Page 39 of Boardroom Ties
He still hasn’t moved the folder. He’s letting it sit there between us, ominous and patient. I know this game. I’ve played it from both sides of the desk.Put the file down. Don’t say what’s in it. Make the other guy ask.
I’m sure as fuck not going to ask.
Instead, I sip my espresso and stare him down.
Afon folds his hands in his lap and stares right back. He’s got a scruffy beard that hides a square jaw and a strong neck. His wardrobe consists of either one or one hundred sets of the same black jeans, black boots, and black sweater, because that’s all I’ve ever seen him wear, and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember.
His hair is more salt than pepper now, cropped close to the scalp. The tattoo on the side of his throat—a star with eight points, faded blue-black—peeks above his collar. His nose has been broken enough times that it can’t decide which way it wants to lean.
His eyes are my father’s eyes. That’s the worst part.
Maybe second-worst. The worst, at least as far as I’m concerned right now, is that he knows exactly how long I can hold a stare before I cave.
“Fine,” I sigh after a minute. “I’ll bite. What’s in the folder?”
“Open it.”
“Can you spare me the theatrics and just tell me?”
He simply waits.
Grimacing, I open the folder.
The top page is a surveillance photo. Grainy, long lens, taken from across a street I don’t recognize. In it, a man is getting out of the back of a town car. The man’s back is to me, so I can’t see his face, but I’m already getting an uneasy prickle of recognition in my stomach.
More to the point, I don’tneedto see the face just yet. I’m more focused on what’s in the background.
I know that building. I walk into it every single weekday. I’m sitting in it right now.
“That’s the lobby of my firm,” I say slowly.
Afon nods. “Mhmm.”
“Why do you have a surveillance photo of the lobby of my firm?”
“Keep going.”
I flip the page.
The next one’s the same man, pictured again from the back—a.k.a., no face—but from a different angle on a different day. He’s shaking hands with a gruff-faced stranger who might as well have the wordCRIMINALtattooed on his forehead.
It doesn’t take anything more than that for the pieces to come together.
“Oh, goddammit.”
“I told you you were going to want to sit down,” chuckles Afon.
“Raymond Snyder,” I say.
“Raymond Snyder,” he confirms.
“The head of my firm.”
“The head of your firm.”
“… is the head of the Vainakh Syndicate.”
“Head. Founder. Moneyman. Puppeteer. Pick your word.” Afon tips his palm side to side. “He’s the one at the top. We’re sure.”
