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He shuffles back and forth in place nervously. “We found a…a note, I guess you’d call it.”
I freeze. “A what?”
“A note. Tacked onto a body around the corner. The fire burned the flesh right off the poor guy’s face, so I couldn’t tell who it was…but this was pinned to the front of his shirt.” Dima pulls out a scrap of singed paper and hands it to me.
Two words, scrawled hastily on the blistered paper.
Missed me?
It’s unsigned. But no points for guessing who wrote it.
“Blyat’,” I snarl, crushing the note in my first. “Five fucking years of this Hide & Seek, Whack-A-Mole bullshit, and now, Benedict thinks it’s time to be cute?”
“He’s just trying to goad you. Get in your head,” Dima suggests. “Why else would he write notes like some lovestruck school asking you to “Check yes if you like her’?”
“No.” I throw the crumpled note into a pile of embers in the corner. “He’s getting ready.”
“Him and what army?” he scoffs. “In case you forgot, we burned everything he ever loved to the fucking ground.”
I look around me again. “And now, he’s returning the favor. In the last twelve months alone, how many times has he struck? Half a dozen warehouses sabotaged. A safehouse raided by the FBI. The devil only knows how many of our foot soldiers missing or tempted off-course or killed outright.”
“Because that’s all hecando.”
I shake my head and turn my back on the carnage of my property. “It’s not just that. He’s trying to tell me something.He’s been preparing.”
Stepping out into the open air, I pick my way to the jeep. This warehouse was a recent purchase, and a pricey one to boot. It’ll take money to restore it, but I’m not concerned about the cost. Money is something I have in spades.
Patience, though? I’m running rather short on that.
“We need to find him.” I gesture for Mila and Dima to get into the Wrangler.
Mila climbs in the passenger seat while Dima hops into the back. “It’s not as though we haven’t been trying,” he pouts. “The rat bastard just disappeared into thin air.”
He’s not wrong. That’s the problem. We’ve scoured the city, traced every footstep that Benedict and his brother Gregor ever laid down. And come up with a grand total of…
Jack shit.
No one has laid eyes on either Bellasio man since the night I reduced their empire to rubble.
The few of his followers we’ve managed to ensnare since then have all died without snitching during interrogations, or they genuinely had no clue where their dons had gone.
“If only you’d had that talk with Archie before he ran,” Mila murmurs.
I clench my teeth. As if I needed more reminding ofthatparticular mistake.
“There’s no guarantee that Archie ever knew a damn thing,” Dima argues back. “And even if he did, that information is probably null and void now. Benedict’s a rat, but he’s not stupid.”
“I don’t know about that.”
The theory is sound; I just tend to avoid thinking about Archie and… all the shit that the man’s name stirs up in me.
But that doesn’t mean I’ve buried my head in the sand. For as many places as we’ve combed through in search of the Bellasio brothers, there are a few I’ve left untouched. Intentionally, of course.
I want Benedict to think I don’t know everything. If he’s been lulled into a false sense of security…if he thinks that maybe Archie took his secrets with him when he ran…then maybe he’ll make an unforced error.
One crack. One mistake. That’s all I need.
Then I’ll have his head on a silver fucking platter, and I can pretend that my life is going according to plan.
