Page 68 of Brutal Secrets
Listen to your mother
I stuff the phone back in my pocket.
It’s a clusterfuck, but I can’t think about it as I pull up to the docks. It’s dark and silent at this time of night. A nest of yellow-and-black striped barriers lies in shadow away from the streetlights. Sasha put shipments on hold until we know who’s planning to move against us. A couple of red shipping containers perch on the concrete over the foul water of the Hudson, and a light shines in two rectangles around the edges of one of their doors.
That must be where Sasha is keeping the man we picked up in the attack upstate. If the light is still on, then he’s probably still alive. Good news for me. Less so for him.
I’ve seen shipping containers used for a lot of things, but they’re surprisingly effective as torture chambers. Rinse them off with a power hose, stick them on the back of a truck, and drive the evidence away. Stick it on a ship back to China and no one will be the wiser.
I walk toward the two rectangles of light around the container doors. Opening them, I see Sasha standing over a man slumped in a chair. The man’s feet have been bound to the chair’s legs with duct tape, his hands cuffed behind him. He’s passed out. He’ll wish he stayed that way by the time we’ve finished with him.
“What are you waiting for?” I point at the bucket of cold water in the corner next to a table of saws, drills, and pliers that Sasha has laid out for effect.
Sasha gets off on the fear men feel when they see the hardware store he’s laid out for them, but it’s not usually my bag. I doubt anyone would survive long enough to tell you anything if you used the entire toolbox. I like my kills quick and clean.
This time, though, I’m almost shaking with rage. I want to tear this fucker limb from limb and then slice what’s left into little pieces. He threatened my kid and my woman. Even if I can’t be with them, they’re still mine.
“Let’s wake him up.” I pick up the bucket of cold water and the power hose lying next to it.
“Hang on a minute.” Sasha eyes the door.
“For what? You’ve gotten what you need, haven’t you?”
“No. Kai and Dima are on their way. They’re almost here.” He sits in a folding chair opposite the slumped man.
“Why do we need them?”
“If we want to take over the Bratva and sideline the Night Governor, we need to know who else is coming for us.” Sasha kicks his feet against the metal floor, and they make a clanging noise, but the fucker slumped in the chair doesn’t stir. “Was it a kidnap attempt? A hit? Who did the Italians want to piss off? Us? The Chinese? There’s a whole spiderweb to unravel here, and this guy is the only fly we’ve caught.”
“He’s mine.” I run my fingers over a saw and then pick up the power drill before putting it down.
“You can kill him, but we aren’t wasting our chance to see what we’ve gotten into here. We can’t give back the girl you snatched and smooth things over now that they’ve lashed out at you. The only way out of this is to escalate.” Sasha ignores the toolbox he’s laid out on the table in favor of the curved blade he always carries. He pulls it from his boot.
“Where’s the Italian girl now?” I look over at Sasha.
“The principessa? With Kai. He’s done us a favor, but he doesn’t want to keep her unless we can figure out what’s going on,” he says.
“And if we can’t? What then?”
“That scene at the New York dacha in the woods wasn’t pretty. I haven’t had to dispose of two dead bodies in one weekend for a long time.” Sasha looks pensive. He’s twirling the carved scimitar blade that matches the one he gave me. It’s a nervous tic we both share when things are bad.
“I’m still shocked Andrei survived. I thought he was done for.”
“He’s pretty banged up. Serves him right for disobeying orders and bringing trouble to your door. He won’t be back in action for a couple of months.” Sasha smirks at me. “I suppose you’ll want to bang him up again once he recovers.”
I shrug, looking at the miserable fucker slumped in the chair in front of us. “I might. We’ve got our hands full for now.”
Sasha cups the back of his neck and closes his eyes. “I was trying to get us out of this mess. I want to make millions and attend political fundraisers, not hang around in a shipping container on the docks, beating some fucker to a pulp on a Tuesday night.” He sighs and casts his eyes toward the ceiling as I listen to tires crunch on the gravel outside. “I thought we were over that shit, but it follows us everywhere we go.”
“It’s my fault.”
“It is.” Sasha glares at me, but then his face softens. “But I don’t know if I would have done it differently. It’s like years of work we’ve laid out are about to come crashing down. My dead sister’s look-alike appears in a brothel when you go to pick up protection money, and how were you to know she was related to Spataro, daughter of the craziest fucker in New York?”
“And then to top it all off, my long-lost daughter turns up.” I laugh. “I feel like we’re living in a Mexican telenovela.” I look over at the red and pulpy face of the man slumped in the chair. “Why did you call Dima over? I thought he was in London.”
Sasha looks toward the door. “I asked him to fly back. The tectonic plates are shifting, and we’re in for earthquakes. We could end up controlling a lot more money or losing everything.”
Dima’s black curls appear in the doorway, and he steps in. “Good evening, gentlemen. Let’s get this party started.”