Casually, he walked up to the DJ booth and grabbed the microphone.
“Be smart, ladies and gentlemen. Follow directions and you live. Try to be a hero and you die.” He scanned the room and saw everyone was in place as planned. “Anyone who reaches for a cell phone, hits a panic button, even eyeballs me too hard is going to pay a visit to the morgue tonight, and your families will follow you by tomorrow morning. I’m not here for you. So, be glad and be compliant.”
Before Dmitry could get the words out of his mouth, a man sitting directly across from the DJ booth pulled out his gun. Without a second thought, Dmitry quickly raised his own gun and shot the man in the middle of his head. One bullet sent him flying backward over the table. He was dead before his body could hit the floor.
“Anyone else want to take their best shot?” Dmitry asked calmly into the microphone.
Three of Dmitry’s men rushed to Ryan’s office, kicked the door off the hinges and headed straight for his desk. They quickly loaded up his laptop, collected his ledger books, pulled the security tapes, snatched open his locked desk drawers and pulled out his files. When they were done raiding his office, they placed a small black container with C4 and a timer on his desk and walked out.
Anatoly made his way to the women who were holed up in the small dressing room in the back. The strippers huddled in a circle on the floor with tears streaming down their faces, mingled in mascara and foundation.
Stepping past the guard with his gun pointed at the small group, Anatoly looked around. There were eight girls, but only one of them stood out. She was a statuesque black woman, long legs, flawless makeup, menacing eyes. He knew she was the one he was looking for, but just in case, he tested the group.
“I’m here to kill only one of you, but if you don’t tell me what I want to hear, I’m going to kill all of you,” Anatoly said, sucking his teeth.
All eyes widened with fear, but none were brave enough to look up at their captors.
Anatoly rolled his neck and thought of his sister. “Which one of you is Ryan Colt’s girl?” He knew there was a chance none of them were, but he’d never get anywhere assuming.
“She is!” one of the girls screamed, pointing to the black woman Anatoly had noticed when he first came in. “Her! Eddy!”
“Yeah, Eddy!” another girl screamed. They all hated her. She received the special treatment from Ryan, and as a result, she was mean as a rattlesnake. This was just payback for all the times she had done them wrong or caused them to get slapped up.
“Fuck you dirty bitches,” Eddy spat. “Y’all ain’t loyal to shit.” She looked up at Anatoly defiantly and raised a brow.
“Are you Ryan’s girl?” Anatoly asked, mocking her.
Eddy rolled her eyes and pursed her shiny red lips together. “I ain’t telling you shit. You can kiss my black ass,” she said, refusing to show weakness in front of the very women she had terrorized for years.
Anatoly felt his cool slipping away. “Oh, you not gonna tell me shit, eh?” He stepped over the other women and grabbed Eddy by a fist full of her hair. Dragging her out of the room kicking and screaming with only a G-string on, he threw her into one of his men’s arms. “Take her and leave now. We’ll see how tough she is alone.”
He walked back into the room and pulled the only picture he had of his sister from his back pocket. “Have any of you seen this woman?” Passing the picture around, all the women said the same thing. NO. Not just no, but HELL NO.
“Where does he keep the other women?” Anatoly growled. “Where does he keep his escorts?”
“What other women?” one of the girls asked. None of the other girls said a word.
Anatoly cocked his gun as a warning. He was not playing with any of them. Innocent or not, he would shoot everyone in this room one-by-one until someone gave him some information.
“Colt doesn’t keep us nowhere,” another woman screamed, clueless of Ryan’s other business. “The guards are the only guys we see outside of Ryan. And they beat the hell out of us if we don’t make pay out.” She looked up with a black eye given to her the night before by one of the bouncers. “Sir, we don’t know nothing else about Mr. Colt’s affairs.”
“He don’t tell us shit. We just work for him,” another girl yelled, keeping her head down.
