Page 98 of Sins of Arrogance

They could be from one of the other Al­ba­nian crews, but these two have a tinge of the Gheg di­alect to their words, even when they’re speak­ing Eng­lish.

Besnik’s gang is the only lo­cal one from Norther Al­ba­nia.

The man limp­ing on a foot tightly wound with a ban­dage to stop him bleed­ing out, looks away from Ranger Rick, then back again and swal­lows. “Our boss will pay to get us back.”

“Not be­fore I get the an­swers I want.” Giv­ing them hope that I might ran­som them back to Besnik, gives them in­cen­tive to talk in or­der to live.

But I make no pre­tense at giv­ing them hope I will show mercy when I string up the guy with the bro­ken arm from the ceil­ing. By his wrists.

“Take his friend to hold­ing.” The cell he’s go­ing to is an­other psy­cho­log­i­cal move.

Smelling like piss, shite and blood, it’s soaked in de­spair. A good set­ting for him to think about how co­op­er­a­tive, or un­co­op­er­a­tive he wants to be with me when it’s his turn to talk.

I fo­cus on my now snivel­ing cap­tive. “Let’s start with some­thing easy. Your name?”

If he’s fool­ish, he’ll be­lieve me ask­ing is a good thing. It hu­man­izes him and makes me less likely to kill him.

He’s wrong.

What I’m re­ally do­ing is tak­ing away con­trol bit by bit, start­ing with his iden­tity.

When he doesn’t an­swer right away, I punch him in the kid­ney.

“Aagh! It’s Gjon.”

“Who sent you here, Gjon?” I ask, al­most friendly.

It only takes two more punches to get him to say Besnik’s name.

“How is Besnik’s crew get­ting so much busi­ness with weak­lings like him work­ing for him?” Brice asks in Gaeilge.

“No clue. But Ranger Rick took worse in to­tal si­lence,” I re­ply in the same lan­guage.

“Ranger Rick?”

“If he wasn’t an Army Ranger, Wraith was some kind of elite sol­dier. But he’s been trained in black ops too.”

“He must be free­lance.”

“I hope so.”

“Why?”

“Be­cause if he’s part of Besnik’s crew I have to kill him and that would be a waste of a good sol­dier.”

“You think you can re­cruit him?”

“You think I can’t?” My morn­ing just got more in­ter­est­ing. “Care to wa­ger a bot­tle of Mi­dle­ton’s 40th An­niver­sary Ruby Edi­tion?”

“You know I’m sav­ing that whiskey for a spe­cial oc­ca­sion.”

“I’ve got just the one. You los­ing this wa­ger.”

“You’re a bleedin’ pain in my arse.” Brice gives me a gim­let stare. “But to win, you can’t just con­vince him to be in­ducted into the mob, he has to do it.”

Brice knows I’ll only in­duct Wraith if I be­lieve he’ll be loyal. And that’s al­ways an iffy propo­si­tion when turn­ing some­one.

But my in­stincts haven’t been wrong yet.