Page 82 of Leading Conviction
Phoenix’s smart mouth snapped shut when he saw Hawk’s displeased face. The jokester finally sighed and waved his hand. “Fine. Go on.”
“What did taking Phoenix do?”
“He shows me he does not care about his own operation. He cares about fucking women who look like his daughter and—how you say—fucking over you ‘BlackStone boys.’ The taking of this one”—he tilted his head toward Phoenix—“was a threat to your team. I would get answers and kill him. Those were my jobs. Retrieve. Answers. Kill. I amgoodat this thing.”
“You’ve got a weird set of morals, my dude,” Phoenix muttered and crossed his arms.
“It is how I live. But the General does not have thesemorals. He likes to play too much.Heis a rat.”
Every word out of Vlad’s mouth made Hawk more and more disgusted.
“So what, you decided to take over?”
“It was my idea at the time, yes. I would take over the operation and go to my country. We have… easy laws. If we have money, we can do many things. My men worked for me already, and taking thePakhanmeant I could make him answer questions from buyers that wanted adurakAmerican to answer questions.”
“You didn’t kill him immediately because you wanted to keep him as insurance basically?” Hawk suggested.
“That is the truth. It also make buyers happy rat is no longer king.”
“Well that fucking backfired, didn’t it, ol’ boy?” Phoenix asked, but Vlad seemed unrattled.
“It is the way of these things,” he shrugged again. “You take risk. Sometimes they work. Sometimes you die.”
“Damn, and I thought I was the morbid one,” Phoenix grumbled.
Hawk ignored him. “Do you know who grabbed the General? Do you know where they’ve taken him? He’s our main target, although a canary like you can’t hurt. If you sing to the prosecutors, they might even give you a deal.”
Vlad shook his head with a frown. “I do notsing. I answer your questions. Only BlackStone. No one else has earned more than my silence. As for where he is. He has a home close by where he likes toplay, as he says. He is either there or somewhere else.”
“Detailed answers. We love to see it.” Phoenix gave a thumbs-up.
Vlad stared at him with a furrowed brow before continuing, “He likes to play and it is good to know his ways. Sometimes it makes him less predictable. Sometimes more.”
“Predictable how?” Hawk asked.
Vlad shifted on the ground with his hand over his chest, prompting all three of the BlackStone men to raise their weapons at him. He didn’t seem to mind having three guns in his face and didn’t do anything to assuage their paranoia until he settled more comfortably against the wall and answered.
“He asked me to watch his daughter. Cat and rat, we play for two years. He was done with that game when I took Andrew Ascot with your Phoenix. Ascot told him you were looking for women from the party in Ashland County and Officer Henry Brown told him you were looking for H. Smith from the same party. When he found her this time, he wanted me to get her, to bring her to him.”
Phoenix swore, “Henryratted Hannah out? That mother—”
“Why didn’t you?” Hawk asked, his chest tightening. “Why didn’t you bring Hannah to the General?”
“I did not like his game and it was not her time yet. There were other loose ends to cut.”
“But you went after her eventually,” Hawk pointed out, and Vlad nodded. “Was that before or after you cut other loose ends?”
“After. I took the General, as you call him, and wanted to leave this country. His need for her would have made him less agreeable. And I was not sure what she knew. I wanted to kill her. Of course, you stopped that from happening.”
Hawk’s heart thundered as realization crept in. “Does he know your plan failed?”
Vlad shrugged. “He was there when I found out you got her. But it was in Russian. He does not like Russian.”
“Fuck. Just because he doesn’t like it, doesn’t mean he doesn’t fucking know it,” Hawk hissed.
“It is no matter to me. I did want her dead. She is not. Now, I do not care. Another loose end in wind.”
“We’ve got to go,” Hawk muttered and pressed his mic closer to his mouth. “Everyone, get ready to roll out. Snake, relay to Devil that we need him to carry this asshole.”
