“So, working at the hospitals with people who confirmed my beliefs of not being good enough made matters worse. But when I started learning things, it began to affect me less. I just had to remind myself of the reason I chose nursing: to care for people even when the people they love don’t know what to do.”
I didn’t know what to say to her. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t deserve to be treated that way, but I had done nothing much different from that. I wanted to let her know that she was worth more than she thought, but I’d doubted her again and again.
So I pulled her closer and kissed her. I kissed her until I felt the salty taste of her tears. Then I lifted her to straddle me, and she lay with her head against my chest, the movie forgotten.
**********
Sergei and I had spent most of the night in my home office, and it was almost dawn. We were hunched over the two monitors, the screens casting a sickly blue-white glow on our tired faces. Outside, the Manhattan skyline was a distant, uncaring behemoth, but here, in the heart of Brooklyn’s industrial maze, we were deep in Dimitri Volodin’s turf.
“He’s tighter than Morozov. See this?” I pointed out, tracing a route on a diagram filling a 32-inch screen—a complex web of IP addresses and data packets. “Vitya was a sprawl, an oil slick over half the city. Sloppy. Loud. But Dimitri, the bastard, is embedded deep.”
“He didn’t build a separate shadow-net. He threaded his poison right into the shipping line. New York Atlantic Freight, boss. The one running the docks from Pier 44 to Newark,” Sergei answered.
He tapped a point on the diagram. It was an anomaly—a tiny, secure subnet nested within the massive, legitimate corporate firewall.
“The bills of lading, the cargo manifests, the scheduling for every container ship coming into port…” I muttered, more to myself, realizing the depth of it. “His entire operation—the drugs, the untaxed liquor, the smuggled designer goods—it all moves under the cover of a legitimate global logistics company. If we pull the thread on Trey’s little knot, the whole fucking shipping operation will unravel.”
“Exactly, boss,” Sergei agreed. “This isn’t about running numbers in the back room; it’s about controlling what gets stamped, what gets loaded, and what gets waved through Customs without a second look. The motherfucker is making mafia moves.”
He zoomed in, his fingers flying across the keyboard. “He’s using their own encrypted channels. We can’t just hack in and download the ledger; the moment we touch it, the wholesystem alarms. They’ll know we’re inside the Atlantic Freight network, not just Dimitri’s.”
“Then we don’t hit the ledger, Sergei. We hit the map. We need to find the choke point. The physical location tied to those three terminals. The office, the shack, the trailer where the paper trail meets the digital one. The shipping line is his shell, but the network is his blood. We need to cut the vein without killing the host to get all the evidence in the cleanup. Every single affiliation he has with Vitya must be found and sent to the authorities.”
Clearing Alina’s name in Russia wasn’t just right; it was personal.
“Then we end the bastard. He can continue being the host from the great beyond,” I added, and Sergei chuckled.
My phone vibrated, and I went over to my desk to pick it up.
Viktor.
I signaled to Sergei to leave as I answered the call.
“Brother,” I called.
“Konstantin. Dimitri has sent a message. Claims he has ‘insurance’ on the Lobanov Bratva.”
“The lunatic,” I mumbled.
“It could be anything. Anyone. But it’s definitely connected to the Morozov case, you know how Dimitri works. Have you found out more about his business?”
“Yes, brother. I’m currently on it.”
“Good. Everything must be underground, you know the fool has legit ties. We shouldn’t waste our resources on cleanup because of him.”
“Yes, brother. I’ll update you again soon.”
“I’ll be expecting it.”
As the call ended, I realized the ‘insurance’ Dimitri had might be Alina. It could be false dossiers, photographs, anything to ruin her. And me.
A gnawing unease arose within me.
She was more than just leverage to me; I’d rather die than let the slimy bastard get to her.
I dialed a number on my phone.
“Sergei. Get two more men to the house. Double her security,” I instructed before ending the call.
