An Obsession with Vengeance (Wanted Men Book 3) (16 page)

“You need to stop saying that, Australia,” she thought he grumbled before saying louder, so that Alek could also hear, “I’m going to go pick up some lunch. Be back in a few.”

Before she could so much as offer a token protest, he was gone, slamming back out of the apartment as if the place were on fire.
Shit.

She sighed and turned toward the massive room and its one remaining occupant, who gave her a curious look before turning away. So much for trying to come clean.

CHAPTER 9

As Maksim cursed his way back to the SUV, he called Micha.

“Anything?” he asked as he drove up from the garage, wondering if Sydney liked shawarma. He could have it delivered. By someone other than him. Because he needed some distance between them. A lot of distance.
Goddammit.
She was lucky he hadn’t dragged her into his lap in the SUV and cuddled the shit out of her. She’d looked like a lost kitten sitting there all fucking tiny and shit.

“I was going to call you once I got our guests settled.”

He almost sideswiped a parked Lexus. “What?”

“Did some recon and found out who’s who on Morales’s team. Picked up the two responsible for planting an explosive device on a BMW that had been valeted last night at a fancy restaurant uptown.”

Maks knew “did some recon” was code for picked up one of Morales’s men and did certain things to him that had made it impossible for the guy to stay silent.

“You at the club?”

“Yes.”

“I’m on my way.”

He hung up and called Alek.

“Yeah.”

“You’re going to have to babysit longer than expected. Micha got them.”

“I don’t know why that surprises me. It’s only been, what, a few hours?” Alek kept his voice quiet.

“I know. I’m coming around to admitting he’s a hair better than me. But just a hair.”

“What should I do with the lady?”

Maks tried not to grind his teeth and kept his voice as even as possible. “See if she plays Xbox or something. Watch a movie. There’s cable. The place is well stocked with things to amuse yourselves. Do with her the same as you’d do with anyone in a situation like this.” Thank God it was Alek he was talking to. The huge plus in Maks’s favor was that the guy was still in love with his ex and wouldn’t be tempted even if Sydney pranced out of the bedroom naked with feathers taped to her lush ass. The guy would see it as cheating even though he and Sacha had been apart for more than a year now. Loyalty was a beautiful thing.

“We should have brought her to the house,” Alek said. “I’m sure the girls would have enjoyed entertaining her.”

Fuck that.
Bringing Sydney home would be too much like bringing Sydney home. Introduce her to his family? No. Besides, this wasn’t personal, it was a job—see? He remembered.

“Stay put. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Before he made it to Rapture, he made a few more phone calls, one of which was to Vasily to give an update.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” his Pakhan said slowly when he heard about the bomb. His incredulous tone wasn’t one Maks heard often. “I spoke to Luiz only hours ago, and he’d relented. Wished you luck, as a matter of fact, the lying cocksucker. Goddammit, why can’t these people just admit they’re pissed so we all know what fucking page we’re on?” Something slammed in the background. “The message you send that bastard better be a good one, Maks. He attempted to kill a woman he thinks you’re in love with. Do you have any idea how your life would have been affected if this thing between you and Sydney were real? Look at Sergei, at Alek. You take someone’s most loved, you take their life without even having to touch them.”

Was that what had happened to Vasily last summer when a rival family had killed Kathryn Jacobs, Eva’s mother? Was Vasily speaking from experience? Or simply from watching what remained of his nephews as they tried to go on without the women most important to them?

“The message I send will not be ignored,” he promised before saying good-bye.

Another call was made to bring in some of the boys they referred to as shadows. He told the one in charge to make sure the area was clear and then to set up a perimeter around Pant, warning him that the cops would be doing the same. He also had a few more sent over to Morales’s restaurant. When Luiz showed, he wanted to know it. The second he got to a computer, he’d get the fucker’s home address. Multiples, no doubt.

After parking behind the club, Maks entered through the back entrance and headed straight to the basement through the trapdoor that was under the roll-away bar in the corner of his office. It had already been moved. He knew Gabriel and Vincente chose to do their dirty work in a neutral location, a warehouse in Brownsville, but Maks preferred to keep things close. If they were talking mass interrogation, Vasily usually insisted they use his place in Brighton Beach.

Lifting the full-size panel, he took his coat and suit jacket off as he descended the concrete steps to enter an enormous well-lit room that had hundreds of crates filled with weaponry of all sorts taking up a good chunk of the real estate. To the right of the stairs were a couple of metal desks, the type found in any office, with rolling chairs and a half-dozen open laptops.

