Page 20 of Ruthless Sin
“Devushka. Russkaya. Let dvadtsat’. Svetlye volosy. Khudaya.”
A girl. Russian. About twenty. Light hair. Thin.
Izzy taps the pad again, switching to a different intercept. Same voice. Two days later.
“Mozhet, sestra cheloveka, kotoryy proshel cherez port v proshlom godu. Dolzhok doma.”
Maybe the sister of a man who came through the port last year. A debt back home.
The phrasing is lethal. Dolzhok doma. A little debt back home.
It’s the phrase a Russian longshoreman from Odessa hears in his nightmares before a blade finds his ribs. The bastard isn’t just asking questions anymore. He is recruiting every criminal on the docks to start watching the streets on his behalf.
“There’s a third clip,” Izzy says, her fingers freezing over the keys. “I’m not playing it.”
“Why.”
“It is the part where he details what’s going to happen to her when they take her back.”
“Play it.”
“Nico.”
“Izzy. Play the tape.”
She hits the key.
“Sperva my otrabotayem nash dolg na ney. Potom ona poydyot domoy. Ne vazhno v kakom sostoyanii.”
First we work off our debt on her. Then she goes home. It doesn’t matter in what condition.
My jaw grinds around the Russian verbs until my teeth ache. The hand wearing Papa’s watch closes into a fist at my side, my nails digging into my palm, but I stay standing.
She cuts the audio short.
I want to put my fist through the wall.
“He’s not asking with discipline anymore,” Izzy says, looking up at me through the shadows. “He’s asking like a man whose deadline is moving. Which means somebody above him in the Bratva hierarchy is leaning on his neck.”
“How long do we have.”
“A week before he buys a name from a dirty cop. Two weeks before he has a face that matches a body.” She looks straight into my eyes, her face still. “You should tell her. It’s going to land on her whether or not you keep her behind that door. It’ll land softer if you give her the knife yourself.”
“Not yet.”
“That wasn’t advice.”
“I know.”
“Nico—”
“I said not yet, Izzy.”
She holds my eyes for another beat, then goes back to her keyboard, her fingers back on the keys.
Cassia walks into the back room then, a leather Casa Lucia financials folder tucked under one arm and a fountain pen in her other hand. Her left hand rests instinctively at the small of her back. The baby bump is still small enough to live under the folds of the linen dress, but the fabric has stopped pretending.
She glances at my face, her expression sober. “You’re driving Tuesday.”
