The Secaucus motel is the kind of two-story place that you rent by the hour from a clerk who looks the other way for a dollar.
Renat’s tracker waits under the dripping eave near the corner, hands buried in his jacket, hood up. He nods once. “Room twenty-seven. He’s been pacing for the past hour.”
“Neighbors?” I ask.
“Nobody on the left side. On the right is a woman with a kid who doesn’t want to go to sleep. You’ll need to be quiet.”
“We will,” I agree.
We climb the stairs, and the metal grates give a small scream under our weight. I keep my hand by my thigh, close to mypistol. My mind on the woman who told me to sit down and take it easy, making me softer every second I’m near her. A bad time to grow a conscience. A worse time to want anything I shouldn’t.
Petrov ghosts a keycard with a right wrist flick that looks like a magic trick outside room twenty-seven. The green dots blink in a hurry. He pushes. The door opens with the stink of cigarette smoke.
Archer is exactly where I expected him to be, a weak man taking up too much space on a bed that’s seen more sorrow than sleep. There’s a glass bottle by his side, a burner phone on the nightstand, a duffel half-packed with stupid choices on the bed. He lifts his head and swears when he sees my face.
“Get out,” he snaps, reaching for the drawer like he’s determined to make worse choices before the day is done. Petrov goes over and kicks the drawer shut with his shoe and Archer gets his fingers jammed. He yelps, then yanks his hand back, and glares at me. “You can’t?—”
“We can,” I say. If Archer had gotten that gun, Alina would never have forgiven me for what I’d have to do next. I step inside the room and close the door with my heel. “You should have run further.”
“Where?” he spits. “Where, you fucking—” He catches himself on the edge of a name he won’t survive. His eyes go mean. “You don’t get to lecture me. You took my sister! You bleed because you earned that shit.”
“I bleed because you sold us out to fools with loud new toys,” I say. “The difference is I’ll heal from my wounds. You won’t.”
His chin comes up, reminding me of his sister. “You think you can scare me? I grew up in a house with worse men than you.”
“It’s adorable that you think so,” I say. But the information settles in the back of my mind, refusing to budge. If Archer grew up with those types of men, then so did Alina.
While I’m distracted, he lunges. It’s ragged and a stupid move that makes Petrov laugh in a low, affectionate way, like watching a kitten trying to catch a bee. Stepping sideways, Petrov takes Archer’s wrist, turns, and the kid is face-down on the carpet in less than a breath, all his energy going into a curse that can’t find a god. Viktor’s knee pins his shoulder; the handcuffs click.
My men lift him by his elbows. Archer continues to fight like a boy who never learned when he’d lost.
“You’re going to kill me?” Archer asks. It comes out as a question because he’s still acting like a boy, no matter how many guns he hides under furniture. “Will you do it with her in the other room so she can hear it?”
“No,” I say. “I wouldn’t put her through that.”
“What then?” He throws his head back toward the ceiling. His eyes flash, desperate and bright. “You want me to beg? You want me to apologize? I did what I had to do for us. The bikers made me give up the meeting time and place when I thought she was already as good as dead.”
“You did it for yourself,” I say. “You stole two million. You promised men a pipeline you couldn’t build. You handed them maps they didn’t deserve and door codes that weren’t yours. You took a debt and turned it into a string of bad choices. Don’t speak to me about ‘us.’ Even Alina is fed up with you and your shit. There is no ‘us.’ Not anymore.”
He shakes his head hard enough to hurt something inside his thick skull. He has that look on his face I’ve seen a hundred times, the one that says if you tell the story long enough it’ll become true. “She’ll forgive me,” he says hoarsely. “She always does.”
He says it like it’s a guarantee. Like she’s a resource he owns.
That, more than betrayal, seals his fate.
The words land in a place I don’t let enemies touch. And the fury that I feel hits me so hard that I lose my breath for a second.
That smug bastard. I step close enough that his breath hits the base of my throat. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I say, and watch the minute flinch he doesn’t want to give.
“Bring him,” I instruct my men.
Tomorrow at noon hangs over us like a loaded gun. And Archer Kent is the weight that might help us tip the scales.
27
Dominik
Back at my apartment building,we come in from the private elevator in the garage. We put Archer in the mostly empty room of the penthouse with no windows and a chair that won’t forgive bad posture. Petrov locks the cuffs to a spreader bolted under the table so Archer can sit and feel something solid in his life for once. He pulls and swears through his gag, no doubt promising things he can’t deliver. I close the door on it all.
