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Bea slipped past me to perch on the edge of the new chair that sat in front of the desk. Father must not have been able to get my blood out of the old one. Its replica sat empty next to her, but I made no move to take it. My brother could wait and stare all he liked, I intended to be prepared to strike in the event he grew some balls and came at me.
Ryder came up on my right, while Gunner took the left, their stances matching that of Piotr’s guards. Somewhere between the front door and the office, Gunner had pulled his shaggy, light brown hair into a tight bun at the base of his skull. The only time he only wore it that way was when he was expecting trouble, and knowing Gunner, he came prepared with at least one gun hidden underneath his baggy clothing. Even if the guards had searched him, I’d never known him not to slip at least one past detection.
Despite not playing into his mind games by sitting, Piotr’s eyes still gleamed. He thought he had the advantage. Sure, he had more guns and men at his disposal, but how loyal were they? If Marek was anything to go by, not very. My brother had always excelled at shooting himself in the foot, and demoting one of our father’s best men was no way to garner respect or loyalty. His mistake may prove useful to me considering I had leverage against Marek that I’d never used.
Piotr leaned forward to slip a manila file folder across the desk and then sat back. Keeping a close eye on my brother, I leaned over and grabbed it. When I opened the envelope, I saw my father’s bold scrawl across the bottom. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t believe the typed words in front of my face. Then I noticed the date at the top and things clicked into place.
My eyes snapped up to meet my brother’s. “He never changed his succession plan?”
“Evidently not.” His lips were a thin line as he bit out, “Trust me, I’ve checked with his attorney. Keep leafing through, there’s more.”
My thumbs flipped through several more pages, scanning the words, still trying to process why he’d left me the keys to his kingdom after trying to kill me. Though, to be fair, I tried to kill him first. While I didn’t regret it, that momentary loss of control had changed everything.
At the bottom of the very last page, there was a blank line with my name typed below it. There it was. His endgame hadn’t changed since we were kids, but him having to legally take my birthright from me was still a shock. I thought he’d summoned me here to ensure I wouldn’t make waves for him now that our father was dead. But this was more than a mere dick measuring contest.
When I looked back at him, he had a cocky half smile on his face. “If you don’t sign, everyone in your precious club does hard time or goes out in a hail of bullets. Either way, I’ll get what should have been mine.”
I cocked my head to the side, studying him. He had to have something on the club, or he wouldn’t be so sure of himself. But what? Madness tinged his eyes, a touch of our father’s cruelty shining through. All this time, I thought I was the only one of my siblings who’d inherited our father’s difficulties. Piotr might not be the monster Father and I were, but he hadn’t escaped untainted either.
My father must have seen the same weaknesses I always have in Piotr, and narcissist that he was, feared that Piotr would topple the empire he’d clawed and schemed to build. That would also explain my success in evading him all these years. He had to have held back during our fight, then for show made half-hearted attempts to find me. At the time, it hadn’t felt that way, but all my memories were through the eyes of a teenager.
Pops interrupted my musings by leaning in and whispering, “I don’t think you should give him what he wants. He’s telling the truth, but your brother is slicker than pig snot on a radiator. I wouldn’t put it past him to do whatever he’s gonna do anyway after you sign.”
Ryder kept his eyes on my brother as his shoulder brushed against mine, his voice a low rumble. “I agree with Pops. Don’t sign a thing he pushes your way.”
Pops was known around the club for being something of a human lie detector, but even without his confirmation, I’d already come to the same conclusion. Our father hadn’t given Piotr a choice, not if he was hellbent on ruling. He either needed to kill me himself, which we both knew he didn’t have the balls to do, or let the Braterstwo take care of me in jail. The paper was simply the tool he was using to lull me into a false sense of security.
The easiest thing to do would be to kill him and be done with it. However, it might be more prudent to buy us some time. We needed to figure out what he had on the club. Then again, the key could be in who he had in his pocket. If I killed him now, we might never know, and the threat would hang over our heads indefinitely.
Not to mention, I could use the added time to determine which soldiers were loyal to Piotr and which could be turned. My brother would watch my every move from here on out, so it wasn’t like I could take care of it before I left. Luckily, I knew the perfect person for the job, and that someone owed me a debt.
