Chapter Eighteen
Ten Years Ago
“Be careful tonight,” Frankie warned on the other endof the phone. Her sigh was bone deep and full of emotion. “I should be goingwith you.”
“Yeah, well you have more important things to dotonight. I can take care of myself. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Don’t call what I have to do important. It’s not.”
It was. But I wasn’t going to argue about it with her.Instead, I played dumb. “Aren’t your uncles taking you to a dinner tonight?”
“With some politicians,” she groaned. “They’re goingto dress me up like a doll and put me on parade.”
“And…”
“And teach me how to wine and dine my way into partnerships.”Her voice dropped, taking on her uncles’ Russian accents. “Not everythingshould be obtained by threat and intimidation, you know.” She made anotherfrustrated sound. “You wouldn’t believe these people, Caro. You wouldn’tbelieve how easily they give up their morality for the promise of just a littlebit more power. It’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, well maybe you should casually bring up thecontainer of human beings your uncles got last week.”
“I swear they wouldn’t care. They’d pretend to be deafand blind.”
“Is the mayor going to be there?”
“Yeah, apparently the life of his dog is moreimportant than thirty underage girls.”
My stomach tightened, threatening to empty itself ofmy lunch. “They can’t do this forever.”
“They can. And they will.”
She was right. As long as theVolkovhad a foothold in this city, they would run girls and more—drugs, weapons,black market everything. And if something happened to the Russians, ten othercrime families would be there to fill in, pulling politicians and lobbyists andpolicemen and all of the supposedly upstanding citizens into it with them.
Maybe the people hanging out to the right of legaldidn’t know the extent of the depravity, but only because they didn’t want toknow. They wanted to live their shiny, happy, wealthy lives with clearconsciences. As did the rest of America. It was easier to pretend that humantrafficking didn’t exist than to do something about it. It was easier topretend the fat diamond on your engagement ring wasn’t a blooddiamond, thatlittle kids didn’t die so you could have itthan to pick a less popular stone for your wedding band. It was easier toassume drug overdoses and gun violence happened to other people than torecognize how far the dangerous tentacles of the underworld reached, how theychoked and strangled and imprisoned all of society to their whim.
I wasn’t judging. I was part of the problem. Maybe Ididn’t deal in humans and illegal substances directly, but my department fundeda lot of the other happenings in thebratva. If all sin was the same, I was as corrupt anddepraved as the rest of my thieves-in-law.
“Be safe,” I told her.
“Oh, hey, Caro.” Her voice dropped, catching me right beforeI disconnected our call.
“Yeah?”
“They’re going to make Sayer a brigadier. I heard themtalking about it over lunch. They want to keep moving him up. They talked abouthim becoming one of the two spies someday.”
“What the hell, Frankie?”
“I thought you should know. This job is a test.”
She couldn’t have led with that? I pressed my palm tomy forehead. “Thanks for the head’s up.”
“Are you going to help him?” Her voice dropped evenlower. “You could… sabotage.”
She didn’t know what she was saying. Thebratvawaseverything to Sayer. He would kill me if I messed up a chance like this.
And yet the temptation was there…
“I need to go, Frankie. I’m going to be late.”
“Bye, Caro.”
