She stands in front of me and gives me a pensive long look. I stare back at her just as intently. Something about me intrigues her because the corner of her painted lips lifts in a small smirk.
“Do you speak Russian?”
“Nyet,” I answer with the second word I know, but this is easy. Many people know how to say no in Russian just by watching television, but again the point here is to create doubt, not certainty.
The woman beams this time.
“You lie to me?”
“Nyet,” I repeat.
She walks in a circle around me and the squeak of her heels grows increasingly more annoying than the god-awful music they were playing earlier.
“The beautiful boy you put your hands on at Drexel Village is my son.”
At least she gets right to the point.
“Your son needs some manners,” I tell her, as I contemplate how the hell this woman knows who I am and where she could find me.
“Who are you to speak of manners when you have no respect?”
This conversation is actually helpful. The woman only has a slight hint of a Russian accent which tells me she’s probably American born and was perhaps raised in a Russian neighborhood but not one in Philadelphia or else I’d know her. The mention of the word respect also reveals to me she’s indeed Bratva. Mafia types are obsessed with being paid respect. The question about her now is from which family and where.
“I don’t respect any man who harasses a woman just because he can,” I tell her.
“Is this what Patricia told you? That my son harassed her?”
“She didn’t have to tell me anything. It was obvious what your son was doing.”
“Based on what evidence?”
“He broke into her apartment and searched through her things like a pervert. He placed spyware on her computer, which is illegal. He followed her to her car on numerous occasions, asking her out after she already turned him down. That is stalking. You need more? I could go on.”
The woman points two of her fingers to the ground as some sort of signal. The enforcer whom I’m growing to loathe at this point kicks me two times in the same spot with that damn metal tipped boot of his. She’s got these dogs of hers trained well. I need not hear a snap to know that he’s successfully broken one of my ribs this time. The pain comes swiftly as I struggle to breathe.
“Your information is incorrect. My son doesn’t need to stalk someshlyukhawho can’t pay her rent on time. You made a mistake.”
I know for a fact that my intel is correct. Cam found the spyware, Cutter found his prints on her underwear drawer, and I had Stone watch the woman for a week. This woman’s sociopathic son was approaching Patricia damn near every day. He was obsessed with her, and anyone with an ounce of common sense could see that his fascination with the girl was going to go south soon.
“My intel is solid,” I say through pained breaths.
“You put your hands on the wrong man.”
“And he was stalking the wrong woman.”
The woman’s face tightens further, as if that’s even possible. It’s so full of Botox she has a permanent scowl on her face already.
“Are you a cop?”
“Nyet.”
Her eyelid jumps every time I try replying in my terrible Russian. That must be one of her pet peeves, as I’m no doubt butchering the pronunciations.
“Then who hired you or who is Patricia to you?”
This is the second time they have asked me this specific question which makes me think Patricia is seriously hurt or they plan to hurt her because they’re trying to calculate what the ramifications might be afterward.
“She’s no one to me.”