Anatoly knew then that Ryan Colt kept everyone in the dark. Never let the right hand know what the left hand was doing. Smart. Seeing he had no further use for them, he turned to his guards. “Get them out front,” he said, walking back out. He looked at his watch and checked the time. They had three minutes. He got on his earpiece. “Are all the other rooms clear?”
“Clear,” the men reported one at a time from their various positions around the club. They had planted several small bombs in the places they knew would have the most impact, like the storage room for the liquor and the closet with all the cleaning supplies.
Coming back out in the main area of the club, Anatoly nodded toward his father. They had what they came for. It was time to get out of here before the cops arrived.
“Thank you for your cooperation. Now, if you would quietly file out of the front door,” Dmitry said, dropping the mic.
A line of patrons slowly started to move until Anatoly flung his rifle over his shoulder, gripping the handle he slipped his finger over the trigger. Unloading on the bar, he ripped through bottles, destroying the back-lit sign of the Bouncing Beaver, the long wall mirror and everything in his view. At that point, the people rushed out the club, screaming and knocking each other over to get away from the gunman.
Gabriel was busy gathering the bouncers into a corner on their knees. Upon hearing Dmitry’s order to exit, they got up and prepared to leave as well.
“Where are you going?” Gabriel asked, weapon pointed. His voice was ominously playful. “Someone’s gotta stay to deliver a message to your boss.”
The bouncers looked at each other, praying not to be picked.
“I’ll stay,” the head guard said to Gabriel. His mouth was still bloody from the kick Anatoly had given him a few minutes before.
“What’s your name?” Gabriel asked, inhaling the acrid smell of gunpowder.
“Marko,” the man answered. He pushed out his chest and narrowed his eyes on Gabriel, challenging his authority. Even in a potentially deadly situation, he was not about to be punked in front of his men. “Bet you not that fucking bad without that gun, dude.”
“You may live to find out. For now, move over to the side,” he said, motioning for him to go with one of Dmitry’s men. He turned his attention to the other five men who were waiting impatiently to be excused now that someone had volunteered to get a message to Ryan.
But they were all sorely mistaken.
“Eeny,” Gabriel moved the barrel of the gun between them. “Meeny.” The men tried to duck out of the way. “Miny.” They pushed back on the wall, eyes big with fear. “Moe,” Gabriel said with a wink before he pulled the trigger and mowed down all six of them. Their football-sized bodies fell atop of each other in a pool of their own blood.
Anatoly walked over to the guard, who was standing with Marko, and frowned. “Why is he still alive?”
“He volunteered to leave a message, Boss,” the guard replied. He pushed Marko forward.
Anatoly stepped closer to Marko. “You one of Ryan’s men, right?”
“Yeah,” Marko said, a little less brave.
Anatoly pulled out the picture of his sister. “You ever see him with this woman?”
Marko looked at the picture and shrugged. “Nope.” It wasn’t a lie. Ryan kept his staff at the club away from his business at the brothel, that included the guards.
But Anatoly wasn’t satisfied with the man’s response. “Did you give that stripper in there a black eye for not making pay out,” Anatoly asked, moving up closer to Marko. It was funny how violent these guys were with women, but when faced with a real man, they seemed to be more in control of their actions.
Marko’s eye t
witched. Unable to lie, he looked away. “Maybe.”
“How brave of you…hitting girls.” Anatoly motioned toward the door. “Okay. Head outside then. I’ll be with you in a minute, hero.”
“Let’s go!” Vasily said, looking at his watch. “We’re out of time!”
The last people to leave the club were the four Medlov Men. Out in the parking lot, people dashed into their cars and sped off, wanting to get as far away from the club as possible. They remembered when Dmitry had said. Anyone who said a word to the police would end up dead, along with their families. It was enough of a threat to send them all into hiding.
With only the Medlov men in the parking lot, Anatoly stalked up to Marko. “You ready to send my message?”
“It’s whatever, man,” Marko said, muscular tree-trunk arms in front of him. He swallowed hard and wiped his sweaty brow, showing signs that his prickly exterior was starting to fade.
