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The rest of the management team streamed into the room after that, all of them men of impressive height and build, all leading teams of younger, less experienced men in a variety of specialties.
Less than a minute after the last man had taken a seat, Hawk McGregor entered the room.
It was no surprise that he strode in like he owned the place — he did — but Hawk entered every room the same way, commanding attention that went beyond his impressive height and build. There was something dark in his eyes, something coiled in the way he carried himself, like a snake waiting for an excuse to strike.
It had softened since he’d met Laurel, but not enough that Mauz would want to get on his bad side. Mauz had seen his share of violence, but that didn’t mean he went looking for it.
Hawk took his position at one end of the long table, opposite where Logan sat.
“Thanks for coming in.” Hawk started every meeting this way, but it was a courtesy. If Hawk asked them to take a shot of gasoline they’d ask if he wanted them to light it first. It was loyalty born out of a healthy dose of fear combined with deeply-held respect for the man who’d built an empire out of nothing. “The details of our next job are on your iPads. I’ll let Logan take it from here.”
Mauz hid his surprise. Logan was usually the strong, silent type. He let Hawk do the talking until Hawk talked himself — or the company — into a corner. Then Logan stepped in to finesse their way out of it.
Logan scowled at his partner, like the situation was unexpected even for him. He rose to his feet. “All of this information is in your dossiers as usual, but I’ll give you an overview.”
Everyone hurried to open their iPads, Mauz included. Some jobs were straightforward: escort this starlet or that to an awards show, stand guard at some rich producer’s house in the Hills to deter a rabid screenwriter-turned-stalker, accompany a controversial tech billionaire or “thought leader” to some conference.
Those jobs didn’t need a meeting.
Then there were the complicated ones, like the job protecting Laurel Bancroft that started as a favor and ended with Hawk assembling a crib and painting one of the bedrooms yellow in his once-sterile cliffside home.
Those jobs needed more explanation, more coordination among team leaders and their men.
Apparently this was not a straightforward job.
Logan hit a button on his phone and an image filled the screen at the front of the conference room. It matched the one on Mauz’s iPad: a picture of a man with the sallow complexion of an alcoholic, rheumy blue eyes, and a brown widow’s peak that said he’d be bald inside a decade.
“This is Yakov Vitsin, bratva avtoritet in Chicago.” Mauz made a mental note. An avtoritet, or brigadier, was the Russian equivalent of a captain in the Italian mob, which meant Vitsin had a group of men working under him, running card games, bookmaking operations, prostitution rings, and anything else that would make them money. It meant Vitsin was a boss of sorts, but also that Vitsin had a boss. Mauz focused on Logan as he continued. “He’s going to trial on a murder charge in Chicago, something the Baranov bratva isn’t too pleased about.”
Mauz followed along with the dossier as Logan laid out the details. Mauz organized them in his mind as if it were a military operation, shuffling the specifics like index cards on a bulletin board, putting the important ones at the top, filing smaller details away to think about later.
Apparently Vitsin was a loose cannon, but he came from an old bratva family, which was par for the course. It was a family business for most of those guys, a pre-requisite that calmed nervous bosses and itchy trigger fingers. All that history made selling out psychologically complicated, in addition to the obvious downsides of a probable bullet to the brain and a concrete anklet in the lake.
“This is our client,” Logan said as the image onscreen changed. This time it was a woman. She stared at something beyond the camera lens, her dark hair long and wavy over one shoulder, her eyes intense and focused. “Gabriella Perez, prosecutor for the State of Illinois.”
The name snagged on something in Mauz’s mind, and he tried to tease it out while Logan continued.
“Perez is an experienced prosecutor, about two months out from trial. Divorced with one child, a son, five years old,” Logan said.
“Are they coming for her?” Ford asked. “The bratva? Because those boys are nasty, particularly with women.”
Logan nodded. “It started with a tail and progressed to a dead bird on the porch. More recently, someone was spotted outside her son’s school.”
Mauz studied Logan, wondering why his voice sounded devoid of emotion, almost robotic. That was Hawk’s department: cold as a witch’s tit. Logan was usually more human.
“Gabriella Perez needs protection for the next two months,” Logan said. “That will include a security workup on her house, plus a transportation protocol for her and her son, among other things.”
The repeat of the woman’s name shook loose the information Mauz had been mining for in his memory.
He’d known Imperium did an extensive background check on him before offering him a job, but they probably didn’t know that he’d done the same thing. He’d known too many guys who left the military only to become employed by black ops organizations with no leadership, no moral compass, no honor code.
No one joined the military for money — the pay was shit — but earning peanuts while trying not to get your balls blown off had a way of taking your idealism down a few notches. Going to work for so-called security forces that were really mercenary orgs for hire was lucrative work.
Which was why Mauz had done background not only on Imperium, but on its owners. That’s where he’d come across a single photo of Hawk and Logan in high school, posted by someone on a reunion organizing group on Facebook.
But Hawk and Logan hadn’t been alone. A girl had stood between them, young and beautiful, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail. Mauz had studied the picture, reading the body language: a young Hawk on one side of the girl, his arms folded over his chest, Logan on the other side, one arm snaked intimately around the woman’s waist.
Logan had been looking down at her in the photo, and the expression in his eyes had stuck with Mauz: Logan and the woman, tagged as Gabriella Perez in the caption, were more than buddies.
