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“You’ve signed this man’s death warrant.”
“Are all Americans so soft? I asked him to severely and sexually injure your daughter, and he was happy to do it. You know what has to be done.”
My finger trembles for the gun when he phrases it like that. Something strange happens too. When he saysyour daughter, I imagine somebody else who hasn’t been born yet—my and Emma’s child.
“I don’t kill on the orders of the Bratva,” I tell him.
He could have an ulterior motive for wanting me to take him out. Maybe Matvei knows something Fyodor doesn’t want us to. He sent him here to die, wanting to implicate me in a murder while getting rid of an enemy, but why take the risk?
“He is nothing, Leonardo,” Fyodor says as if reading my mind. “He is barely an insect. He knows nothing, and heisnothing. He does what I tell him to, a good pet. He is a drug addict. He is addicted to that crack shit you have here.”
“That crack shityou’rebringing here,” I snap.
“Give us the city, and we will keep it clean. While at war, what choice do we have?”
I don’t respond. It’s a stupid thing for him to say. There are always choices.
“He would have enjoyed it,” Fyodor says.
Still, I stay silent. It’s a foolish leader who feels the need to speak constantly.
“This is the first step to peace,” he goes on. “I’m delivering the man who almost kidnapped your daughter.”
“You order a dog to bite me and then expect me to throw you a party when you bandage the wound?”
“I like the analogy, and yes, fair point, Italian.”
“You don’t want peace,” I ask.
“What do I want, then?”
“Before I spoke to you, I wasn’t sure, but now I think you want chaos.”
“I want the city, and please, don’t say ‘over my dead body’ because then I will say ‘that can be arranged,’ and it will be like one of your awful American movies.”
“You’ll never have control of this city. I could order my men to execute you now.”
“You could order them to try, but I have twenty-five gunmen with me. They will all die.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I might be.”
I grind my teeth, my head aching.
“What do you want, Fyodor? From me? Now? Why did you leave a note at Edonismo?”
“Peace, like I said. We will carve the city in two. Right down the middle. The Mafia on one side and the Bratva on another. A great alliance, an end to the bloodshed.”
“And watch as your side of the city becomes a sex-trafficked, drug-addicted, jobless, crime-ridden hellhole?”
“So many ugly words.”
“Never.”
“Then the war will keep going. More women and children will die.”
“You say that like it’s a natural disaster, and you’re not controlling it.”
