by Nicole Fox
And genuine fear is still lingering in the background, desperate for my attention. I know more than anybody that caring about anyone gives me a vulnerability that’s easy to attack. Even with Natalie dead, the Balduccis found a way to desecrate her memory by killing Ravil at her gravesite. It’s a dishonor to her and a blatant attempt at hurting me by attacking those close to me—the living and the dead alike.
The thought of going to Cassandra’s gravesite and witnessing someone killed nearby as a way to mock her death—the idea causes an ache in my chest that’s deeper than the pain from it happening to Natalie. I can’t let it happen again. I don’t make the same mistake twice and I’m not about to start because of a Balducci.
I check my phone. Yakov has called continuously to update me on our attempts to attack, bait, and taunt Gianluigi. But the incursions into his territory have only managed to leave craters where our soldiers had shootouts. My men are better shots, but the Balduccis have home-field advantage.
I pore over a map of West Side of Manhattan, the Balducci stronghold. I circle their weaknesses until I forget all of my own.
Our two Mafia doctors are waiting when we enter through the basement of the Akimov Suites. They’ve already transformed the area into a temporary operating room, the plastic sheets whipping around us as we bring in Semyon, Yury, Joseph, and Ivan.
I grab Dr. Lisov’s shoulder—he’s been with us the longest and I’ve literally trusted him with my life. “They all need to make it. Understood?”
He nods, but his face is pale and his hands are less confident than usual as he and Dr. Puzakov transfer the four men onto the beds. The scent of blood is overpowering. The sound of panting and grunts, followed by occasional high-pitched keening, is debilitating. I secure the basement, pacing as the doctors work.
I should have found another doctor before we started this war. Two doctors can’t save four men.
I shouldn’t have attacked the Balduccis’ meth lab. I should have stuck with attacking their lieutenants one by one. They may have been more prepared, but they would never have been able to surmise which house we were going to attack next. The stress and stretching their resources would have worn them down eventually.
I should have found another way. Timofey, Konstantin, and Luca are dead. Semyon’s wound doesn’t look life-threatening, but Yury, Joseph, and Ivan could easily die. We won the battle—at least ten of his men are dead, including the Balduccis’ meth cooks, but I can’t justify our heavy casualties. I need a better way to execute my revenge. Our revenge.
And I have a way.
Cassandra.
Why don’t I just use her like I had always planned? I spent all that time tracking down Lily. I threatened Gianluigi’s black sheep cousin, I threatened the lawyer, and I played nice with the foster care system. I put in more work for this than any of my other plans of attack. But I haven’t pulled the trigger. I haven’t revealed my ace in the hole.
Why?
It’s because she’s not what I expected. She’s surprised me, challenged me in ways that no one in my world has ever dared. She’s a curiosity. A fun, sexy toy. I need to remember that I can break toys and get myself new ones. None of them will be like Cassandra, but I’m not going to throw away months of work because some woman spread her legs for me, especially when the trade-off is my men getting picked off.
I pull out my cell phone. Gianluigi’s number is buried in the contacts—another present from his lawyer. I dial.
“Who is this?” Gianluigi answers. The stress weighs heavy on his voice. He must have gotten the news about his meth lab.
“You know who I am,”
I hear his breathing becoming harsher as the seconds pass by. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” he bites out.
“You keep trying,” I say. “And failing spectacularly. But I didn’t call to talk about my death. I’m here to talk about your daughter’s.” I let the words sink in, but as the thought drowns in my own head, I charge on. “And about your granddaughter,” I say. “I have them both. If you don’t turn over your territory and exile yourself from the city, I will kill Cassandra. Your child and your legacy will be dead.”
I close my eyes. Just saying the words causes flares of guilt in my chest that climb up my throat. I swallow back the stomach acid, letting it burn all the way back down.
“Fine,” Gianluigi says. “Don’t hurt them. I need some time—”
“You have a week from today. Get all your papers in order. We’ll meet at the Akimov Suites and you’ll sign the papers in front of our lieutenants. You’ll turn over Balducci control to me.”
“Fine,” he says.
I stare at the wavering plastic sheets. I’m not close enough to see what’s happening inside, but that’s likely for the best. I feel the same way about Gianluigi’s compliance—it’s strangely quick, but it is his daughter. I’ll accept the win, even if the guilt is fermenting in my stomach now.
I end the call and focus on the smell of blood, feeling like both the shark in the water and the dying bait.
My phone rings. It’s Bogdan.
“What is it?” I answer.
“Cassandra is talking to Pérez.” Miguel Pérez is our biggest drug supplier.
“How did she find him?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I know she talked to some of the truckers before. Maybe she got one of them to talk.”
“You know I despise when you tell me that you don’t know something,” I say. “Where is she right now?”
“She’s at his sister’s house with him. I’m parked outside, two doors down.”
“Make sure she stays there.”
I hang up. I take my car keys out of my pocket and head toward the door. Cassandra knows how to perpetually get under my skin, but her ability to seduce anyone she wants into conversation is perhaps more impressive.
But when she sees me, she’s going to need a lot more than seduction to get me to do anything for her.
