Page 36 of Vasily the Hammer

Dima. I haven’t confirmed it, but the absence of evidence is no more the evidence of absence than the evidence of absence is the absence of evidence. And traitors are like cockroaches. Sometimes, one just randomly walks in through the front door and makes its way to the kitchen to have a couple snacks and die, but it’s far more likely there are thousands behind the wall.

“Everybody out!” I yell.

“Vasily—” Kostya starts, but I shoo him away.

“You pulled all his weapons, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“He scratched that itch right behind my left nut, too!” Angelo pipes up.

I pull my gun on him again.

He puts his hands up. “Hey, man. You can ask your boy. I had a gun and a knife on me, and I handed them over when they asked. They didn’t find nothing else on me.”

“Found a cigar snip,” Kostya argues.

“Oh come on, that’s not a weapon.”

“You people cut off fingers with that shit!”

“Yeah, I’ll cut your little pencil dick off with it—”

“Out!”I bellow, wishing I could kick Angelo out, too.

But we’re finally alone, and when I tell him to sing, he grins and relaxes back in his chair. “Gino has your boy.”

It takes me a couple seconds to even recognize the name, but Angelo is right. Gino is not my enemy. He’s Mafia, but that time Ana nearly died in my apartment? The friend she was talking to was Gino’s wife, and Gino actually called me a dozen times to save her. And when everyone thought I was livestreaming myself raping her— which was her idea and she loved every second of— he managed to smuggle a phone in to her to find out if she needed an extraction team. He’s the only man from her side of the world who truly cared about her during all of that, even if it was all to make his wife happy, and I respect the hell out of that.

Then it clicks what Angelo is saying.

“Alex? Gino has Alex?”

Angelo shrugs. “I don’t know his name. I just know Gino has him.”

“How? Why?” I want to ask how a second time— and then why a second time, just for good measure— but I hold back so I don’t sound like a complete idiot.

A shake of the head this time, but he says, “If I get the gist of what happened, Tony had him, and Gino talked Tony into handing him over. He was with Gino when I was there, and they didn’t want to freak him out or anything, so we couldn’t talk too much about it.”

Alex is a bit soft, always has been sensitive, but he’s a grown man and has the brand to prove he’s a full-fledged Bratva member. It’s ridiculous that they thought they couldn’t talk frankly about him when, if anything, what they had to say should have made him feel better about getting kidnapped, but I shrug it off. Mafia. No point seeking logic where there is none.

I thought more highly of Gino, though.

“Why you?”

Angelo nods to the door everyone just exited through. “Everyone knows you’re banging my cousin.”

“Of course they do,” I sigh dryly.

“So yeah, we all figured if I caught her, she’d be able to hook the two of us up so we could have this talk because, bro, I shouldn’t be the one telling you this, but your organization is leaking like a sieve and it’s all raining right into the Mafia’s pocket.”

“I fucking know,” I grumble. “I’m working on it, and I’m going to kill the traitors, so you can zip your pockets back up.”

“Hey man, I hate Tony the Bitch. I was the one who gave him that nickname, you know.”

No less than seven Mafia men have claimed that over the years, but I nod like I believe him.

“So if this shit I’m passing off to you helps close up your leaks and fucks Tony up to boot, I’m all for it. But... there’s something else you need to know that we know.”

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