It was the back corner Maks was interested in, though, which was decked out with links attached to the concrete walls, an industrial-size spool of chain, and an assortment of tools. Oh, and there was a drain in the floor that had come in handy when he and Caleb Paynne, Nika’s brother who was VP of the Manhattan chapter of the Obsidian Devils MC, had used the facilities to question a couple of guys on Vincente’s behalf not long ago.
That
hadn’t ended well for the two assholes who’d been paid to lure Nika into an alley so that her abusive husband could get at her again.

Satisfaction filled him when he saw two captives bound to metal chairs. Micha stood a few feet away, leaning against an exposed support beam. Maks dropped his things on an empty metal chair and went to clap his friend on the shoulder. “You’ll be at the top of my list during Thanksgiving dinner,” he said in Russian, which he would continue to use when communicating with him during this interview. Even though these two wouldn’t make it out alive, he preferred they didn’t hear any exchanges he and Micha might have.

He continued over and clamped his hand around the throat of one of their captives without slowing his progress. The effect had chair legs scraping until the metal back hit the wall, along with the guy’s head. He bent and came in close.

“You almost killed a woman today who doesn’t deserve death, motherfucker. Now you’re going to pay for that.”

The guy’s head bobbed for a second or two before Maks loosened his hold on his trachea so a little air could get through.

“Was d-doing my job, man. Same as you.”

Maks delivered one solid jab to the guy’s solar plexus and was pretty sure he felt his knuckles touch a spleen. “Don’t compare us again. Ever.”

“Don’t answer him nothing, Juan,” the partner said in a voice that pegged him as a couple-of-packs-a-day smoker. “We’re done anyway.”

Maks turned. When he received a glare loaded with cynicism and aggression, he released Juan and went straight over. He slid his Glock from the holster under his arm. “Okay. Since you’ve proven you’ll be no help to me, your time is up.” He leveled his weapon at a forehead as wide as a barn door—made sure to step over so that Micha couldn’t become a secondary target—and pulled the trigger. Complete silence filled the basement after the echo of the shot faded, until dribbling sounded. Juan’s bladder gave up the fight.

When Maks returned, the overpowering smell of urine coming up had his glands working overtime, but he ignored it. “Before you join your comrade, I’m going to give you the opportunity to redeem yourself in the eyes of whoever it is you’re praying to right now. If you know of Morales’s plans for the woman you missed this morning, tell me.”

“Why would he let me in on his plans? I don’t know nothing, man.”

True.
Because someone in Morales’s position would have no reason to share with a lowly worker bee.

“Micha?”

“I believe him,” Micha said as he came over and passed a blade through the zip ties holding Juan’s wrists and ankles together.

His assumption confirmed, Maksim snapped out his arm when his victim would have bolted. He pinned Juan to the wall so his feet dangled, his hand a manacle around the guy’s neck. With a small smile, he put his free arm behind and under his shirt to extract Angelina from the sheath strapped across his back.

The sweet ring of steel coming out of its holding filled the air with a smidge of terror.

“Your associate got off easy, Juan,” he said quietly. “But I’m afraid you won’t be so lucky.”

Panic had the guy hyperventilating even as Maks loosened his hold and let his feet once again touch ground. “I didn’t know it was the blonde’s car. Really! I didn’t!”

The monsters created in the Academy, and strengthened in that cell, swooped in to take over Maksim as the shell of Sydney’s Bimmer flashed in his crowded mind. An image of what would have been left behind had her small body taken the brunt of the blast tortured him. What would he have had left to bury?

The shudder that rattled through him was violent. “If you didn’t know it was her car, how did you know she’s blonde, asshole?” With a quick grab, he pinned Juan’s arm to the wall next to his head and held it steady so Angelina could slam solid and sure through a skinny wrist, easily passing through flesh and tendon and, with a little added pressure, bone. The shrill scream that reverberated through the room covered the sound of that hand hitting the floor with a slap. Not that Maks would have noticed because he was already on to the other arm, which got the same treatment. He kicked both appendages out of the urine and his mind calmed as swiftly as it had erupted, allowing him to see Juan’s wide-open mouth keening an agonized song that grated on the ears.

He jammed his hand under the guy’s hanging jaw and cut the sound off. Could tell by the labored breath and rolling eyes that Juan was going under. Maks slapped his cheek to keep him awake as Micha slid a chair over before heading for the medical supplies and equipment sitting on a small table off to the side.

