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He had a flash of rose gold, the glint of a knife.
Felt the blade bite into his skin.
“You good?” Damian asked.
Lyon realized he was sweating and was surprised by the note of concern in the other man’s voice. Like Roman, Damian Cavallo was an uneasy ally, but even more so because he was one of the Syndicate’s bosses.
Lyon took a deep breath. “Fine.”
“Heard you had a rough go of it.” Damian’s eyes were kind. “You have a lot on your plate, but when things settle down, well… no shame in needing a little help processing it all.” He hesitated. “My wife was taken prisoner once. By the Greeks. She still wakes up shaking and sweating in the middle of the night. That was almost ten years ago.”
Lyon nodded slowly. “Thank you.” He handed Damian the picture. “This one. The guy in the white shirt, Piaget watch. That’s Vadim’s son, Sergei.”
“I know,” Damian said. “I just wanted you to confirm it. Keep flipping."
Sergei was depicted in several of the photos, always surrounded by other men.
Security, Lyon assumed.
“He’s been wounded,” Lyon said, studying one of the photos. Sergei’s sleeve was rolled up, a bandage around his forearm.
“Shot,” Damian said. “Word is it happened when your guys came in to get you. Ballsy move on your wife’s part, by the way.”
Lyon felt a rush of pride. “My wife is a strong woman.”
“Heard Sergei took one to the shoulder too,” Damian said.
“And Vadim?” Lyon asked.
“Last picture,” Damian said.
Lyon skipped to the end, his eyes glued to the image in front of him: an older man, still trim but with a slight paunch, graying hair long around his ears.
“Vadim.” Lyon studied the picture, focusing on the details, feeling the pieces of the puzzle trying to click into place. It didn’t come in a flash of discovery, but in the memory of scent: fresh water and peat, cold air and wind. “He’s staging from one of the water cribs.”
“Based on the triangulation from all these cameras, my techs agree,” Damian said.
Lyon couldn’t believe it. He’d forwarded Damian names and photos of Vadim and his son — Sergei was easy, he was always out on the town drinking and drugging, but Vadim had been harder — but he hadn’t expected an exact hit from the Syndicate’s cyberlab so soon. It only validated his plans to set one up for the bratva sooner rather than later.
There was no way to do business without it in this era of organized crime. Men like Igor Kalashnik, Roman’s father, were hurting their organizations by keeping them in the past.
“Motherfucker,” Lyon said.
It was brilliant. Most of the water cribs had been built in the 1800s as a way to funnel fresh water from the lake to the city for drinking water. Most of them were defunct, but they still sat out on the lake, circular structures built out of concrete, a strange circus tent in the middle of the water.
No one paid any attention to them anymore except as a source of historical fascination. Lyon had read that once upon a time, the cribs had been manned by workers stationed on the water. They’d slept and eaten there to keep an eye on the structure, working in shifts.
Now, the cribs were monitored by the city from afar.
And probably not very closely.
“I assume you know they’re connected to the mainland by tunnel,” Damian said.
Lyon nodded, his mind already at work. He focused on the area surrounding Sergei and the other men in the pictures. “That’s Lawrence Street, by the park.”
For years, Lyon had run miles through the city on his early morning jogs, plotting his takeover of the bratva. It was the one time of day he didn’t have to pretend to be a lowly cog in the wheel, the one time of day he could indulge his fantasies of being pakhan.
He knew that street. Knew all of them.
