Page 57 of Ruthless Sin
“The Don’s wife runs the intake board. Volin reads it every morning before the doors open. He passes us the rerouting list.He does not know what it is. The family in Naples told him this is how he pays the debt. He thinks he is buying his sister back.”
My hand stays on the folder. I keep my face where it is.
“What did he see that morning.”
Korvan looks at me.
“Your girl,” he says. “The front passenger seat. The young one with the violin.” He stops. One beat. “The Algiers route.”
The air goes out of my chest.
My jaw locks and I feel it lock and I cannot stop it and Korvan sees it. I know he sees it because his eyes change, the stillness in them something I have not seen in this room tonight, and for the first time since I walked through that door he looks at me the way a man looks when he has found something he did not expect to find.
He has a daughter. A man with a daughter knows what a face does over a name.
The Algiers route.
She was in that seat. I drove her on that road. Someone in a Casa Lucia polo read her name off an intake board and handed it to the man sitting across from me and this man knew which road I drove her on a Tuesday morning and put it in the hands of someone looking for her and I want to put my hands through the table. I am going to destroy something and I am not moving.
I am moving.
I am across the table before I decide to be. My fist finds his face. The crack of it goes up my arm and into my shoulder and I do not stop. The chair goes back. Korvan goes with it. I go with him and my knee is on his chest and my fist is coming back a third time when Marco’s arms lock around mine from behind and drag me off the floor.
“Nico. Nico.”
I let Marco pull me back because I choose to. That is the only thing I have chosen correctly in the last thirty seconds.
Korvan is on the floor with his chair. His nose is broken. Blood on the concrete. Blood on my hand. He is breathing, which is the only reason this room stays useful tonight.
Marco sets me back on my feet. His hands stay on my arms one extra second. Checking.
I straighten my jacket and pick up the folder. I sit back down at the table and I breathe through my nose and I look at the blood on my knuckles.
I just showed him everything. I have never shown anyone anything in a room like this. And I just gave it to him for free.
Two of Marco’s men get Korvan off the floor and right the chair and put him back in it.
He spits blood onto the concrete. His eyes find mine.
He does not look afraid. He looks at me like a man who has just been handed something he did not know he was going to get. He is very still. That is the only thing I can read on him right now, and it is enough.
I hold his eyes and I do not look away.
I could not take it back if I tried. I am not sure I want to. Anyone who reads her name off a list deserves to know what it costs them.
“Nico.” Low. Even. “I am giving you Andrei because I do not want my daughter to be the woman in Naples. I am not your friend.”
“I didn’t ask you to be.”
I stand. I pick up the folder and leave the photograph face up on the table where he has to keep looking at it. I cross to the door.
Marco is at the side-room threshold, tablet in his hand, his eyes red at the rims from the monitors.
“Hold him. No water for an hour, then bring it at the hour. Second pass at first light. I want Izzy inside Volin’s phone beforethe Russian’s finished his water. The Naples thread. The sister, the family, the debt, all of it. Have me a number by morning.”
“On it.”
“And Marco.”