Anatoly hated his arrogance, hated his type. He was a woman-beater and a slave driver. Stepping beside Marko, he leaned toward his ear and spoke slowly. “I want you to tell your boss that I said…” He pulled his knife from the back of his pants and in one swift motion stabbed Marko in his neck, cutting through his jugular.
Stunned, Marko grabbed his neck. Eyes bulging, he stumbled out into the parking lot, dropped to his knees beside one of the SUVs and gargled his last breath.
Anatoly walked over to the dead man and yanked the knife from his throat. Blood spewed from the wound and ran down on the black pavement. He rolled Marko’s wide heavy body over. Tearing open the front of Marko’s shirt, he used the tip of his knife to carve one word sloppily into his chest. RYAN.
Dmitry walked up to Anatoly and handed him the detonator. “Let’s hope the news stations get here before the cops. Otherwise, Ryan might not hear about it.”
“He’ll hear about it,” Anatoly said, turning to his father. “You were right. Ryan has a girl. We’ve got her.”
“Good,” Dmitry said, headed back to load into his car. There was no time to celebrate. “I’ve got a few more stops to make, but you all start working down Ryan’s list of businesses. I want them burned to the ground before the police can figure out what is going on.”
“Hey! The call just went in to News 6. They are on their way!” Vasily yelled out after listening to the scanner in the truck. “Let’s get the hell out of here unless we plan on doing a fucking news conference.”
Immediately, Anatoly headed toward the SUV with Gabriel. Jumping in the backseat, he held on as the driver pulled out of the parking lot with the convoy at top speed, burning rubber as they exited out onto the nearly empty Ronald Regan Turnpike.
“Ready to put the cherry on top?” Gabriel asked, pulling at the sides of his Kevlar vest.
“Hell yes.” Pushing down on the red button on the detonator, Anatoly heard a loud explosion behind him. A second later a plume of fire and smoke broke the horizon from the direction of where the club used to be. Alas, the Bouncing Beaver was no more.
Gabriel laughed to himself. “Message sent.”
Chapter Six
She’s Just a Kid…
Arnolt Accounting Firm
Miami Beach, Florida
4:30 p.m.
T he narrow one-way street of Abbott Avenue was tight with tourist traffic, making it easy to spot a convoy of black, luxury SUVs parading in succession. Not wanting to draw attention, Dmitry sent the two vehicles that were tailing him a few streets over to park on 71st and 69th street out of the view of public to await further notice.
His driver found a spot right in front of Arnolt Accounting. Whipping in and parallel parking, he turned off the vehicle and radioed in to give his exact location.
The building housing Arnolt’s office was a one-story red-bricked store front with iron bars on the doors. No other businesses occupied the space. Tall palm trees danced in the sunlight above it, shadowing the entrance way. Gold lettering hung above the door. From the outside, it looked closed, but Dmitry’s man said he had seen him rush in thirty minutes prior.
“How do you plan to get in there?” Vasily asked from the front passenger seat. He glanced back at Dmitry, who was pulling off his suit jacket and his gun holster.
“I’m going to walk in,” Dmitry said with a wink. He put his guns on the smooth leather seat and rolled up his sleeves. “Not unless you have a better suggestion.”
Vasily was curious to see what his Czar was up to. “Lead the way.”
Lenard Arnolt should have been home with his family enjoying the Sunday dinner that his wife had been slaving over since yesterday, but he had pressing business to take care of before the work-week began.
Sitting behind his desk with his eyes planted on his oversized monitor, he reviewed the ledger statements of Ryan Colt, preparing to transfer funds as he had been instructed less than an hour ago.
“Bring me more coffee, Tawni,” Lenard ordered, glancing over at the television mounted on the wall across the room. He ran a hand over his balding comb-over and scratched the crown of his shiny head.
A news reporter was discussing the impending career doom of Harry Weinstein after allegations of sexual abuse that were rocking Hollywood. The female journalist was incensed, he could tell. Though she tried hard to report the news objectively, he could hear her judgement of the man in her tone.
