Anatoly Medlov (5 page)

Jumping back inside the car, he turned the ignition and pulled off into the streets with the AC blasting. Adjusting the vents, he let the air cool his hot, sticky body. He couldn’t wait to peel out of his vest and get something to eat. His stomach growled so loud it sounded like it would eat him. Plus, he’d seen what he needed to see. Something big was going down soon. Only this time, he didn’t have a source inside – not yet.

He picked up his cell and hit redial. The phone rang a few times before it picked up. A woman’s voice answered.

“Hello.”

“Meet me in ten minutes in Mid-Town on Flicker Street.”

“Isn’t that a pretty obvious location?”

“It’s
pretty
safe,” he said, hanging up.

Ten minutes later, a red Audi A8 pulled up to the Memphis Police Department Training Facility beside Nicola’s car and parked. The woman looked over at him as if she was short on time. He pulled off his shdes and pointed inside of the building.

With her notepad in her hands, she grabbed her purse, slammed her door and ran inside quickly. After Nicola watched her go into the front glass doors, he looked around one last time and headed in after her in a slow, leisurely stride.

“You’re going to blow my cover,” she said as he walked into an empty classroom and closed the door. She was visibly frustrated with him. Pacing back and forth, she clasped her keys in one hand and rested the other on her hip.

“Easy there,
crazy horse
. This is your first investigation. I think that I’ve got a few on you.
You
let
me
tell
you
when you’re blowing your cover,” he said, sitting down on the desk at the front of the classroom while he
schooled
her.

“I had lunch with him today,” she said a little proud of herself. “He didn’t give me one good bit of Intel, but the point is that I had lunch with him.”

“Bravo,” his voice was flat.

Destiny was pissed that Agosto didn’t seem the least bit impressed. “My first day on this case undercover, I went to his home...”

“After you intentionally hit him with a vehicle. That’s assault,” Agosto interrupted.

“The point is that I got in.”

Nicola raised his brow. “A lot of people get in, Destiny. But did you get anything?”

“I saw him in both of his elements. He’s a hermit at home. He’s surrounded by bodyguards at work.”

“Fits the profile of most mafia bosses.”

“And I think that he’s interested in me.”

“Fits the profile of most men.” He stood up off the desk and tried to smile. “I don’t want you to be too overzealous. I know that you’ll do well, but you can’t read more into an interaction than what’s there. At this point, you’re just some hot chick who works for a local rag. I need more than that. You have to figure out a way to get in with this young guy without sleeping with him.”

“I would never sleep with him,” she said offended.

Agosto waved his finger. “You say you would never do a lot of strange things before you go undercover, but you wake up one morning and you’ve crossed everything, and I mean everything, off your list. Just remember, if you sleep with him, this investigation becomes inadmissible, and I become your worst enemy.”

“I will not sleep with him, Lou. I just want you to see that I’m closer to gettinginside than you think.”

“Okay.” He checked his watch. “We will see,
young lady
.” Hearing voices in the hallway, he turned without saying another word and left her in the room alone.

Destiny stood looking out the blinds of the classroom at the sun setting and rolled her eyes.
What did Agosto know about anything
? Like she said, she was close. The way that Anatoly talked to her, looked at her, he would walk her right into his operations before long. And then, Agosto would have to eat his words.

Grabbing her purse, she finally left with one mission in mind.

***

Anatoly’s personal cell would not stop ringing. He looked at the phone and grunted.
Blocked number.
He already knew who that was. Victoria. She had called him every single day since he left her at his father’s place.
Why wouldn’t she just give up? How could she not have gotten a clue yet?

He almost picked up and answered, just to tell her to get lost, but he decided against it. Instead, he hit IGNORE and kept eating.

“How was your date?” he finally asked. His deep blue eyes were menacing.

“Nice,” Renee said frowning. She had avoided talking about it on purpose.

“I’m going to be gone for a while, so if you want to stay here...”

“I like the apartment,” she said, pouring another glass of wine.

“What’s wrong with you now?” he snapped.

“You missed Royal’s birthday today.”

He put down his fork and sat back in his seat. Every year since Royal’s
passing
, Renee had gone to her grave site on her birthday with Anatoly and put down flowers. He played along because it threw the feds off, but he wanted so badly to tell her that his step-mother was alive and well in Prague.

He watched Renee brooding over his oversight and debated again if he shouldn’t just tell her. She would never tell a soul. Plus, it would ease her pain.

“Sorry, I had...
stuff
going on.” His voice was softer. Looking up at her, he watched her face change.

“You don’t have to apologize to me. I just don’t want you to...you know.” Her voice ached.

“Want me to
what
?”

