Monk and Teddy looked at each other. They’d never heard of anybody by that name ever. But when they looked at Mick, they suspected that he definitely had.
Mick didn’t like where this was going, but he kept it to himself. “What was your assignment?” he asked number three. But when Mick didn’t ask who this Datvey Gagarin was, it only confirmed their suspicion.
“We were supposed to snatch the wife or one of the twins, or both if we could,” number three said. “The team that was supposed to get the wife bungled it, but we were able to get the boy.”
“Snatch him and take him where?” asked Monk.
“I do not know.”
Monk frowned. “What you mean your ass don’t know?”
“I do not know. He was supposed to call us. But your men took control of our van, dropped off our target, and brought us here.”
“When was he supposed to call?”
“After we delivered our subject.”
“Delivered him where?”
He hesitated only for a second. Mick shot him in the foot, which shocked everybody.
Especially number three. “To the club!” he cried out in pain and fear.
“What club?” Mick asked him.
“His club. He was supposed to text us the name and location, but he did not. We were driving around waiting to get his orders. But they never came.”
Mick, Teddy, and Monk looked at each other. “They might have had spies in the area too,” said Monk. “Once the van was highjacked, they may have changed their plans.”
Mick nodded. He agreed.
“What was the backup plan?” Teddy asked number three because there always was.
“Bella was the backup plan. But that failed too.”
Monk and Teddy were shocked. “Bella?” Teddy asked. Then they looked at Mick.
But Mick had already figured Bella was tied up in it some kind of way when he heard who the mastermind was. Datvey Gagarin was Bella’s Russian Oligarch boyfriend. The man she had run to Mick’s hotel to get away from. He was most likely Russian mob.
“How was Bella the backup plan?” Mick asked him.
“She was supposed to go to your hotel and distract you before you left for your wife’s opening night on Broadway. She was supposed to keep you at that hotel so that you would not be around to interfere with the abductions. But she failed. When we saw you drive up, we knew she had failed.”
“Gotdamn Pop,” said Teddy. “Bella in this shit too?”
It was a scary feeling for Mick. Bella was his daughter’s mother. It would devastate Gloria if anything ever happened to her beloved mother. What the fuck?
But as they all seemed taken aback by Bella’s role in all of this, Monk noticed a red glow out of the side of his eyes. When he looked, he could see the red dot laser of a rifle on Mick’s back. He could see that it was the glow of a target on Mick’s back.
“Hit the deck!” he yelled as loud as he could as he pushed Teddy down while he dropped down too.
But Teddy was worried about Nikki near the window, and he cried out to her. “Nikki, get down!” he cried. But Nikki had already dropped to the floor.
Mick and Monk’s capos inside the house had dropped to the floor, too, as gunfire ripped through the window of the safe house without a sound. The only reason they knew they were being shot at was because of Monk’s warning and the soundof glass shattering around them. And the fact that bullets were ripping through all four prisoners. Those bullets took out number three and shot up the ones already deceased. Bullets knew no difference.
When it appeared as if no more bullets were being fired, Nikki leaned up and peeped out of the window. That was when she saw a man with a rifle in his hand running away from the safe house and into the woods. “He’s getting away!” she cried as they all jumped up and ran out of the front door.
Monk’s four men were already dead when they ran outside, as if the gunman took them out before he trained his silencer-enhanced weapon indoors. If his goal was to catch them unawares, he succeeded mightily.
