I reached for the grenade inside my black trench coat. Kolya grinned.
And I lit those motherfuckers up.
“Who threw the fucking grenade?”Moretti growled.
“It sped things up, didn’t it?” I said. There were nine thugs. Two died instantly when I threw the explosive while it disoriented the others. In my experience with these types of men and the way they executed the attack on Lucy, the dumb ones were sent to the front lines, and there were one or two smart ones who fell back.
We already had their files, their social security numbers, and their bank accounts. Cash deposits, but we hadn’t identified the source yet. We recovered several phones from one of their safe houses, and Trevor dumped the data. That was how we knew they had once been connected to the Irish mob. We knew which ones were the weak links. Kolya was already working on them. Their screams echoed in the warehouse where we had surrounded them. Bratva and De Lucci soldiers. Moretti didn’t want to miss out on the action.
I glowered at the man in front of me. He was panting and sweating, and he stank like the sewer. But he was their leader. A man named Oz.
I slipped my knife from the boot and held the tip to his eye. “Now is the time to tell us who paid you to attack my wife.”
“Why should I?” He tried to act defiant. “You’re just going to kill me!”
I chuckled darkly. “Bratva revenge 101. We don’t stop with you. We will wipe out three generations of your family. Your wife, sons, daughters, and grandchildren.”
“Monsters.” He started sobbing.
“Start talking, Oz.”
“We don’t know who paid us,” he hiccupped. “It was all anonymous. But the bank account is on the computer.” He cocked his head toward a stack of boxes. Trevor, who’d been observing, made his way to the corner.
“Found it,” Trevor said, with a laptop in hand.
While I waited to see if we had a lead, I checked on what Kolya had found out. Two men lay eviscerated on the ground. He was working on the third. The screaming, crying, and yelling were giving me a headache.
Meanwhile, Moretti and De Lucci were doing their own brand of mob justice while trying to get information out of the others.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“No,” Kolya answered grimly. “They all received their orders from Oz, but this one”—he gripped the hair of the man he was currently interrogating—“is the one in the surveillance footage driving the truck that hit Sato and Lucy.”
He handed me his machete. He always carried one on his person or in his car.
The smell of the man’s fear saturated my nose. Like Oz, he was sweating and scared shitless; he’d soiled his jeans with God knew what.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
His mouth flattened into a thin line. His eyes were glazed. And he was shuddering like an addict in withdrawal. Hatred encased in ice flowed through every cell in my body. It wasdetachment, yet I knew there was a simmering rage beneath it. I swung the machete down and sliced off his ear.
“Ahhhhhh! You fucker!”
“What’s. Your. Name?” I gritted.
“Bert Leonard!” he yelled, still howling in agony as his blood mixed with the river of red he was already sitting on.
“I found something!” Trevor yelled.
I scoffed. “Well, Bert Leonard, I just wanted to know the name of the man I’m sending to hell for putting my wife in a coma. I’m not forgetting it anytime soon.”
Then I cut an arc across his neck.
I handed the machete back to Kolya and stalked back to Oz, who was rocking back and forth in hysteria after he witnessed me decapitate one of his crew.
I was surprisingly numb. I didn’t find any satisfaction at all in what I’d done. This blackness and emptiness saturating my soul could only be filled if Lucy woke up.
None of this matters if I lose you, Lusenka.
