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“I wish you would have admitted to taking the money sooner,” I tell him as I stuff a gag in his mouth. I’m not interested in anything else he has to say. “I wouldn’t have had to resort to this level of… ugliness.” His face is a canvas of bruises and cuts, and I’m sure he’s nursing broken ribs. The chair he’s strapped into is the only thing keeping him upright.
Looking down at my bloody knuckles, I frown. “This isn’t my usual line of work,” I confess.
Much to my father’s disappointment, I was never a typical vor. My brothers embraced the brutality of our world, but I preferred using my brains to my fists. My computer skills to my knife skills. I learned early on that everyone has deep dark secrets—finding and exposing what others want to keep quiet makes me a much more dangerous adversary.
Like with my friend Gerhart here, the Swiss banker we trusted to launder our money who’d given in to temptation. He swiped a cool three million from the brotherhood, probably thinking we wouldn’t notice. But I noticed. And now he must suffer the consequences, because you don’t get away with cheating the bratva and live to tell the tale. We’ve got enforcers for this kind of thing, but sometimes, like now, I volunteer for the job just to see if I still have it in me.
“I know why you did it,” I say, shaking my head, my voice echoing off the walls of the bank vault. “Stupid, but I understand.” I grab the photos from my bag, leafing through them until I find the right one: Gerhart and a beautiful blonde entwined in each other. “I’d like to think you took the money for love. That, at least, I get. Love’s one hell of a drug.”
It’ll take you to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I should know.
He nods desperately, as if he could sway me with a heartfelt plea. But we both know the truth.
“Let’s cut the crap. You didn’t steal for love; you stole for pussy. Katarina, right? She wanted to be wined and dined. Whisked off to Dubai for a weekend, the Caribbean the next. Expensive tastes.” Gerhart scowls and stiffens against the binds. Of course he doesn’t want to be reminded of his weakness. No man does.
“The thing I don’t get…” I say, throwing the pictures on the floor so they scatter in all directions. “Why cheat on your wife?” I let that question hang as I pick up one picture in particular. It’s of his family. Big smiles all around at his daughter’s high school graduation. I hold it up to his face, devastation crossing his features. It always comes down to the sins of the father. “She’s a lovely woman, your wife, I can tell. She loves you, and you fucked it up. For what?” I heave out a sigh for the shame it is and once again take the seat across from him.
“I was in love once. With my best friend’s little sister. Cliché, right?” I smile wistfully. “She was the one person in my life who believed I could be something other than a cold-blooded vor. That I was capable of more than just darkness. Guess I proved her wrong.” I force down the guilt, reminding myself that loyalty to my family came at a cost. Like everything.
Gerhart maintains his scowl, guess he’s not in the mood for story time. But fuck him, this is my version of torture. “But the difference between us? I know what I lost, what I had to turn my back on. And I still feel the loss every fucking day.” Every time I look in the mirror.
I rarely talk about Alyona and what we had. Because when I do, when I allow her to take up too much real estate in my mind, I spiral. Pushing her away was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But there is no rewriting the past, so I focus on the one thing I can control. Her future.
“Well, Gerhart, our time here is up,” I say, sounding more like a therapist than a vor. His eyes widen in horror, and he tries to squirm out of his bindings, a futile effort given his battered state. I’m almost regretful our chat has to come to an end—it’s not often I can talk so freely. “So, here’s what’s going to happen,” I say, preferring to be straightforward about these things. “I’m going to shoot you in the head. You’ll die instantly. Tomorrow morning, someone at the bank will find your body, usually a janitor or a member of the staff. Your wife and kids won’t learn about the mistress. They’ll think it’s a bank robbery gone wrong. Tragic, but at least they’ll never learn what a dirty dog you are. But we know the truth, don’t we?”
He releases a pitiful wail, but his pleas fall on deaf ears, I’ve heard enough. I glance down at my phone, swiping a few times to make sure the money Gerhart took is now back in our offshore account where it should be.
The black metal of my Sig looks dull under the shitty fluorescent lighting. “It’s been real, my friend.” I pull the trigger, not wanting to stretch out the moment. It’s a clean shot, right between the eyes, he’s dead within seconds.
* * *
The bike rumblesbeneath me as I rev the engine, the vibrations lulling as I turn near the private airport in Geneva. My bones ache. Hours of standing on the cold concrete floor of the bank vault will do that to you. But in less than nine hours, I’ll be touching down in New York.
I park in front of the hangar doors, my Jetstream visible inside. Dismounting, I pull the helmet over my head, and hand it off to one of the men standing by. He’ll load the black Kawasaki in the hold of the plane.
Damn, it’s a pretty bike. Might need to acquire one in red when I get home.
What’s another bike when you have forty already?
Whatever fills the void.
As I sling my bag over my shoulder and head towards the waiting jet, my cell buzzes from inside the bag. It’s late here in Switzerland, meaning it’s the dead of night back home—never a good sign. But when I check my phone, it’s not my brother Andrei calling.
“Matis, what’s happening?” I demand. A phone call means something’s gone wrong, and I pay Matis handsomely to ensure that never happens. “Is the ass wipe still in the picture?”
“No, no,” Matis’s distinct rasp comes through. “The little merde dropped her like a hot potato. Nearly shit his pants when we had our talk. She really picks some losers.” He laughs before breaking into a coughing fit.
They pick her, but I don’t bother correcting him. “So what’s the issue?”
“The problem is…” Matis hesitates, which I don’t like. He’s usually very direct. “Alyona called Gianni. I don’t have all the details, but…”
He doesn’t need to finish the thought. You don’t call a man like Gianni Mero unless you require his expertise in body disposal, cleanup, or erasing a murder.
My chest tightens, anxiety coiling around my throat. “Just tell me, is she hurt?”
“No, no, not at all. It seems she did the hurting.”
I pause, considering this. I know what she’s capable of—I trained her myself—but it’s been years. “Keep an eye on the situation,” I order. “I’ll be in Paris in just over an hour. And, Matis, you better have some answers when I land.”