16
Cassandra
I never expected to get the chance to talk to Miguel Pérez. He’s a Mexican citizen who has been funneling drugs across the border to the Bratva. The cocaine is produced cheap enough in Mexico that it’s worth it to transfer all the way to New York City.
But I didn’t know how they managed to get it across the border. I didn’t know how the business relationship worked. I didn’t know who else was involved.
And now I do, because Miguel Pérez visits his sick half-sister once a month.
I walk out of his sister’s house, trying to hide a smile as I turn to head south toward my car. The smile vanishes as I see Maksim leaning against the handrail of the next house’s stoop. He’s smoking a cigarette, his motions eerily calm. Even though it’s relatively warm, he’s wearing a peacoat.
“I should have known you’d be following me,” I grumble.
“I’ve been busy,” he says. “But I heard that you’d been busy too, so I decided to come and see what you’ve been up to. How is Miguel doing?”
“Good. Especially now that he doesn’t have to worry about his sister getting involved in mafia business.”
“I didn’t think you’d stoop so low.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I reply. “He just found out who I was related to and decided to cooperate. There wasn’t any threat.”
“I’m the authority on not giving explicit threats. It doesn’t stop them from being threats.” He gestures to his car. “Let’s go. I’ll take you back to my house.” He doesn’t seem angry, which feels even more dangerous than if he was. He is someone with enough control that it reminds me that I’m a pawn in his game.
When I get into his truck, there’s a faint scent of copper. No, not copper. Blood. I look around as Maksim slams his door shut and starts the truck.
“Did you kill someone in this truck?” I ask.
“Not in the truck,” he answers. “You can try to deny that you’re writing an article about the Bratva. It is what it is—I’d think less of
you if you weren’t trying to find an advantage to your situation. But if you’re going to write a narrative about us, you should get the facts from someone better than a drug addict that wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
“Somehow, I doubt that you’re going to tell me the Bratva’s deepest, darkest secrets,” I say.
“I’ll do more than that,” he says. “I’ll show you.”
Patrick Donnan, the Irish Mafia enforcer, told me that before the Bratva sent the Irish Mafia into hiding, the Irishmen stopped one of the Bratva’s shipments of cocaine. It ended up being a tragic mistake, a set-up—Bratva soldiers were waiting to gun all the Irish down. This was a brutal blow to the Irish Mafia’s morale, but their research meant that Patrick knew Carlos Rodriguez—the truck driver—was involved in Bratva business.
When I interviewed Carlos Rodriguez—with some implications that I’d tell Maksim that he was the leak in the Bratva—he pointed me in the direction of Miguel Pérez. And Miguel Pérez led me right back to me sitting on the passenger side of Maksim’s truck.
I try to appear nonchalant as Maksim drives, but if he’s truly going to show me his operation, it’s going to be the finishing touch on my article. I have all these loose strings, but what Maksim shows me could be the linchpin.
“Where are we going first?” I ask.
“You’ll see.”
Soon, we pull up outside of a hotel. Akimov Suites. I’d hypothesized his hotel was used for laundering, possibly some prostitution, but I hadn’t anticipated he’d have his operations functioning from a place with his name on it. He parks in the back parking lot of the facility. After we get out, Maksim settles his hand on the small of my back and leads me into the hotel.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Akimov. It’s wonderful to see you again. And good afternoon to you, too, ma’am,” the doorman greets us. I give him a quick smile, but my mind is racing. Anybody here could be involved with the Bratva. Anybody could be a potential enemy—or a potential source of information.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Akimov!” the woman standing behind the front desk calls out. He nods to her, continuing our walk straight to the elevators. He presses the button for the fourth floor. I lean against the elevator’s railing.
“Not the basement or the penthouse?” I ask.
“I move things around to avoid catching people’s attention,” he says. “The basement is used for emergencies. Right now it’s being used as an operating room. I would never use the penthouse for anything illegal. It’s worth too much money and draws too much attention.”
We get off on the fourth floor. He leads me to room 408. A “Do Not Disturb” sign hangs from the doorknob. He takes his wallet out, pulling out a hotel key. He unlocks the door and pushes it open.
I don’t know exactly what I expected, but the room is disappointingly normal. It’s still a beautiful room. With a bed layered with cream-colored and green blankets and leather furniture, it gives off a calming, earthy vibe. But I expected to find a lab setup or a wall covered with shotguns.
I sit down on the edge of the bed. It adjusts underneath me like memory foam.
“What is this?” I ask. “I thought you were going to show me your business. Did you just want to get me away from Miguel Pérez?”
“I am showing you,” he says. “This room is under the name Isamu Sugihara. It’s one of our code names.”
He opens the top dresser drawer. Inside, there are several small jars. He takes one of them out and hands it to me. Cimona’s Face Cream.
“This is what your shipments are,” I say. “This is how you get the drugs across the border.”
“Yes,” he says. “Cimona has enough money now to retire, but she wants to continue. Thank God for human greed.”
“You just keep the drugs in this room,” I say. “And you don’t get caught.”
“Like I said—we change rooms.” He takes the jar from me, putting it back into the drawer. As he stands back up, he leans close to me, his hand brushing up against the inside of my elbow. His grayish blue eyes send sparks through me.
