Page 104 of Mob Princess

“Yeah. He’s here. I thought you had him knocked out. You said I wouldn’t have to be involved beyond getting you into the school. If my dad finds out I swiped his keys to let you in, he’ll kill me.”

Interesting. Manny’s dad is a custodian at the school. That solves one mystery.

“How’d he get out?” I don’t recognize the voice.

“I don’t know how he escaped. That’s not my problem.”

“It is now that you let him use your phone.”

“What else was I supposed to do? Say no? Not likely.”

I slip back behind the counter. I know where Manny keeps his gun. Definitely not in a gun case or the safe. I grab it, check that it’s loaded—full clip—and take off the safety. No silencer. Inconvenient.

I creep closer to the door that’s ajar. I listen for a little longer.

“Look. You made me help you. You said you’d let Josue go if I did.”

Josue is his nephew. The kid’s like ten. Who the fuck held him hostage?

I shift to see a different angle as I stand outside the door. I spot Manny. I can’t tell who the other person is. It’s unlikely Manny’ll notice if I open the door wider. I use my shoulder, easing it open a few millimeters at a time, waiting for someone to sound the alarm. Nothing happens, and I can slide through the doorway.

It’s not like this is a warehouse. There aren’t stacks of crates to hide behind, but there are some boxes piled up that I crouch near. It puts me in the right place to see who Manny’s chatting with.

Surprising, but not entirely shocking. How’d I not know his voice?

Mikhail Agopov. He’s one of the Kutsenko brothers’ most trusted men. He’s usually one of their wives’ bodyguards. I don’t know why he’s in charge of this operation, but there he is.

It’s a shame because I like Manny.

I put a bullet through his left temple. Mikhail swings around, but I fire off four rounds. One in each shoulder and one in each kneecap. I don’t want him dead yet. Just disabled.

I prowl closer, making sure he sees I’m taunting him by taking my time. He’s on the ground, trying to stretch for his gun, but neither shoulder allows him to raise his arms high enough to reach where it fell. I kick it out of the way and kick him in the gut. While he’s gagging, I check him for his other weapons. He’s Russian, so I know he has at least three. Their training is still Soviet era paramilitary. I find a knife in each side pocket, a small can of mace in his left pocket, and brass knuckles in his back right one. The image would be complete if he carried cyanide tablets.

“Which one sent you?”

He clams up.

“I was the easy one to get. Who did they really want?”

Still quiet.

I assess him. The Russians are the hardest to break because of their training. Especially the ones the Kutsenkos’ age. A psychopath who got his rocks off torturing people trained them and their Andreyev cousins. He was KGB and bratva back in Russia. Once again, my family knows shite no one else knows we know. We witnessed some of their training—the kind that emotionally scarred them enough that those eight men show no emotion to pain. It’s how they survived.

No one knew Dillan, Seamus, Cormac, Finn, Shane, and I used to spy on them. We found a way into the place Vlad used. It wasn’t the same warehouse they use as their torture palace now. They still use the abandoned grocery store where the meat department used to butcher their fresh meat but for other stuff. If Upton Sinclair hadn’t died in the sixties, he could have written The Jungle about the unsanitary conditions in that meat processing place. The grocery store wasn’t abandoned when they first started using it. Vlad forced the owners out.

Thorough as they were securing the place from the outside, they didn’t think about the tunnel that led out near the Flushing River. It was how the blood drained. I dared Shane to go in there. The thing about anything I dared Shane was it meant I had to be willing to do it too. We did nothing like that shite alone.

We all saw shite we never should have. We pitied the now bratva leaders back then. But it didn’t stop us from giving as good as we got, even when we were teenagers. It just meant we prepared for how they fought. It’s going to come in handy now.

I put my foot on his chest and slowly transfer my weight to it. My heel is over his sternum, and I’m certain it feels like it’s about to snap. I’m slow to increase the pressure, not wanting to snap his xiphoid process, the bit of cartilage that could break off and lacerate his diaphragm or even puncture his liver. That would—hopefully—lead to him bleeding to death internally. That’s what I’ll aim for at the end. I’ve already left a mess that’ll need cleaning.

“Who sent you?”

I lean forward and put the muzzle of the gun to the bullet hole in his right shoulder and press there, digging it into his wound. He groans, unable to remain entirely silent.

“Your funeral.”

I twist and put a bullet in his groin. Not quite his junk, but so damn near it, he can’t help but try to coil to protect himself. I press harder on his chest. Rolling into a ball just makes it easier for me to put a bullet in his arse. I pull my foot back. If I do too much more right now, he’ll pass out. That’s not what I need. He just needs to understand I’ll torture him. I might have finished Manny quickly, but that’s because he was useless. Mikhail might wind up at the house we have on Staten Island where we hold people until we’re ready for them at the station. It would give us time to round up some more of his associates.

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