Page 170 of Ruthless Sin
“He needs me dead. I am the last of my father’s line. With me alive, his throne is a fiction.”
“If he had taken Nico to the plantation tonight, he would have put him in that basement. The first round is the cigarette. Alexei always starts with the cigarette. Sokolov was bringing him a gift. The gift did not arrive. By tomorrow night he will knowit is not coming. He will be at the dining table eating dinner anyway. He always eats dinner. That is when we take him.”
The room is so quiet I can hear the lamp at Izzy’s station hum.
Izzy is typing. Without looking up.
“Schematic confirms a sub-floor under the main dining room. Hot-spot signature on the satellite IR from last week. I missed it. I’m pulling it now.”
Marco. “Mila.”
I look at him.
“How much more do you have.”
“As much as you want.”
Cassia stands. Walks around the table. Stops beside my chair. Sets her hand on my shoulder. Light. Steady.
“Tell them everything. Russian, if you need to. Translate yourself if it helps.”
I look up at her.
She nods.
I keep going.
Russian code phrases first.
I give Izzy six. The ones Alexei used in my house when I was a child. The phrases for move the cargo, change the route, the wife is asking, the boy is back. The phrase for we have a guest. That’s what Alexei calls a hostage when he’s about to start the interrogation.
Izzy types each into a search field. She has been running pattern analysis on Alexei’s network communications for weeks. Six new phrases give her six new threads.
Then the routine.
Alexei’s morning. Coffee at dawn. He runs three miles on whatever the property has. A road, a track, a treadmill. He showers. He reads two newspapers at the breakfast table.Russian and English. He eats only bread until late morning. He starts working at noon.
He eats lunch with whoever is on the property. He doesn’t take meetings during lunch.
He works through the afternoon.
He eats dinner in the dining room at dusk. He starts dinner with vodka.
The interrogations happen between vodka and dinner.
Renzo. “Why between.”
“Because he is sober for the threat and drunk for the violence. He doesn’t trust himself sober with the violence. He never has.”
Renzo nods.
I keep going.
“The lieutenants. The seven Yelena had photographs of, I knew six by face from the compound in Saint Petersburg. The fourth I knew from a Bratva wedding when I was a girl. The seventh, I knew from the kitchen in Moscow the year my father was dying.”
Izzy is typing as fast as I am speaking. Marco is drawing on the schematic. Renzo has not moved.
Dante is watching me.
