probably should have felt something, having Boris tailed by the police like he was no-one, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on here. Something that I couldn’t trust him to see, with the way he’d been lately.“Don’t let him realize that he’s being tailed,” I added after a moment. Not that there was much of a chance of that if he was drinking as much as I suspected. But whatever was going on, my instincts told me I couldn’t rely on Boris alone right now. Not anymore.“Of course not.” He stared at me for a moment, then ventured, “You don’t seem as hot for a turf war as your boys.”“Definitely not. Yet another reason why I want this handled discreetly.” But even as I said it, I knew there would likely be no other choice now but war. If not violence in the streets, then a cold war of quiet move against quiet move, which would still involve deaths.Either way, Ivan had to be avenged. And if I discovered that Mischka’s death was anything but completely natural, blood would run.“Was there anything else?” I asked the new detective.“No, sir.” He had seen the look in my eyes, and was now so pale that his hair looked carroty by comparison. I waved him out distractedly, and he hurried out of the office like his ass was on fire.I got up and went to stand at the window, watching him hurry out to his unmarked sedan and drive away. As I stood there, my mind drifted toward more pleasant things.Olivia. Our son Michael, whom she was apparently working very hard to care for and protect. I smiled faintly. Our conversation had been awkward. But it could have gone so much worse.At least I had that now. Though I was well aware that if the Puerto Ricans sank low enough, they could leverage that. And being that they had murdered a helpless old man in the middle of a hospital, I had to make sure nobody found out about my new woman and my unexpected son.***“Now, Viktor, what have I told you about speaking out of turn?”I lifted my head and wiped blood out of the corner of my eye. The other was already swelling shut. My beating had been intense, but that wasn’t what bothered me. No. What had me tensed up inside and tempted to test the ropes that bound me was the sobbing I had heard in the other room.“My apologies.” I was always cool and polite when I spoke to Mr. Florescu. He had plucked me off the Vladivostok streets along with some other boys, and in return, we owed him our lives, our loyalty, and, above all, any money that we earned.Which was why I was tied to a chair right now, at fifteen, taking a beating that would leave me scarred.“So explain to me again where that money got to, Viktor. You were short again.” His voice was thick with anger, and I knew that whether I was honest or not, he wasn’t done hitting me.But if I lied and he caught me in it, he would do more than beat me. Possibly much more. He had killed one boy for taking a payoff from a rival gang. Maybe not intentionally, but dead was dead.“My neighbor was starving,” I said simply. “She has small children. There is nothing for her by the time she can get into the bread lines. I thought—”“You thought what? That you would save her? With my money?” He sounded so disgusted that my ears burned. “You and Boris are both idealistic idiots. No wonder you’ve paired off like brothers.”I heard the sobbing start up in the other room again, and this time I was sure of it. “Sir—”“Don’t give me your ridiculous excuses. Now I have to put that stupid woman on the streets to earn back what you stole. Where she should have gone in the first place, really. Who told her to have babies if she couldn’t feed them?”I felt my rage simmering inside me as I looked at the man who had taken me in and made me a thief. In just a few short years, he had gone from my hero to the man I despised most. Florescu was a petty sadist, cruel, greedy, without even the pretense that some thieves called honor.“What about her children?”“What about them? Plenty of kids grow up with whores for mothers. If they’re lucky, she even keeps them.” That was a dig at me, at all of us, we were all throwaway children.I was just realizing how much I wanted to kill him when the door opened, and two of Florescu’s men came in dragging a struggling woman.But the woman was Olivia. She had Michael in her arms—I sat straight up in bed with a little shout and stared around the dim room. Nightmare. Nothing more. Florescu was long dead, Boris and I had long since come to America, and now both of us had power within a Bratva of our own. And Olivia, she had never been to Russia.But the dream had still spoken of things that could happen.Olivia didn’t avoid me because she didn’t want me to know about Michael, or didn’t like me, or didn’t want me in her life. She avoided me because she was afraid. I would never harm her or Michael, but she was right. Trouble follows a man in my position.I got up, tugging my pajama pants up a little as I crossed my bedroom floor. I pushed aside my curtains and stared out the window at the rainy view beyond. I had put in an order for Uncle Mischka’s autopsy report, aiming to compare it with Ivan’s. I was having Boris followed. I was coming at this from every angle I could come up with, but I still felt like I was missing something.My dream had me thinking of Olivia and her safety far too much. It wouldn’t be much of a drive to go check on her. But I shouldn’t. I might be followed. Also, it was the middle of the damned night and she had a small child.I still found myself on the road in one of the motor pool’s anonymous black sedans within twenty minutes of having that internal debate. I would just keep an eye on her neighborhood for a while. Make sure that nothing troubling was going on.I played instrumental jazz as I drove, but softly, keeping a wary eye on traffic, especially potential tails.I started to relax as I drew closer to her apartment building. The neighborhood was solidly middle class, the building well kept, but the units looked small. I wondered if she was trying to save money. She had insisted that she was well off, but apparently her standards and mine were different.I frowned slightly. I could at least set her up in one of the houses I owned. It was a small thing for me, but it could make a huge difference for her and my son. A yard to run around in. A dog—big, tough, and well-trained—to look after their safety.Maybe even room for me.I rolled my eyes as I caught myself in that idea. Plenty of Bratva men had wives and children eventually, but I was a fool to even think about that now. Not only was Olivia afraid of getting too close to me, but I was new in my leadership position, and it was currently being threatened.I was just considering pulling out of my parking spot across the street when I saw something I hadn’t expected. There was a figure prowling the alleyway alongside her apartment building. A tall man, all in black, his face covered with a bandana under his hoodie.A