Page 38 of The Mistake

ChapterNine

Ive

OneMonth Later

Hank and Benjamin hadn’t come out ofhiding, but that was okay. I happened to locate several of their workers, and in fact, I smiled as I watched the man before me who was hanging upside down. I’d captured him a month ago, on the very day my wife had come to the office at my casino and asked me if she was a prisoner.

No, my wife wasn’t a prisoner. I wouldn’t treat her like this.

The man before me, David Butters, was a known thug. He was one of the men who carried the girls out of my nightclubs. He helped to round them up, and from my information, he’d been the one to purchase the grounds. Here are the sticky details: the man was broke and had no money. An amateur thug who collected money for Hank. He wasn’t even that high up in the ranks. He was nothing, and yet, he suddenly had the funds to buy property. Again, I couldn’t help but believe that Hank and Benjamin were working for someone else. So far, Vlad hadn’t been able to locate any information that backed up my theory, which pissed me off big time.

“Please, let me down. I’m going tobe sick,” David said.

He’d not eaten in a week.

“Then be sick, and don’t worry, I’ll be sure to feed it to you.”

In the past month,there had been a lot of mess to clean up in Oleg’s territory. I had to leave my own for a week to handle it, with the rest of the brigadiers. There was a threat from the fucking Irish mafia, who felt they had a claim to it.

Ivan needed to get his shit together and put someone in place. There was a rumor he already had someone in place, and if so, we were all fucked because they were doing a shit job of it.

Iwas angry. And this man in front of me wasn’t helping me feel any better. All I wanted to do was slit his throat, but that kind of death would be too easy. I needed answers.

David didn’t vomit. He got his shit back in control, and then he began to scream, yell, and curse me out. Now,thatI could deal with because that was fucking easy.

I was impressed because for ten minutes straight, I listened to allof David’s threats about what he would do to us, as well as Hank and Benjamin. How they planned to take over, and that we didn’t have a fucking clue what was in store for us, and we wouldn’t be alive to see how they intended to take over every single part of the Volkov Bratva. All you needed was a little bit of patience and a lot of fear, and people had a tendency to talk, like now.

David’s long tirade ended in tears andbegging as he knew he’d said too much. I crouched down so that I was eye level with him.

“And how are your friends going to do all of this exactly?” I asked. “I got wordthat the girls are back home with their families and it was nothing but a game gone too far. Your friends have nothing. I took that away.”

David glared at me. “But you don’t have them, do you? That’s why you’ve got me.”

“No, I’ve got you because you dared to interfere. You see, I knew who you were, David. I was quite happy for you to be this pathetic thug, thinking he was making a name for himself. It was rather charming. Weren’t you trying to impress me and Mr. Volkov with how … unique your skills were?” His skills weren’t unique. He beat the shit out of people to get what he wanted. The whole fear tactic, like the one I was using now. The only difference was David rarely killed anyone. He might have left them with a broken bone or two. They at least got to walk away. It was rare for anyone to end up like this in my care to get away with it.

Apart from Charlotte. But then, she was a special case and I never turned her upside down, nor attempted to starve her. Ivan would have been pissed if I had done that. Thinking about it, if I’d done that to my wife, I’d have been pissed with myself. I guess I’m going to have to thank Ivan for something after all.

I drew my attention back to the man hanging upside down.

“Hank and Benjamin saw my potential,” David said.

“No, they saw an easy target,” I said. “They knew there was a big chance their plan wouldn’t work. It was a long shot, based on one person and one scenario—Ivan Volkov’s death. They thought they had a chance with him dead, but he wasn’t dead. It was nothing more than an act, a ploy, and now you get to pay the price.”

I was done with this man. Seeing as I had to go out to dinner, though, I stepped away and watched as Vlad slid the blade across David’s throat. He didn’t die right away, but took a few minutes, and by then, boredom on my part had already set in.

“Any news?” I asked, as men already started to dispose of the body and do the cleanup. I stepped aside, making my way out of the abandoned warehouse. I tended to do my kills in some of my basements. I hated these obscure locations, but this was close to where Vlad had located him.

“There are rumors that Hank and Benjamin were approached by another organization larger than them.”

I smiled. “There are a lot of suspects, Vlad. Irish, Italian, even theSpanish.”

“Some believe it’s the cartel.”

This made me stop. Of course it could be the cartel. They were always on the fucking border, attempting to find paths that led straight from the docks to the main cities. I, unfortunately, was one of those fucking routes. It made sense for it to be the cartel. I was hoping it wasn’t, because they were nothing more than a pest. Also, I knew some of the cartel had dealings with the previous Bratva.

“What do you believe?” I asked.

Vlad sighed. He hated delivering bad news, but until all of this was cleaned up, that was all he was going to bring me.

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