“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,
