“Twenty-five percent.”
“I cannot give you twenty-five percent of Bratva business!”
“Twenty-five percent ofyourprofits not Bratva. No one will ever know that you’re giving a quarter of your money to us unless you tell them.”
“Thieves.” She spits close to my feet.
“Partners.”
“I’m not giving a quarter of my business to you mutts.”
I ignore her tirade. She will do exactly as she’s told or she’ll find herself six feet under.
“Finally, you will put these two lowlifes out of their misery. They’re not important enough for me to have their blood on my hands, but they’ve got to go.”
Her two enforcers start speaking rapidly in their native tongue. Probably begging for their lives. One of them even puts his hands in a prayer formation, but the woman shakes her head.
“I’ll let you three say your goodbyes. The weapon is taped behind the pipe of that sink.”
She raises an eyebrow, probably surprised that I’m allowing her access to a firearm but there’s a method to my madness. I know what I’m doing. I return to my office upstairs where we watch the three of them from the camera monitors we had installed about a year ago.
“There’s no way she’s going to do it, Camden,” Stone says. “I don’t think the old woman is a cold-blooded killer of her own people.”
“You better hope she doesn’t do it,” Cutter says. “Roman wanted to deal with them himself and I’ve got to agree that he has every right after what they did.”
“Roman almost died from that slug to his gut. He will not be on his feet for a while and we can’t keep them down here indefinitely,” I tell them.
“Did you ask Joseph about it?”
“I did.”
“Okkkkay then,” Cutter replies unconvinced of the soundness of this plan. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
While Irina’s two enforcers’ hands and feet are bound in front of them, we’ve allowed her to have some freedom around the basement. She searches for the weapon and says something to them in Russian once she locates it. They both frantically shake their heads no until she raises her voice at them.
My assumption is that they are begging for their lives, but that isn’t it the case. She hands the one on Roman’s shit list—Sergei—the weapon and sits on the bed. After smoothing her hair and placing her hands in her lap, she gives the directive.
“What the hell are they doing?” I wonder.
Sergei points and aims the gun at point-blank range to Irina’s head.
“Oh, fuck!” Cutter exclaims.
I’m pretty stunned myself. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
“Maybe that wasn’t a good idea,” Stone says to me. “Now their boss is dead and those two maniacs have a gun. How are we going to go back down there without getting our heads blown off?”
“Let’s just watch,” I assure my brothers, but I’m not truly sure of anything.
The two men have another heated conversation in Russian. They argue with each other over Irina’s dead body until the arguing abruptly stops. Sergei shoots the other man, whose name I could never find, in the head.
Now there’s just Sergei.
He sits on the floor and bends his head into the nose of the gun. When he pulls the trigger, nothing happens, and he slumps over in defeat.
“What just happened?” Cutter asks like he just watched a horror flick.
