Page 12 of The Mad Don
From the shadows along the upper edges of the walls that I had seen came the sound of weapons being readied. I look up. There are about seven men I cannot see clearly, positioned at every angle of the room.
He spreads his hands. The bow hangs loose from his fingers. “Do you want to play this game,Pakhan?”
Kirill looks up at the ceiling. He lowers the gun.
“What do you want?”
“I am Giovanni Mondi. A pleasure to meet you.”
“What do you want from me?” Kirill asks again.
“You see, this is why I respect the Russians.” He sets the bow down on a crate beside him. “Straight to the point. The Italians, God love them, but they’d spend forty minutes on pleasantries first.”
He rolls down one sleeve. “The Castellano port access. The southern corridor route. It belonged to the family I inherited from, for forty years before your predecessor acquired it through certain arrangements.” He says arrangements the way you’d say a word in a language you don’t speak. “I want it back.”
“You couldn’t hold it,” Kirill says. “It’s not yours anymore.”
“Si.” He nods. “I inherited an incompetent man’s mess. But I am not that man, and I want what is mine.”
Kirill is quiet for a moment. Then he snaps his fingers.
The doors behind us blow open.
Our men pour in, spreading around the perimeter, weapons up, and in the space of ten seconds, the room’s geometry has inverted completely. Kirill’s men on the ground outnumber his ceiling significantly. Someone presses a gun into my hand, and I bring it up and aim it at the center of Giovanni’s chest. He looks at the barrel, then at my face, and arranges his expression to convey hurt feelings. He is succeeding at nothing except making me want to pull the trigger.
“I thought we were friends, Miss Yana?”
I remember the parking lot, his hands on my back;I’ll see you soonin my ear in the dark. I almost slap myself back to reality. My finger rests on the trigger and stays there.
“I have,” Kirill says, very quietly, “a good mind to end you permanently."
Giovanni steps back. He smiles and says, “A year ago, my men attacked your cruise ship. I hear you traced us already. Damn! You are as meticulous as they say you are.”
“I guess you know already that for a few months,” he continues, “my people inside your organization have been feeding me everything. Your schedules, your routes, and security rotations.” He grins. “When you shower and when you sleep.” He takes one more step back and looks at Kirill over the barrel still aimed at him. “I know everything about you,Pakhan.”
Kirill points a gun at him. “I guess you have to die then.”
“You’re too intelligent to be that impulsive,” Giovanni says, and he’s not even blinking. “Kill me now, and you start a war that ends with both of us losing. You know that. I know that. So let’s not.”
“I have never lost,” Kirill says.
“And I have every intention of letting you continue that record.” He smiles. “At the cost of one small concession.”
He holds out one hand, and the man who led us in, who has been standing in a corner, places a tablet in it, and he turns the screen to face us.
The image loads, and I feel Kirill go still beside me with a stillness more alarming than any movement he could have made. The feed is from inside the mansion; it’s the basement. There is a device I don’t recognize, and beside it a timer that isn’t running but could be. The timestamp on the feed is live. My heart sinks. He wasn’t bluffing; he had his people in the mansion.
“I’m told your wife is home,” he says. Kirill raises his gun.
“Only I have the detonation code,” Givovanni says. The smile stays exactly where it is. “Kill me, and she comes with me. So.” He lowers the tablet. “Let’s talk like men.”
The room is very quiet.
I lower my weapon. I look at our men, and I look at Kirill, and after a moment, Kirill does the same, and the sound of our men standing down moves through the warehouse.
“One month,” Kirill says. “I’m currently using that route. I’ll hand it back at the end of the month.”
“This is not a bargain,Pakhan. Don’t make me press the button.”
