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“No, we’re actually going to go that way. I did spend a lot of time over there though,” he replies, his eyes distant as he remembers, staring off into the alley.
We continue onward for a short distance before we come to yet another abandoned building, an old bar from the looks of it. Dominik tries to lead me down into the basement by the door in the back, and at first I resolve not to step foot inside of it at all.
After being informed that I would likely be a target for human trafficking if the wrong person saw me, I change my mind and follow him down.
“Mirali!” he calls down the stairs. “I’m back, and I’ve got an even bigger problem for you to solve for me!”
I hear an old man groan loudly in the basement, the noise echoing a bit as it bounces off the walls.
“Why the fuck are you constantly in situations?” the voice calls again, hesitating before a violent coughing fit ensues.
We continue down the stairs until we’re in the most questionable basement that I’ve ever been in. Directly to the right is an office, and sitting in a twenty-year-old office chair is an old man smoking a cigar.
He looks at me, then at Dominik, and then at me again. “Oh no, please tell me you didn’t.”
Dominik remains silent, and the old man rolls his eyes so hard that they could detach from their retinas.
“I know you told me it was a bad idea, and I know you said that nobody gets out, but I need you to help us,” Dominik says in that authoritative voice that I’ve grown to both love and hate.
“Help you with what? Writing a will? We went over this, Dom. There’s no getting out. You’re fucked,especiallynow that you kidnapped the Bratva girl. For fuck’s sake,” Mirali replies.
Dominik sighs heavily, rolling his eyes just as hard. “Okay, so let’s say we’re just looking to go somewhere for a really long time where we could hypothetically hide from the Bratva,” he replies.
“Well, that depends on a lot of things. Does anyone that you’re trying to run from have any warrants?” Mirali asks, trying to power through his cigar even though it’s practically strangling him.
“Mika, do you know if Remi has any warrants?” Dominik asks me with a dangerous amount of hope and expectation in his eyes.
“Um, I know he was being investigated in California, but he never said what for,” I reply, guilty that I disappointed him.
“No, that’s actually really good. We can find out what the charges are and go from there,” he replies as he takes his phone out of his pocket.
He does a couple of searches, and eventually he finds something. It’s an article stating my father’s name alongside a list of charges, including RICO charges. It says that the warrant is still active.
“Holy shit, we need to go to California. He’d never step foot there,” Dominik says, scrolling through another article about my father and the pursuit of his organized crime syndicate.
“Okay, now don’t go getting all excited just yet. You’re still in the city limits, and you’re in heavy Bratva territory. The longer you stay here, even if it’s only hours, the worse your chances of escape are,” Mirali warns.
“You’re right. You understand that, right Mika?” Dominik asks, turning towards me and looking me in the eye.
I scoff at the implication. I was just here listening to their conversation. How could I have missed anything he said? “Of course I understand. I’m not ten years old.”
Dominik coughs hard as the cigar smoke starts to reach him. “Okay, so that’s that. We’re going to go straight to California and figure everything else out when we get there.”
When it really sinks in, I start to feel sick to my stomach about how many factors play into our ability to escape. Mirali is right – the second my father realized that Dominik and I are missing, he sent out all of his men to scour the city looking for us.
“Okay, so first you need to find a path straight to California without any deviations. Flying is much preferred here for obvious reasons. Then, for the next few months, you need to keep close tabs on the men you’re running from. They’ll likely be searching through the city for a long while before they go anywhere else,” Mirali continues.
“Do you think we have enough time to get to the airport before they catch us?” I ask, thinking about how stressful my last airplane ride was when I was seventeen. There wasn’t even a problem. I was just scared of flying.
Now, there’s a problem.
Mirali coughs again, and this time I’m wondering if he needs to see a doctor. “If you leave now, yes. But otherwise, you’ll be lucky not to run into them there. Since they know you’re a flight risk, they’ll search there once they’ve gotten through their warehouses. They need to make sure that you haven’t stolen or destroyed any assets, and that’s the only thing buying you time.”
“Okay, we can do that. Mirali, I can’t thank you enough. You’ll hear from me again, I promise,” Dominik says as he takes my hand and leads me back up the stairs.
I’m anxious to just get back to the bike and get on the road. I hate it here, I hate being in constant panic, and I hate having to look over my shoulder nonstop.
Dominik looks over to the alleyway between the hospital and brick building, and I wonder if he feels like he’ll never see it again. He’d never want to live back here, obviously, but he’d probably feel like a piece of him was demolished with the buildings themselves. I can’t fault him for wanting to see it one last time.
