Page 21 of Breakdown
FORTY MINUTES LATER, Jordan unlocked the front door with the key Peter’d given him for cash pickups after hours. Jordan had climbed the ranks of the Bauer organization just in time to watch the whole thing go to hell. Liv trickled in behind him with her phone pressed into her ear. She seemed more focused than usual, giving only the briefest nod of acknowledgement before veering off into the garage’s small waiting area to continue her conversation. It had been over a month since he’d seen her and it infuriated Peter that was all the greeting she could muster.
Jordan joined Peter and Nik in the bay. “Hey, Chief. Hey, Nik,” he said, just barely meeting Nik’s eye. The two men could be in the same room, but their particular hatchet remained unburied. Peter simply found it ironic that at one of his lowest points in life, he’d had two men vying for his affections. For most of his life he’d struggled to get one.
“What’s going on?” Peter asked in a hushed tone, watching Liv pace in short, clipped steps across the waiting room floor.
“I better let her tell you.” Jordan let out a jumpy laugh that did nothing to put him at ease.
He could tell that Jordan wanted to say more, shooting a nervous glance in Liv’s direction. Peter had been responsible for delivering the kid right into her clutches. He should’ve pushed Nik a little more to drop the grudge between them, offered Jordan a place at the garage, tried harder to get him out of the life when he had the chance. Peter made a promise to himself that he’d help Jordan go legitimate after all of this was over.
“Can I ask you something, Chief?” Jordan asked, his voice low.
“Sure, what’s up?”
He hesitated. “Does your sister seem different to you lately?”
Of course Liv did, but Peter wanted to hear it from somebody else, if only for his own peace of mind. “Different how?”
Jordan looked deeply uncomfortable as he articulated what Peter had been thinking for a while now. “More like your dad.”
It was at that moment that Olivia hung up, mute and fish-belly white. He watched her for a moment, as her shoulders coiled and she balled her fist tightly. Not good news then. He crossed the distance of the shop alone. He didn’t exactly blame Jordan and Nik for hanging back.
“What happened, Liv?”
She looked up from the screen of her phone, startled, as if she only just now remembered where she was. “They just found Stavros Giannopoulos dead in his cell. Overdose.”
“Jesus Christ.” The floor dropped out from under Peter. “I was just talking to him.”
If Liv noticed at all, she let that particular piece of information slide without comment. “Accident, they’re saying, but Dave’s not convinced. Neither am I, to be honest; Volkov’s got guys all over that prison that would feed him more than he could handle. I’m just surprised Matty Giannopoulos would be so cold to allow it on his own brother,” she said. She dug her fingers into the bridge of her nose, pacing agitatedly. “Fuck, if Adara couldn’t even protect him...”
Peter barely heard her. The part of him that was able to compartmentalize this kind of shit had been lost somewhere over the last two years, worn away slowly by the promise of legitimacy and Nik’s unwavering decency. He kept thinking of all the mistakes he still had to atone for, and how Stav would never get a chance to. He’d heard the fear in the man’s voice last night. He’d hated Stav for what he’d done to Nik but he couldn’t do the mental gymnastics required to feel even close to good about this. Peter groped blindly for the back of a chair, something to steady himself.
The news seemed to have the opposite effect on Liv. She squared her shoulders, her mouth set in a firm line. “Jordan, Nik, join us please,” Liv clipped off, efficient and emotionless. “We’ve got a job to discuss.”
Whatever Liv wanted them to do, Peter didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. And he sure as shit didn’t want Nik involved. They were playing for even higher stakes than he’d originally thought.
“I can’t do this, Liv.”
“Look, I know you’re a little rusty, but the job’s not hard,” she said, raising her voice to carry over to Nik and Jordan, crossing the shop towards them. “You steal one car, we bring it here and Nik chops it. I leave with the parts like it never even happened. A single night of work. So easy even you can’t fuck it up, little brother.”
Peter bristled, grinding his molars. “See, the thing about anything that sounds that easy, Olivia, is that there’s usually a catch. What do you want with one car—why the penny-ante bullshit? Aren’t you supposed to have a whole organization for this?”
Nobody but Peter would’ve caught the slight doubt flickering behind her eyes. But he knew his sister too well.
“The catch is that it’s Volkov’s Ferrari,” she said smoothly.
“Fuck me,” Peter choked out. Of all the cars in LA to not get caught stealing, the pale blue Pista Spider with the custom plates—NGHT WLF—was at the top of the list if you didn’t want to end up at the bottom of a lake with some concrete shoes. Every two-bit car thief in town knew that.
She handed over a manila envelope containing the details, giving him the broad strokes as he looked it over. “The Wolf keeps it under lock and key at one of their warehouses in Mar Vista when he’s working. But I have it on good authority that Volkov and Matteo are going to be half-way across town trying to impress some big-shot heroin supplier at a club in Little Armenia. They’re making a show of it for the guy: their hummers, their enforcers, their guns. There’ll be hardly anyone left to guard his baby. No danger at all. The whole thing just requires a little security system finesse; nothing you can’t handle.” She clapped him lightly on the shoulder, faux-genial.
Peter spotted the security system in the glossy prints Liv had so helpfully provided. It was a Russian job, the keypad stamped with indecipherable letters and any specs he could research to bypass them probably written in the same. But it wasn’t just the alarm. There was a time when Peter would have relished a challenge like this, but it had long passed. “Yeah, thanks for the vote of confidence on this fucking suicide mission you want me to pull off, but I’m not doing it.”
Liv let out a short laugh of disbelief, as though she misheard him. “Pardon me?”
“I’m not doing this.” Peter crossed his arms over his chest. The decision surprised him almost as much as it did her. “I don’t do this anymore.”
Her smile was amused, but there was an edge to it that Peter didn’t like. “Wow, look at you, huh? You spend a year and a half being barely legitimate and you think you’re some saint all of a sudden.”
“It’s not because it’s illegal. It’s because it’s both monumentally stupid and extremely fucking reckless, Liv. This kind of escalation isn’t you. Where’s the win here? I thought the whole point wasnotto get killed by Volkov.”