My brother was so sure he had me by the short hairs that he practically bounced in his seat. He was about to be sorely disappointed because the game he put into play was far from over. He didn’t know it yet, but this was only the beginning.
“I’ll contact you with my answer in two weeks. In the meantime, if you so much as sneeze in the club’s direction I’ll wear your intestines like a necktie.”
My cab pulled to a stop in front of a brick two-story building with black metal numbers on the side. The satellite image I’d seen of the building when my sister moved in made me think it was a warehouse that had been converted into an apartment building. It happens all the time in New York City, why not San Antonio? Now, I felt incredibly stupid for making that assumption and not looking into it any further.
Getting out of the cab, I wheeled my suitcase onto the sidewalk and shaded my eyes with my hand as I looked up. One thing was for certain, drugs were definitely treating these boys well. This was no rundown house or junky garage like you saw on TV. The Devil’s building took up an entire city block and had cute black sconces set into the brick and a scrollwork sign above the door.
The DEA’s file, or the parts I had access to with my sister’s involvement, said the club owned this garage and a strip club. Nobody knew for sure how the club cleaned the cash from the drugs they sold, but it was long suspected that the strip club, and possibly this garage, were fronts. They just couldn’t get close enough to prove it.
My boss didn’t know it yet, but that’s exactly what I was going to do. He wanted me to get into bed with the Mafia, but I wasn’t trying to get myself, or my sister, killed just to cement his career. If the limited information we had on the elder Kowalczyk was anything to go by, I wouldn’t last a day. Hunter had probably cut his teeth assassinating seasoned undercover agents, and here I was, a wet behind the ear rookie with zero field experience.
Fuck that. I had no desire to be fitted for cement shoes and thrown over the side of a boat. A RICO case was much more feasible given my skill set, not to mention I stood a better chance of living long enough to make sure my sister didn’t end up in jail. The evidence I collected would be what ensured her freedom, not the drug bust my boss wanted.
He’d dangled my sister’s freedom over my head like a schoolyard bully, but I wasn’t stupid. Even if I went off like a lamb to slaughter, there was no guarantee that my boss had enough clout to hold up his end of the deal. If I was going to risk my life, I was going to get what I came for.
Lies were my specialty, and after all, wasn’t that what undercover work was all about? A fake identity wasn’t an option given the circumstances, so there were no facts about an alter ego I had to keep straight. All I had to do was sneak around and collect evidence on the club behind my sister’s back while trying not to get either of us killed. Simple. Easy. In and out. A week, tops, and I’d be back to my run-of-the-mill, boring existence.
A fine sheen of sweat coated my skin, making my mother’s pearls stick to my neck. I could do this. For Cherry. With a deep breath in, I yanked the Band-Aid off and pulled on the handle of the plain black door. A bell jingled from above it, but nobody would ever hear it over the heavy metal musicblasting from somewhere in the back.
The soft glow of a computer screen was like a flashing beacon, tempting me forward with the promise of my sister’s salvation. When I peered down the hallway and saw that it was empty, I walked around the desk centered in the middle of the room. A customer’s information stared me right in the face, and I couldn’t believe it. This seemed rather careless for criminals that were smart enough to evade justice for all these years. Either that or they had nothing to hide stored on this machine.
The mouse felt cold underneath my palm as I slid it across the motorcycle printed mouse pad. My heartbeat sped up as I toggled between accounting software and customer files, looking over my shoulder every few seconds. All the invoices I clicked on had timecards attached to justify any per hour labor charges, with the same three names appearing over and over.
Despite being behind on the accounting side of the shop, they were still turning a legitimate profit. At least on the surface. It was going to take me hours of sifting through all the records to find the proof I needed, assuming there was any. The strip club was a much more likely place to launder money, yet I couldn’t rule anything out. Plus, the garage was attached to the clubhouse, making it easier for me to sneak over here after everyone went to sleep. A shiver went down my spine at the thought of what I might need to do in order to access the strip club’s computers.
Heavy metal still reverberated down the hallway, but I couldn’t afford to get caught snooping by whoever was in the back. My sister’s freedom, and both of our lives, depended on me being smart about the way I did things. Setting the screen back the way I found it, I looked around, trying to familiarize myself with the lobby’s layout for when I would have to find my way back in the dark.
