He eyes me for a minute before he turns, walks back to the desk, and presses the intercom button. “Send Boris and Tony in.” He releases it and looks at me again. “If either of them hates this as much as I do, you’re out of luck.”
Boris enters first, with Tony trailing behind him. One look at me standing in front of Dmitri’s desk tells them this isn’t routine.
“What now?” Boris asks.
Dmitri jerks his chin at me. “Tell them.”
I do, and Boris swears before I finish the first sentence.
“You want to walk point into your own father’s house?” Boris asks. “Have you taken another hit to the head since the garage?”
Tony folds his arms. “Why.”
“Because he’ll never expect Dmitri to put me at the front of a Kozlov strike.”
“He won’t expect Dmitri to trust you at all,” Boris points out.
“Exactly.”
Boris looks at Dmitri. “This is insane.”
Tony doesn’t look away from me. “It might work.”
Boris swings toward him. “Of course you’d say that.”
“It gives us a cleaner shot at Vadim before he scatters.”
“It also puts a loaded gun inside our own operation.”
Dmitri’s gaze stays on me. “I told him the same thing.”
I let them argue for another few seconds, then cut in. “Put a man behind me the entire time.”
That gets Boris’s attention. “What?”
“Two men. Yours. I’ll leave Ruslan behind so you don’t have to worry about us hatching anything. If I move wrong, your men can shoot me.”
Boris lets out a rough breath. “Jesus.”
Tony glances at Dmitri. Boris rubs his mouth. Neither looks thrilled. Good. A bad plan should disturb people before they agree to it.
“If we do this, we do it fast,” Tony states. “Vadim tested the perimeter today. He’ll either hit again, or he’ll pull back and change locations. We won’t get long.”
Boris points at me. “You will give me every entrance. Every blind corner. Every room Vadim uses for records, cash, and hostages. And if I think for one second that you’re holding something back, I won’t wait for Dmitri’s permission.”
“That’s fair.”
Dmitri exhales and reaches for a pen. “All right. We plan it now, and we move within forty-eight hours.”
Boris swears again, quieter this time.
Tony nods once, already moving toward the map cabinet. “I’ll pull the satellite prints.”
Dmitri looks at me with brutal clarity. “You do this my way. Not yours. You take orders. You don’t improvise unless I say so. You don’t break formation because you see your father and decide this is personal.”
“Itispersonal.”
“You know what I mean.”
