Forty-eight hours.
I should go straight back to the penthouse. Check the ropes. Make sure he’s still exactly where I left him—face down on that bench, body trembling from denial. Instead my feet turn east, away from the high-rise, toward the old neighborhood.
He can’t go anywhere, I tell myself wryly. Not tied like that. Not with the building locked tighter than a vault. But the thought doesn’t comfort me. It just makes the knot in my gut pull tighter.
I need air.
Perspective.
Someone who’s seen this life chew up better men than me and spit out the bones. And I know just the man…
The dive bar is still there: same chipped red door, same neon sign that’s only half lit these days.
I push inside, no time to waste. The smell hits first: stale beer, old cigarette smoke that’s somehow still clinging to the walls twenty years after the smoking ban, pine cleaner that never quite wins.
He’s in the back booth, same one he’s occupied since the real old school days. Gray hair now, thinner on top, but the shoulders are still wide, the eyes still sharp.
Kasper Karol.
The man who dragged me out of a Ukrainian basement at nineteen and taught me how to survive in this world instead of just dying in it.
I slide into the opposite seat without asking.
Kasper doesn’t look surprised. He rarely does. Somehow, Kasper always seems to know, it’s like he can sense things in the air. And this makes him a dangerous enemy. But a brilliant ally too.
“Vodka?” I ask.
He lifts his empty glass in salute. “Always.”
I signal the bartender—the same man who’s been pouring here since I was old enough to drink legally. Two doubles. Neat.
When the glasses arrive I push one toward him.
Kasper takes it. Waits.
I don’t know how to start, so I don’t. I just drink.
The burn helps.
Then the memory surfaces unbidden, as vivid as ever…
Twenty years ago. Fall. Brighton Beach boardwalk half-deserted, wind off the Atlantic cutting through my cheap coat like knives. I was twenty-one, cocky, green, convinced I was untouchable because I’d made it through two winters without getting killed.
I’d already seen many a man fall. And I was still standing. Maybe I was indeed untouchable, or so my youthful arrogance reasoned.
The target was a mid-level Armenian fence who’d skimmed too much from one of Viktor’s early shipments. Simple job: follow, wait for him to be alone, two in the chest, one in the head, walk away.
Kasper was running point. I was backup. He’d been doing this since before I was born.
We tailed the guy into a shuttered arcade under the boardwalk—broken pinball machines, dust, the smell of mildew and old popcorn. He was meeting someone. We waited in the shadows.
Then it went wrong.
Thesomeonewasn’t alone. Three men. Armed. They knew we were coming.
First shot shattered the machine next to my head. Glass and plastic rained down. I dove behind a Skee-Ball lane. Kasper was already moving—low, fast, returning fire with the old Makarov he still preferred.
I popped up, squeezed off two rounds. Hit one in the shoulder. He screamed. Another bullet clipped my forearm—hot, wet, burning. I dropped, cursing.