“This little exercise will guarantee you don’t attempt to hand out death again, especially to someone that belongs to me. If I find you again after we release you tonight”—he brought Angelina’s tip to the guy’s groin and pressed it in until he heard a weak moan—“this will be lying on the floor during that session. I promise.” And Juan was out.

Micha bypassed the chair and laid the unconscious man on the floor while Maksim washed up in the stainless-steel sink in the corner. A quick glance was given when his phone beeped, and then he was taking care of his machete—with a solution one of their boys had cooked up in a lab that would remove all traces of blood. He resheathed it before taking off and wadding up his ruined shirt. He was just pulling a clean one from the stash he had in a stand-up cabinet when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He turned, shrugging into the winter-white button-up, not worried because the alert he’d just gotten had indicated a programmed card key had been used to gain entry into the club.

Gabriel appeared first, Vincente—the one with the card and codes to reset the alarms—behind him. Quan Mao, G’s tight and deadly bodyguard, brought up the rear. They took in the scene with a quick glance.

“Told you we should have left when we saw the door open,” Gabriel said as he went over, nodding to Micha, who looked up from his cauterizing. Quan remained on the outskirts as a show of respect. He was more than five years in with Gabriel, but the majority of that time had been spent in Seattle and not in New York with the rest of them, which meant they were still getting comfortable. But the guy was swiftly earning his place. He knew how to conduct himself, and Maks liked that.

“These two have anything to do with the explosion we heard about this morning?” Gabriel asked, nodding to the bodies. He was six foot five, had shoulders like a linebacker, and could ring your bell as loudly as any UFC heavyweight fighter. Maksim’s respect for his skills was as high up there as his respect for the man’s intelligence.

He wandered over, tucking in his shirt and doing up the buttons at his wrists. “They put the device on her car.”

“How is she?” Vincente asked, bending to get a closer look at the hands. “What’d you use to go through these? Clean cut.”

Maks reached behind and tapped his back. “Come on. Let’s leave him to work. He doesn’t appreciate an audience.”

Micha grunted in agreement and started on the other wrist so that the smell of burning flesh followed them to the stairs.

Once in the club proper, Maks led them by the empty tables and booths to the bar. “Anyone thirsty?”

V and Quan shook their heads, so he poured only two, sliding a Stoli on ice across the bar to Gabriel.

“What dragged you two away from your warm bodies this fine Saturday afternoon?” Morning had long gone; his breakfast with Jeremy and Alek seemed as though it had been yesterday.

Gabriel settled on a stool and took a long swallow before answering. “I had to meet with Mikey—sorry, Father Russo.” He pulled a face. “Can’t get used to calling him that. When I went to Seattle, he was still just Lorenzo’s little brother. Anyway, we had a sit-down about the family’s involvement in this year’s Thanksgiving drive. I think he’d have preferred to deal with Eva, but she insisted I get social with the priest she and Nika still see weekly.”

Eva watching out for Gabriel’s soul.
Very nice.
“Your wife reminds me more of her old man every day.”

He and the boys had hung out with Father Russo’s older brother, and they had been pretty close until the guy’s career choice went public. Lore was now a highly respected NYPD detective . . . who Maks had yet to shake hands with for putting that final bullet into Nika’s abusive husband’s head. He would eventually. When he could be sincere about it, and look at the guy without seeing a turncoat.

He tuned in to what Gabriel was saying, mainly because he didn’t want to think about what he himself had done to Nika, or what Lore had done to them.

“In the end, we decided it would be best to push everything for the drive under TarMor’s name. Keep the church legit.”

TarMor, which was short for Tarasov/Moretti, was Alek and Gabriel’s project management firm. The company had a suite of offices in Manhattan, but lately they’d all been working from the house.

“Makes sense,” Maks said.

“Mikey doesn’t really seem to care, as long as his parish gets what they need. He said if people want to tiptoe around the Moretti name, it shouldn’t bother me.” He chuckled darkly. “ ‘They’ll eventually have to answer for their judgment, Gabriel.’ The kid doesn’t seem to get that the opinions of his herd aren’t what keep me awake at night.” The Don of the Moretti crime family gave his head a shake and moved on. “There’ll be some overflow coming from my father-in-law that Saint Luke’s can share with others, and that seems to be making everyone happy.”