“Any questions yet?” he asks.
How do you unnerve me so easily?
“Um.” I focus on the dresser. “How does the cocaine end up in this room?”
“Housekeeping,” he says. I nod. The housekeepers push their carts straight into the room. It would be easy to drop off all these jars. “Any other questions?”
I should have hundreds of questions. I should be drilling him, demanding answers like he’s already in an interrogation room.
“No.”
He offers me his hand. “Let’s go then. If you want to see the rest of my enterprise, we need to keep moving.”
After he helps me onto my feet, he goes to open the door and waits for me to walk out before following. Out in the hallway, he takes the lead again, staying a half step ahead of me. I pick up my pace to keep up with him.
“There’s something else I need to do here as well,” he says.
We take the elevator down to the ground floor. I start heading back toward the lobby, but he grabs my arm, taking me toward the back of the hotel. He moves his hand to the small of my back as we step outside. We head north for several feet before he leads me down a set of stone stairs. He knocks on the metal door at the end of the stairs.
The door opens a crack. A man’s face pokes out. A large scar stretches across his forehead and down his cheek.
“Hey, boss,” he says. He opens the door farther. With his arm around my waist, Maksim pulls me into the basement of the hotel. There’s a short hallway, pipes snaking their way across the walls, but all I can focus on is the bright, blinding lights coming through the plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling at the end of the hall. And the stench of blood.
“The doc says Semyon is doing good. Yury and Ivan are hanging on,” the scarred man tells Maksim.
“And Joseph?” Maksim asks.
The scarred man sighs heavily. “He didn’t make it.”
I try to look at Maksim’s face, but he steps forward, clapping the man on the shoulder.
“Start making the calls. Money isn’t an issue,” Maksim says. His tone isn’t harsh, but it’s commanding.
The scarred man nods once. He moves past the two of us to go out of the door we came through. Maksim doesn’t watch him leave—his eyes are focused on the plastic sheet. Two silhouettes are moving behind it. They read off numbers and abbreviations to each other.
“There was a shooting?” I ask. “Did you bring me here to see your men having surgery?”
It would be great for an article—Mafia doctors aren’t mentioned much in the legacies left by fallen Mafias and nothing gets people talking about an article more than humanizing the vile people of the world—but this feels too intimate, too personal, and too real to put into words. It almost feels like I’d be profiting off multiple murders.
“No,” he says. “I just wanted to check what had changed. Excuse me for a moment.”
He disappears behind the plastic sheets. He questions the two silhouettes, but his voice is strangely composed for just hearing that one of his men died. Initially, I think it’s apathy, but as he steps out and I see a brief flash of anguish rip across his face, I know it’s not.
That’s when it hits me with enough force that I take a step back. When he picked me up, his truck smelled like blood because he’d either been involved in this violence or he helped his men get out of it.
“Let’s go,” he says, moving past me. I grab his arm. He’s moving so fast, I stumble as he pulls me forward. He spins around, catching me around the waist before I fall. He pulls me upright, his hands lingering above my hips.
“I just—” I start. “If you need to stay here, I understand.”
“I’m not doing anything for them by sticking around,” he says. “I didn’t hire these doctors because they’re second-rate. They’re good at what they do and they know what I want. That’s all that matters. Let’s go. I want to finish this before the end
of the night.”
He leads me out of the basement. As we cross the back parking lot, a woman in black slacks and a white blouse stops and waves at us.
“Mr. Akimov, what a pleasure to see you. I didn’t know you were stopping by today,” she says, touching one of the thin gray streaks in her hair. He forces a smile. To other people, it might seem genuine, but there’s a faint tension in his jaw and it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I was just visiting Mr. Sugihara,” Maksim says. “He mentioned last time that some of the housekeeping staff bothered him in his room, despite the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and after he explicitly asked for privacy, so I was reassuring him we wouldn’t make the same mistake again.”
Maksim and I stop a couple of feet in front of the woman. While she appears to be in her fifties, she still has a youthful vibrancy to her.
“Oh, I’m so sorry about that, Mr. Akimov.” Her forehead furrows in genuine concern and her hand presses over her heart. “I will make sure nothing like that happens again. I know Mr. Sugihara is important to us. I’ll talk to housekeeping to see what happened.”
“There’s no need to talk to them. I already did. The situation has been dealt with,” Maksim says. He gestures to me. “Michelle Knapp, this is Cassandra. She’s considering writing an article about the Akimov Suites. Cassandra, Michelle has been the front office supervisor since the hotel opened.”
“Wow,” I say, shaking her hand. “You must have seen quite a bit.”
“Hotel business is always interesting,” she says. “But the Akimov Suites is by far the best hotel I’ve worked for.”
Maksim abruptly turns. I follow his gaze to see the scarred man several feet away. “Cassandra. Michelle. Excuse me for a moment,” Maksim says. He quickly walks toward the scarred man.
I turn back toward Michelle. “He must be a fascinating man to work for.”
“He’s always been a great boss,” she says.
“Really?” I ask. “I’d heard from some other employees that he could be harsh—even violent.”