scowl deepened on my face as I watched him. He was fiddling with the bars on one of the apartment windows. Not Olivia’s—but that didn’t matter. There was no telling where the man would go once he broke into the building.Could someone have found out about Olivia and me this quickly? I hadn’t even told Boris yet. The man could just be a random prowler.But he had picked the wrong alleyway.I got out of my car, locked it, and looked up. The man was standing still in the shadows, alerted by the sound of my car door opening and closing. I started crossing toward the apartment, not quite facing his direction. He didn’t move.I drew my pistol from under my jacket as I saw a flash of metal in his hand, and bolted toward him as fast as I could.I heard a yell as he dropped whatever was in his hand and it clattered on the ground. Then he ran for it. I picked up speed, racing after him, my black overcoat flapping at my heels. We cleared the alleyway just as someone flicked on the lights in the window he had been standing at.I was faster than most men my size and age, so the prowler lost ground to me fast, especially when he had to scramble over a fence. I had only caught a flash of dark hair and frightened black eyes. I had no idea who the hell he was. But I was going to find out.Our chase took us through the backyard of a large house and then over another fence. I was still gaining ground on him. But then he leaped the fence into the next yard over, and I heard a deep-voiced snarl from beyond, that sounded like it came from a bear. My quarry yelled suddenly and started scrambling to get back over to my side of the fence while a deep, booming bark echoed out over the neighborhood.I gave him a hand by grabbing both his lapels as soon as his head and shoulders popped back up over the fence. I dragged him the rest of the way, hearing the cloth tear. He came over with the back of his raincoat ripped off. I heard the dog growling and shaking his head.Lights were going on in some of the surrounding houses. I dragged the idiot into the darkest, most remote corner of the yard and slammed him up against the garage wall. He was a kid, maybe nineteen, and definitely not Puerto Rican, unless he’d been adopted. His freckles stood out on his ashen face like paint spatters.“Who are you? What the hell did you think you were doing?” I hissed as I smacked him against the wall again for emphasis.He flapped his mouth silently. Impatient, I looked around for security cameras and then drew my gun and stuck it in his face. He whimpered, cringing away from it. This was no hitman.“Well?” I demanded.“My girlfriend lives there. She blocked me and won’t talk to me, and she wouldn’t say why so I—”I stared at him. Are you fucking kidding me? “So you thought you would break into her home.”I looked him up and down. That raincoat was too heavy for the weather. With an annoyed snarl I shoved my forearm into his throat, partially blocking his airway as I pinned him down. Then with my other hand I waved my gun in his face. “If you so much as twitch, I’ll shoot you in whatever body part this is nearest.” Then I checked under his raincoat and yanked out a long, cheap catalog knife, pulling hard enough that its faux leather sheath dropped to the ground in two pieces.“You thought you’d chop her up. With this.”He didn’t seem to know where to direct his terrified look now—at my eyes, at the gun, or at the knife. “I…she was…I just wanted to make her come back…”“Then maybe you shouldn’t have scared her off in the first place.” I wanted to kill him for his audacity, for his bloody plans, and for fucking inconveniencing me like this when I could have been watching over Olivia. “You can’t make a woman come back to you once you damage her love for you enough, you damned fool.” I forced him to look at me, letting back on the partial pressure I had on his throat so that I could switch the knife to my free hand and tuck it under his weak chin to keep his head up. “You would have murdered her as soon as you realized that.”Tears brimmed over in his tiny shit-colored eyes. “I…I…all I did was choke her once!”He let out a tiny squeak of fear as he saw my expression.“I should kill you here and now, before you hurt any more defenseless girls,” I growled. “Your kind never gets taken to task for your actions. You just pity yourselves and pull the same shit over and over.” I moved a step closer. At this angle I could have severed his jugular with one stroke, even with this cheap-ass knife. “It’s time you learned about consequences.”He started to hyperventilate. His breath was foul. That only pissed me off more.“If you ever go near her, this building, or this neighborhood again, or speak of this to anyone, I will know. I will find you. And I will geld you with your own knife!”He was nodding gingerly, too aware of the knife under his neck. His eyes rolled like a frightened horse’s. When I pulled the knife away, he ran for it, stumbling out of the yard as fast as he could.I stood there in the shadows, catching my breath. The lights around us had gone back out. But I suddenly became aware that someone was watching me.I looked over and saw a furry head peering at me over the fence. The dog was absolutely gigantic, a brown and black Ovcharka that probably outweighed me. He’d gone silent and just watched, as if knowing I had his intruder in hand.“Good dog,” I told him. He tilted his head slightly, then dropped back down. It was unusual to see a Caucasian shepherd dog being used as a guard dog here, maybe I’d have to get someone to check on the owner. Or maybe, I just needed to stop being so paranoid about what kind of people were getting close to my woman and child.I slipped out of the yard, tucking my pistol away and hiding the knife up one sleeve. The thing felt like it had been hammered out of a car bumper. What was with stalkers and outsized, cheap cutlery?I went back to my car without slipping through the alleyway, though I did turn back once I was on that street to see what the metal thing he had dropped was. My eyes widened—it was a pistol. I had scared that wet-behind-the-ears little maniac so badly that he’d dropped it instead of firing it.His girl dumped him, and his response was to break into her apartment with a knife and a gun. I should have cut his throat. Hopefully, I had put enough fear into him that he would think twice about indulging any more of his ‘romantic’ fantasies.I sat in my car watching a while longer. Eventually, a slim young woman in pajamas wandered out yawning to see what the fuss had been about. She looked in the alley, saw the gun, and turned around quickly, looking around before rushing inside.I sighed. She hadn’t seen me, but she was doubtless about to call the police. And that marked the end of my vigil.Sleep well, Olivia, I thought, hoping she would only learn about the strange events at her apartment building in the morning. You and my son too.