Page 95 of Truths

“And who's that? Because the last time I checked, Dimitri's dead. Very dead. I have no other enemies to speak of.”

He slides a flash drive to the Irishman. “When we made the exchange for O'Malley, Dimitri told us to look at his laptop. We finally got around to decrypting it, and here are the recordings from it. The first audio recording is in Russian, but it shows we killed the wrong man. The last two are conversations between O'Malley and Ivan you may find interesting.”

“Have you been working with the RIO recently?” Psycho asks.

“I refuse to work with them after their rogue agent.”

“How about with Ivan?”

His eyebrow lifts. “Yes, I work with Ivan. We're working on an agreement to bring his Russian contacts and my organization together.”

“To screw over the RIO?” Jennings asks.

“I have a feeling you are like cops. You're not asking questions you don't already know the answer to.”

“The first recording, the one in Russian, translates to Ivan telling Dimitri to order the hit on you,” Psycho says.

Setting his hands on the table, Jennings locks eyes with the enemy of their enemy. “He was working with O'Malley to take you down. O'Malley was in on it from the get go. With you focused on revenge, he could overthrow you while Ivan overthrew the RIO. They wanted to piss us off to walk away and weaken the Russians. Perfect opportunity for Ivan to take over.”

“And I suppose you have proof of that?”

“O'Malley says it himself on those recordings.”

“Before you ask, what could we possibly gain from misleading you?” Psycho asks. “We have no connection anymore. We got O'Malley, who needed to die, and we have no beef with the Irish now.”

Collin smirks and leans back. “O'Malley really had a thing for your girl, Alexis.”

“Yeah, and I made that motherfucker regret the day he ever thought about her. The reason he picked her to begin with, though, was at Ivan's suggestion. That's how long they've been working together.”

“Do you know who Ryan Graves is?” Jennings asks.

His face turns angry. “O'Malley's cousin? The man crazier than anyone I've ever met in my life? Yeah, I know him.”

“Safe to assume you're not friendly?”

“I fucking hate him,” he growls. “He tried to assault my daughter. She was thirteen. But he was family before we gave you O'Malley.”

“That's who Ivan's working with now,” Jennings says. “And we have business with him as well as Ivan. We want them both dead.”

Looking at his three men, Collin nods, and they walk away to a nearby table. “You have my attention. Because if what you've said is true, Ivan must die.”

“If you want to listen to these now, we'll wait,” Psycho says. “Because the truth is, to get to Ivan, we're going to need your help.”

He snaps his fingers. “Get me a laptop.” Looking at the two of them, he asks, “Are you sure you don't want anything to eat or drink?”

“Whiskey would be fine,” Jennings says.

“A man after my own heart.” A woman in a barely-there outfit brings the requested electronic, and he turns to her. “Top shelf. Three glasses.”

The redhead nods and hurries away. She can't be more than twenty-one, and Psycho exchanges a look with Jennings, who tells him with just his eyes to let it be.

Russian voices play from the first audio. “You're sure this is Ivan ordering Dimitri?”

“Aside from a few lost in translation phrases, it was run through a program,” Jennings says. “We don’t fucking speak Russian.”

Collin looks up and calls out, “Peter!”

“Who the fuck is Peter?” Psycho mutters under his breath as a large man with buzzed hair and cold eyes walks over to the table. “I guess that's Peter.”

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