“Forget.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t want you to
forget
her, Anatoly. She was a very good woman. She didn’t have any family.
We
were her family. It just seems right that we do what any family would do.” She rolled her eyes again.

He picked up his glass of vodka and took a sip. “I know. I haven’t forgotten, Renee.
Not hardly
.”

“Good,” she said, getting up from the table. Taking both of their plates to the sink, she turned to find him still looking at her. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing. I better get ready to leave. I’m on a plane out of here in an hour. The offer still stands. If you want to stay here, you can.”

“Be safe,” she said softly.

Anatoly didn’t smile, but his eyes glimmered. Standing up, he walked over to her, grabbed her bare arms and kissed her forehead. It made him instantly think of his father and Royal, how they carried on for so long during their courtship. Is that what he was doing?
Courting Renee?
The thought disturbed him. Pulling back, he looked down her in her bright, brown eyes.

“I will,” he said, walking off.

***

Victoria threw her phone across the room and watched it collide with the wall. In pieces, it shattered and fell onto the floor by the computer desk. That BASTARD!

She grabbed the open bottle of wine and took a big gulp. The excess ran down the side of her mouth and slithered down her chin. Breathing hard, she wiped her face and cursed.

If Anatoly thought that he could just play her, he had another thing coming. She didn’t give a damn about the mafia, his father or even Royal at this point. If he wanted to just screw her and throw her away all while pretending that he loved her, have her let her guard down and then crush her, she would make him pay. And she knew just how to do it.

Going to her computer, she searched for the stories about the
Massacre in Memphis
three years ago and found that Lieutenant Nicola Agosto headed the investigation. Anatoly had always said that he hated Agosto more than any other cop in the world. Evidently, the man had to be a serious threat. And he was probably just who she needed to get Anatoly back without it coming back to her.

How hard could it be to find a cop?

Her lip quivered as she pulled up his contact information. His picture said a thousand words. He was a tall, clean cut, dark Italian man in his late thirties.
Handsome. Formidable. An Alpha male for sure.

She could look at Agosto’s photo and tell that he was a boy scout, probably ironed his underar. When she told him about the big gun shipment a few months ago in Sochi and how Anatoly laundered his money through art and kept a large inventory in Memphis the only one who would be spending time would be Anatoly...
up state
.

Scribbling his number down on a notepad, she quickly turned off her computer and fell over into her bed. Her thoughts danced about her in the hazy daze of drunkenness.

Tears formed at the sides of her eyes, but she wiped them quickly and turned over to bury her face in her pillow. Inhaling her perfume, she cried aloud. How she hated him for what he had done.

Anatoly had made her love him.

Chapter Four

Kapotnya
(Moscow)

Anatoly looked out the window of his Land Rover as it escorted him down the MDK beltline. It was a dreary Wednesday afternoon, and the smoke of the Moscow Oil Refinery billowed up between spurts of hot fire into the polluted atmosphere and darkened the gloomy horizon.

He and his men were headed to the Kapotnya district. It was a place that he had not visited in many years, and though it was one of the poorest and most crime infested areas in all of Moscow, it was his home.

Running his hands over the console, he let his window down and smelled the air. As thick, strong contaminants filled the back of the SUV, he closed his eyes and thought of his last drive down this stretch of highway away many years ago.

He had left hastily with a pocket of cash and a garbage bag of clothes.

His mother had given him all the money that they had in savings and begged him to go to the USA to find his father. “Find Dmitry,” she urged in his box of a bedroom with a hand of waded-up rubles that were stained with smut from hiding them in the fireplace as she stood in a work smock. Lips twisted and eyes full of pain, she packed his things quickly and kissed him on his cheek before she sent him away.

He remembered that fateful night out in the courtyard of their impoverished apartment complex when he shot a man dead by the swing set. He was only 18 then and full of rage. His mother had worried that he would be sent to prison
or worse
. And while he did not fear his future, she did. Little did she know that he had been in a gang since he was ten years old.

To go to prison would have simply puthim on a quicker path to the Vory and gained him more respect, but she told him that he would face a fate worse than being a Vor if he stayed. “You must go,” he remembered her saying. “And you must never, ever come back, Anatoly – not even when I die.”

She had always feared for her eldest son – a blonde, stout, quiet young man with eyes full of rage and a heart full of malice. And she did right to do so.

His first murder had been one of necessity.

The forty-year-old man he had slain had eyes set on his sister, a girl barely twelve.

When Anatoly saw the man rubbing his sister’s hair on the swing and offering her a piece of candy to go up to his apartment for a while, he shot him.

It had been a quick, respectful death – more than the man had deserved. He never got a chance to tell his mother that part - that the man had been a letch. Instead, like always, he kept his secrets. Besides, they all thought that he had gone mad. And maybe they were right, but that man would never have his sister.