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He blinked, relaxed. “Oh.”
Smiling a little, I murmured, “I won’t be back in tonight. Need you at my apartment tomorrow at two-thirty.”
Though he nodded, it didn’t stop him from grousing, “Can’t believe you picked me.”
A laugh escaped me. “Consider yourself the lucky one.”
“The one who’s gonna get his balls dipped in molten shoe polish when your father finds out I’m the—”
Cocking a brow at him, I interrupted, “Loose lips sink ships.”
“It’s not 1942,” he argued.
“No, this war is far deadlier,” I rumbled with a sigh. “Be there. Make sure the other fuckers are as well.”
“You sure you don’t want your brothers around?”
“I don’t want anyone trying to talk me out of it, and they might.”
No ‘might’ about it. Especially when they found out Vasov was dead.
He heaved a sigh, making it clear to me that he was hoping my brothers would have the chance to talk some sense into me. No dice.
“See you tomorrow,” he muttered.
I waved at him, then retreated to the foyer and out into the lot. Making my way through the puddles that were illuminated in the spotlights that were fixed to the roof, I climbed into my Maybach and made my way out of the dump that was The Hole after I checked exactly where Camille was going to be waiting on me.
It was pretty handy that I was still working, because if I’d been in Hell’s Kitchen, it might have taken longer to get to Brighton Beach than I’d have liked.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to find when I finally made it to Camille, but I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like it.
In my line of work, you either had the knack or you didn’t. It was as clear cut as that. You knew when shit was about to drown you, or you were completely dumb to it. We worked hard to pair soldiers together who’d save each other’s asses, because unlike the Russians and the Italians, we gave a fuck about our men.
In this day and age, people didn’t feel like spending half their lives in a Supermax, taking dumps with a terrorist for a cellmate next door, and staring up at white walls with no natural light for decades on end. Neither did they want to die the second they made it through the ranks and earned a patch on the streets.
The Irish were the only ones who gave a fuck, and for all my father was a head case, that was one thing you could say about him—he cared for his people.
We had retirement slush funds for senior Pointers who were more useful sunning themselves in Florida than dragging shit down in the Big Apple, and the widows of soldiers who’d died on the job were well taken care of, and an integral part of the life.
I knew for a fact that we were the only family who had a safe place to lockdown our women when things really turned bad, and that said a lot about us. About who we were and what mattered to us the most.
But for all that, some soldiers were better than others, and in my instance, I had a knack for sniffing out trouble. That was why I’d gotten in touch with Maxim Lyanov a long time ago.
Something Eoghan had said, months back, when he’d gone to visit his father-in-law after the dumbfuck had been knee-capped had stuck with me. About how Maxim, though he was only young by comparison to Vasov’s other guards, appeared to be higher up the ladder than Eoghan might have thought reasonable for a guy that age.
Guards had to be trusted, they had the responsibility of taking the bullet for their leaders, and that meant crafting a kind of loyalty that took years to build. The skills required to be a good guard were important too, but it was the trust that was the hardest thing to cultivate.
And it seemed that theory was right, too.
Maxim had sold out his Pakhan to me.
I wasn’t happy about the cost, but I’d deal with it later. All transactions had a price and I understood why Maxim had demanded his payment in the form of Victoria Vasov.
The thought had me tightening my hands around the steering wheel.
It was a problem, but before that happened, the bastard might die. Whether or not that was at the end of my gun was another matter entirely. To keep my promise, I’d kill him, I’d just prefer not to have to.
At nine o’clock, the traffic down to Brighton Beach was just as busy as usual. With the rest of my crew back in The Hole, for the first time in a long while, I was alone and I took a moment to listen to the music that most of those fuckers would have mocked me for.
