getting by with this kind of thing.” Then she throws her head back and laughs.
I don’t have time to decipher her bizarre statements. I have to make my excuses and get the hell out of here.
It takes longer than the ten minutes I promised, but when I’m finally on the road, I make up a few minutes and arrive just as Alek is spouting orders.
“Tomas.” Yerkhov nods to me. He’s lower level. Collects the protection money for delivery. He’s the one who has come to Alek with the problem.
But I grab him by the throat and slam him into the side of my SUV over the hood.
“You let them take our money?” My father will expect me to handle the situation the way he would. To make sure that our men know this behavior is unacceptable. I squeeze his throat harder. “Tell me.”
“The liquor store and the pawnshop both said that they’re paying the Italians now.”
Chez, another low-level Bratva patrolman, nods from the side. “Same with the hardware store and the auto shop. They said vandals robbed and ransacked their places.” He blows out a breath. “The Italians have taken over.”
Fucking Italians were probably the vandals in the first place. “Fuck!” I shove Yerkhov away and he stumbles toward Aleksey who helps him stand. “We need to send a message. Tonight. Get the men.”
Taking a chance on the information Corrie managed to steal during her computer investigation of the Italians, I pull a list of addresses from my glove box. I’d planned to give them to my father, but I’m glad I kept them for myself.
After a quick distribution of addresses to each Bratva brigadier, I say, “Tonight, we leave no Italian alive. These are their homes.”
The implications are large. “What about their families?” It’s a random voice and I don’t care who asked. The answer will always be the same.
“Leave no one behind. Bring their women and children to the Bratva.” My father will ransom them back—untouched of course; there are rules to the game, even now—to whichever of their men is left alive. Our job is collections. And so I shall collect—as many Italian scalps as I can get.
Aleksey and I take the house most likely to be Roberto Totti’s. It’s registered to the woman long rumored to be Roberto’s second wife but is probably nothing more than a mistress.
When Aleksey turns down the road where Totti built his new house, he kills the headlights and Sergei hands us weapons.
Two men in back with Sergei climb out and crouch along a line of shrubbery to disappear into the blackness at the back of the house. Aleksey and I take the front. Adrenaline burns through my veins as I count down without making a sound.
When I get to one, I turn and kick the door open, splintering the frame. Fool. No steel reinforcements. No beams to hold it shut.
The house is quiet. Not even a clock ticks in the background. I listen for a footstep, the clank of a metal slide as a bullet loads into a chamber, a breath that isn’t mine or Alek’s. But nothing.
Until a shot takes out a lamp on a table next to me in the entry.
Shards of glass fly but I concentrate on the sound of heels slapping against the tile floor. I keep Alek on the door to make sure Totti doesn’t circle around, and I follow the echo of his heavy steps.
A motor starts in the garage. I have to keep Totti from getting out. If he gets away …
“Little Tomas Dubrovsky!” Totti cackles.
“What do you want, old man?”
“Hand over your business now and go back to Russia where you belong, and we can end this whole thing.”
He’s standing at the door when I round the corner, and it’s my rifle against his gun, but between us is one of the men who rode in the back of my SUV with Sergei. I can’t get a clean shot off without taking out my own man.
“I’d rather die.”
He laughs. “My pleasure.” He levels the gun at me, shoves the man he’s holding forward, and fires off two quick shots so I have to duck. It gives him the room he needs to leap in his car and get away.
Son of a bitch.
15
Corinne
Tomas comes home smelling like sweat and metal and with fury wrinkling his forehead. He refuses to say where he’s been or what he was doing. I hate nagging, but I can tell when something is wrong, and it’s driving me