I drove my fist into his ribs a couple of times, stopping when I heard something crack. He screamed.
“Now, look at you. Unprotected.”
Maxim finally moved, just enough to walk around behind me and glance at the monitor feed, like none of this concerned him much. That was his way—nonchalant. At least, that’s how he seemed, until it was too late to realize how dangerous he was.
“Who wanted my wife’s house hit?” I asked.
Viktor shook his head too fast. “I do not know. There are questions I do not ask, Mr. Sidorov. Surely, you understand.”
Another lie. I could hear it. That’s one thing pain does for people. It makes their guards drop, keeps them from being as careful as they’d like.
I looked over my shoulder. “Lev.”
He stepped forward, calm as fuck. He laid a burner phone and a printed screenshot on the desk. The printout was of a message thread. There were payment confirmations and a time- and date-stamped note requesting three black vehicles with clean plates and “men who move discreetly and understand Russian.”
Viktor went pale.
I smiled at that. “Look at that, Viktor. You keep lying and evidence keeps showing up.”
He started breathing harder, panic finally overwhelming him. That was good.
“Why Russian-speaking men?” I asked, lifting a heavy paperweight from his desk and studying it.
“I don’t know,” he lied.
I slammed his hand flat on the desk and brought the paperweight down on it full force. I swear, he shrieked loud enough to echo.
Maxim sighed behind me. “So subtle,brat.”
“You ain’t say subtle. You said alive. He’s alive,” I retorted without looking back.
Viktor was sobbing now. I let him. Tears didn’t bother me. Sometimes they helped.
“Why Russian-speaking men?” I repeated.
“To send message to you all! To make it look like Russian internal thing or maybe it is one—I do not know. I swear. The request came that way,” Viktor explained.
“Who made the request?”
“A woman handled the first contact. Later, a man took over.”
That made me pause for a minute. A woman. It could be misdirection, someone intent on making me look at her ex’s family, at the woman who led their criminal enterprise, when it wasn’t that. It could be some Russian pussy using a woman to hide himself. Whatever it was, I knew to be on my shit. Women in our world weren’t harmless just because they sounded soft.
“What woman?”
“I do not know her name. The first call, she used a scrambler. The second time, she spoke with her real voice.” He winced, eyes squeezing shut like he was trying to remember. “She sounded educated. Southern.”
Interesting.
“What did she want?”
His eyes opened. Fear rolled off him so heavy I could feel the shit.
“She wanted to create conflict within the family. Between you and the woman. Between you and thepakhan. The house first, but not to kill. To make you feel…” He trailed off.
I put my hand around his throat. “Feel what?”
“Unprotected,” he croaked. “Distracted. Weak.”
