"That?" Fin looked at the bottle like Nikolai was offering him dishwater. "Nah. Ye got a proper ale back there? A real drink? No' that Russian backwash."
The room went quiet.
Jesus Christ, Fin. Read the fucking room.
Was he stupid? What kind of madman walks into a room full of armed vory and insults the fucking national drink of their people? Might as well have pulled his pants down and taken a shit in the middle of the fucking room.
Nikolai didn't move for a second. The bottle stayed tipped over the empty glass, not pouring.
Then he laughed. “Ah bon, this one has fangs, eh?” he said in English and then turned to me, continuing in Russian. “Where did you find this one, big brother? I like him.”
That was worse than if he'd hit him. I'd spent the whole night trying to make Fin small enough that nobody in this room would bother to remember his face. Took the kid one sentence to undo it.
"Enough." Nikita set the bottle straight on the desk. "Aleksi, you know why I called you here, yes?”
I set the empty vodka glass on the desk, stood up straight and rolled my shoulders one at a time before answering. “I shot a traitor and two Italians tonight in the back of an Italian leather shop over the line in Greek territory,” I said plainly.
“Lies,” spat Lyudmila, knuckles going white around the handle of her purse. “My husband was nothing but loyal. He gave everything to this organization and now they are saying you shot him in the back like acoward.”
My left eye twitched. It was one thing to have a man level that accusation against me, but to bear it from a woman was another level of insult entirely. If she’d been anyone other than Pavel’s widow, I wouldn’t have let it stand.
But I knew what was really on trial in this room, and it wasn’t whether I’d shot Pavel or not. It was my honor against hers, and this was a war I knew how to fight.
"When I called him a traitor," I said. "I was being kind. But since you’ve chosen to press the issue, I’ll state it plainly. The old way. Your husband was suka."
She flinched, eyes widening.
"He took money from the Italians," I said. "From the men who put a leather shop on Greek ground to spite us, who've been bleeding this organization for a year while we called it bad luck. Your husband sold us to them. I put him down for it. I regret the shot in the back. If he’d have given me the chance, I’d have shot him in the heart. I’d have done him that service if he hadn’t drawn on me, but he did. He made his choice when he pulled a gun on me in that shop. I’m sorry that I shot him in the back, but I’m not sorry I shot him.”
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"And a suka's widow," I said, "does not get to sit in this office and call me a coward."
Her eyes widened even further, and she turned immediately to Nikita. “I didn’t know,” she said in quick Russian. “I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me anything, I swear to you—”
Nikita silenced her with a wave of his hand. “If you thought, even for a minute, that your husband was anything other thanloyal, you’d never have walked through that door. Your honor was never in question.”
“But mine is,” I said a little meaner than I meant to. “Have all my years of service meant nothing to you?”
“Pavel served this organization for forty years, longer than either of us.” Nikita gave me a hard look and placed his palms flat on the desk. “I’m going to need more than your word this time.”
I pulled the folder out from inside my jacket and dropped it on the desk in front of him. "There's your more than my word."
Nikita stared at it. “What’s this?”
"Open it," I said. "The photos. That's Pavel at Saggio's on Pearl, back room, three weeks ago. That's him with Tonio Marchetti, who runs the counterfeit pipeline for the Italians out of that leather shop. That's the two of them shaking hands like old friends. There’s him with his Italian mistress too."
I set my phone on the desk on top of the photos and thumbed it awake.
“That’s my building. Lobby camera, hallway camera, stamped this morning. That’s Pavel coming through my front door with two men. That’s my door coming off its hinges. And that’s Pavel walking Finlay Gallagher out of my home with a hood over his head.” I let it run to the end. Nobody in the room breathed. “We tracked the car to a bespoke leather shop in Greek Village. Italian-owned. Dario Kastelani was standing in the back of it, waiting to take delivery. You want to tell me a loyal man kicks in his own captain’s door and hand-delivers his asset to the Italians?”
“And before any of that, he built the file. You handed it to me, he handed it to you. Three names, and he stacked every page on Doug Reeve and left himself one clean line at the bottom of his own. Two days he spent telling me to put down a man whose only crime was getting passed over, and the whole time he wasthe one in bed with the Italians.” I tapped the photos. “He didn’t build that file to find the leak, Nikita. He built it to bury it.”
Lyudmila made a small, wounded sound. I didn't look at her.
"I didn't go hunting this for fun," I said. "I went hunting it because the Italians shot up a flower shop and put four rounds through the window of the one place Izzy Costas can't live without. Everyone knows the man loves his fucking flowers. The Italians knew it too, which is exactly why they did it. They wanted the Greeks angry. Angry Greeks start wars, and a war on that line takes all of us down with it." I tapped the folder. "I've spent all this time keeping that war in the box. This is what was in the box."
Nikita opened the folder finally. He went through it slowly, his face giving up nothing. "Where did this come from?"
