“You think he’s going to parade around some fresh faces and expect us to roll over and let them come at us? It’s not his style, besides, I got the distinct impression he’s done.” Sandir was right, Lev was done.
“He said he had influence, right? If anyone can clear your path, it will be Lev. He may not have given you a die-hard guarantee, but I reckon the old git knows he owes you at least something.”
“He does, Andrey. Our arrangement is over, even he can’t backtrack on that and he knows it, it’s up to him to decide what happens next.”
“Yeah, but…” Sandir rubbed at his mouth. “He could take those targets off your back, if there’s any there to begin with. These guys could be something or nothing, who knows?”
I pulled in a breath, my head exhausted trying to find ways I could escape from the shipments, the deals, getting my hands bloodied. I couldn’t see the end no matter how hard I tried. “He said he’d put the word out, I’m not entirely sure how he’s going to do it. Lev also said he was sorting out someone to take over. One of you guys could take the reins, I don’t see a problem with it, easy enough, right?”
“I love you like a brother Yannick, I do, but you are drinking some seriously weird shit if you think any of us want to step into your shoes. I’d rather keep my head, thank you very much.”
“What would you do?” I asked Sandir.
“With a hit on me?”
I waved my hand at him in dismissal. “No, you idiot. I mean, coming out of this organisation with your legs intact, what would you do?”
“Live a quiet fucking life,” he chuckled.
“You wouldn’t get bored?”
“Maybe. Guess I’ll find out when the time comes.”
I nodded, he couldn’t say more than that, we’d all lived this life for a lot of years, it was hard to think there was something else out there, something more on the other side of forty that didn’t involve illegal shit and running within an inch of the law.
“You’ve got your appointment with Irina, then you need to go sort out the bullshit with the container down at the docks. They’re holding but haven’t opened it yet.”
“Just the beans in that one?”
“Yes,” Andrey scowled. “The weight’s correct on the paperwork, matches the weight recorded when it was loaded in Cartagena. Not sure why they won’t release it.”
“It’s a shipment of coffee beans from Colombia, they’re always going to get their knickers in a twist and want to open those bloody containers. I’ll go down this afternoon. Stay at the yard, I’ll call you when the numb nuts apologise for harassing a perfectly legitimate shipment. Where the hell is Tayte? Shouldn’t he be down there smoothing it out?”
“He said he had some shit to do, so I’ll wait to hear from you.”
“All right, fine. I’ll call him after my meeting. Cheers, Andrey.”
Another bloody headache with another container. I made a mental note to get hold of Greg later, he could shake down Devlin instead of me, I wasn’t in the mood. He’d probably have a better way of persuading his copper to do some digging than I did anyway. One of them surely had a magic dick because they both skirted on the edge of professionalism with their respective jobs. Devlin was more loyal to me and Greg than he was his friends in blue.
Not looking forward to the next part of the day, an hour later I was sitting next to Irina in front of a lawyer we used frequently for legal business. He was obnoxious and got under my skin at the best of times, this meeting no different from any other time I had to endure his company. He was Lev’s man, and it showed.
“No remediation?” he asked after reading through the contract he most likely had memorised.
“No. Straightforward is all that’s require.”
“And your assets?”
That was the tricky part. “Irina and I can sit down and discuss whatever those are.” I glanced over to make sure she was in agreement. She nodded but said nothing, unusually quiet, her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands clasped over the Coach purse in her lap. I knew it was Coach because it was one of the few things she’d spent a ridiculous amount of money on and had mooned over for weeks. That damn bag had been the bane of my life for a long time and I was thoroughly sick of the sight of it.
“No clauses broken by you, Mr Ischmov?”
I wanted to laugh because there were no clauses for Irina to break, the onus to satisfy the contract’s small print had all been on my shoulders. “None.”
The wanker raised an eyebrow at me, tapping his finger on a paragraph I knew for a fact was the clause that had deprived me of a good dicking for fifteen years. “You haven’t had sex with another person in fifteen years?”
“Penetrative sex, as stipulated. No.” And just to be a fucker because I was in that kind of mood, I added. “I didn’t stick my cock in another pussy or arse the entire duration of this farce.” This guy was so fucking fired.
“When was the last time you had intercourse?”
I narrowed my eyes at him and growled. “All you need to know is I kept the contract valid, I didn’t break it. Do you think I’d be sitting here now if I had? Wasn’t that the whole fucking point of it?”
The twat coughed into his hand and turned
