In the pre-dawn darkness, Vladimira and Yafon didn’t see the bloody mess that had been placed in front of the door. She didn’t know anything was amiss until her foot came down on a firm mass that was just yielding enough to suggest it was flesh of some kind. She nearly lost her footing as she recoiled from the unknown lump there on the store’s welcome mat.
“What the fuck?!” The blood stain seeping up the side of her strappy stiletto gave testimony to the disgusting prank someone was playing on her.
Yafon leaned down to get a closer look at the dead sewer rat that had been left on the sidewalk in front of the jewelry store. “It’s our boy, gotta be. I’m going to wring his fucking neck. He’s a coward, leaving notes and dead rats and not showing his face.”
“Yes, he is a coward. I think I would rather watch you torture him than me poison him. Just look at what he did to my shoe!!” she wailed in disgust as she narrowed her eyes and looked up and down the sidewalk. “This bastard deserves to die slow. This shit is hitting too close to home, Yafon. We need to stop him before he starts giving ideas to other people in the organization. He’s too bold. For him to come around our place of business while we’re inside working? He’s impulsive. Volatile.”
“The only reason he was able to get away with it was because Dmitriy had turned the alarm off while he upgraded the security system. The problem is, we can’t put a face to the guy. We need to find out who Joseph’s friends were—see if there’s any family who could be out for blood. It’s obvious he had a partner -- a brother, a woman, somebody. I need to know who I’m killing. Once I find out who is threatening you, he’ll be dead.”
The matter-of-fact look on Yafon’s face didn’t fool Vladimira into thinking he wouldn’t deliver recompense with a death blow. He had a way of hiding his true nature until the interrogation began and then you knew it was going to be a long night. Vladimira had seen interrogations where a victim was begging Yafon to kill him just so he could escape the pain.
Yafon was a sadist at heart and threatening his woman was a surefire way to be on the receiving end of his wrath. Vladimira could more than handle herself against any foe, but he was still a man and he would take care of her if she was endangered.
“Like I said, darling, make him suffer. He’s beginning to get on my nerves. And he ruined my Jimmy Choos!! That, in and of itself, is enough to kill him.”
He removed a handkerchief from his pocket in elegant Yafon fashion, shaking it out with a sharp flick of his wrist. It was one of the qualities Vladimira loved most about him, how this brutal warrior approached moments like this with an almost courtly sensibility. Swoon…
He bent down and used the cloth to pick the offending creature up by the tail. He threw it and the handkerchief into a dumpster, then returned to Vladimira and looped his arm through hers, hurrying her to the SUV they’d driven for the day.
In even the smallest of matters he was her knight in shining armor. Though she wasn’t one to back down from a fight, it was nice to have a chivalrous man around.
He pulled out into traffic, his Adam’s Apple jerking in his throat. “Your lack of fear in the face of danger is sexy as fuck,” he bit out, his neck flushed.
“Hmm, do tell,” she purred as she laid a hand on his thigh, smirking when the muscles clenched beneath her caress. “People fuck up when they get scared. I don’t have that luxury, love—plus I’m good at compartmentalizing.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Compartmentalization is important, darling. Without it, one overthinks things. We see so much craziness, it’s a necessary evil.”
What could he say to that? She was right. The things they saw were horrendous. If compartmentalizing helped, then you could do what you had to do to survive.
He covered her hand with his and changed the subject, but only after vowing to himself to work on getting better at compartmentalizing. “Dmitriy is definitely earning his money lately. I don’t know what we’d do without him. He’s the best security we’ve ever had and that rat episode never would have happened if he hadn’t had everything shut down while he was doing system maintenance. It’s almost like the guy knew what Dmitriy was doing.”
“We don’t know it’s a guy.”
“I don’t know any women who would touch a sewer rat, so my money’s on it being a man. Sexist, I know, but true.”
“Hmmph. Say that to Natasha or Roksana and see the reaction you get. But regardless, we have a good team and I plan on keeping it that way. I don’t think anybody on the inside is giving him information; I think he just got lucky. He won’t be so lucky next time. This guy’s going to regret the day he ever laid eyes on me. How pitiful that someone can steal from you and then get mad when their partner in crime gets caught and killed. Truly, what the hell did he expect?”
“People often delude themselves into believing they won’t get caught,” Yafon said pensively, “and when they do, they mask their fear behind anger. Amazing how offended someone can get when they’re the ones who started the problems in the first place. Let’s talk to Dmitriy and see what we can find out.”
“Yes, the sooner we find this bastard and kill him, the sooner we can get on with the business of positioning Escondido to take over. Maybe then we’ll get a reprieve from having to worry about our own people stabbing us in the back,” Vladimira muttered. “The disloyalty alone is enough to warrant someone dying. Maybe my brother’s right, Yafon darling. We need to go back to the old ways.”
They exited the car and headed to the surveillance room where Dmitriy, Anastasia, Oleg, and Roksana were working.
Dmitriy started speaking without turning around when they entered the room. “I’m pulling up surveillance tapes to see who Joseph spent his time with.”
“Good,’ Vladimira huffed, catching the attention of a frowning Roksana. “The bastard left a bloody rat on the sidewalk in front of the store and I stepped on it.” She lifted a shapely leg a few inches and pointed her toe to show the shoe to its best advantage.
Roksana gasped in horror when she looked down at her aunt’s shoes. “Wait a minute. He fucked up your Jimmy Choos?! Oh, that fucker’s as good as dead.”
“You know, we think alike, my beautiful niece; I said the same thing.”
That got a chuckle out of everyone in the room.
“There’s one common denominator in all the stills I’ve pulled up on surveillance and the phone records I’ve reviewed,” Anastasia said. “Joseph communicated with a man named Volya quite a bit. I think they may have been masking their stealing with the façade of him working as Joseph’s assistant.
“But Joseph wasn’t high enough on the food chain to warrant having hired help. He damn sure wasn’t smart enough to have an assistant,” Vladimira drawled, grimacing as she remembered the traitorous bastard. “For him to have this much of a vendetta…it makes me wonder if they were lovers.”
“I think he’s just pissed he can’t ride the gravy train anymore. He had an unlimited source of money and now it’s gone. Money changes people,” Roksana sighed, “especially people with no character. Anybody who would cross their own people isn’t worth the air they breathe. I’m sure Yafon wants to teach this guy a lesson and I’ll expect a front row seat. Sorry this shit’s happening while you’re planning your wedding, auntie V.” Roksana shook her head, disgusted by the thought of the happy occasion being tainted by unwanted trouble.
Vladimira nodded her head decisively as she gazed down at her ruined shoe. “I think there’s really only one thing to be done. We need to put Yuri on it. He’s semi-retired now, but he’s still the best private investigator we’ve ever had.”
“Well, we all know where to find him,” Yafon drawled, closing his eyes as he shook his head.
Roksana and Vladimira met each other’s gaze and couldn’t help laughing as they answered in unison, “The sauna.”