“Bitch,” he said aloud, scanning his cluttered desk for the remote. Knocking over his bottle of blood pressure medicine, he grabbed the remote to change the channel. “Whine, whine, whine. Moan and complain.” Quid pro quo was just a part of life as far as he was concerned. If they wanted something from someone, they had to pay for it.
Lenard was a fat man like Weinstein, but with far less money. His portfolio paled in comparison to any millionaire, but he had managed over the last few years to build a small fortune off the books. It wouldn’t make him a millionaire, but it would make his life more comfortable and when needed, make the escorts a little more willing.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t an attractive man. He had lost his hair before the twenty-first century and had lost his pride after his second divorce. Married a third time to a Cuban woman he met during the course of doing her taxes, he was now just going through the motions.
By accident, he had discovered Ryan Colt and his gentlemen-centered services while visiting the Bouncing Beaver a few years ago. It was just a stroke of luck for Lenard that he asked Ryan about acquiring escort services that were for more discrete tastes and hit the jackpot.
“Do you want sweetener or sugar?” a voice said a few feet away from him.
Tawni, a petite Haitian girl with dark brown skin and boxed braids, barely seventeen years old and far from home, stood up from scrubbing the grout in between the tile on the floor and brushed off her knees.
Placing the dirty toothbrush on the wooden sofa table beside her, she walked over to Lenard’s desk and grabbed his stained coffee mug.
“Less cream this time, sweetheart,” he said, eyeing her exposed midriff. His gaze ran up to her perky breasts, barely covered by the soft cotton T-shirt she was wearing. He licked his lips and pushed away from the desk. “When you come back, I need you to do something else.”
He yawned and stretched his legs, reasoning that a midday blow job might be just what he needed to get motivated.
Tawni felt her stomach constrict, repulsed by his sick, twisted sexual proclivities. She turned quickly to run and fetch her boss’s coffee, praying to God he would change his mind before she returned.
She had been confined to this one-story building as payment from Ryan Colt to Arnolt for bartered services. She lived in the back room on a cot and served as the man’s assistant and sex slave since her arrival one rainy Wednesday night over a year ago.
Ryan threatened her with death if she gave Lenard any trouble. And she wouldn’t. It was better than the gig she had before when Ryan was pimping her out to a local pediatric dentist. He got rid of her when she started to look too much like an adult. But w
orking for Arnolt was still miserable. He never let her leave the building, made her wear an ankle bracelet to track her when he was gone, and on occasion beat her when he was angry with is overbearing wife.
As she stepped out of his office into the lobby, she saw a tall, blonde wall of a man peering into the glass front door. His hand was pressed against the bars, trying to see inside. He motioned for her to come to him with a gentle smile, luring her away from Arnolt’s errand. Something about the man seemed safe, although she couldn’t explain why.
Tawni looked back toward the office door, hearing Arnolt flip through the television stations for something else to watch. She debated on whether to tell Lenard that he had a guest. But the possibility that a brief interruption might make him forget about one of his drawn-out sex sessions pushed her to go to the door.
With the coffee cup still in her hand, she unlocked the top latch and pushed the door open slightly.
A gust of fresh air rushed in to greet her. The sounds of the street poured in with the sunlight. “Can I help you?” she asked hesitantly.
Dmitry was the biggest man she had ever seen in her life. He smelled like expensive cologne. His starched white button down and black slacks made him look like a gangster.
The distinct sound of the door opening made Lenard put down his remote. “Tawni, what are you doing in there?”
Tawni looked back, but Dmitry put his foot in the entrance to block her from closing it.
“You have a guest,” she stuttered. Glancing past Dmitry, she saw Vasily flanking his side, scanning the people walking down the sidewalk.
“Is he in there?” Dmitry asked, noticing the girl was barefoot.
Tawni nodded, looking at the tattoos on Dmitry’s arms. She had been around long enough to know that he was mafia. Russian mafia by his thick accent, just like Popov. “He’s in his office.”
“Is he alone?” Dmitry asked.
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