Page 13 of The Mad Don
“Then you’ll have no routes; either that or have a route with no active infrastructure and no established contacts. One month and you get it back intact and operational, and I retain access twice annually.”
The man looks up at his men in the rafters. He looks back at Kirill. He looks at the ceiling again as though consulting it.
“Is the route worth your wife?” he says.
“I just told you what the route is worth to me,” Kirill says.
Then Giovanni opens his hands and addresses the ceiling. “We have a deal.”
There is silence.
“Clap,” he thunders, “you fools!”
Scattered, uncertain applause from the men above. He throws his head back and laughs, and the laugh echoes off the concrete walls and the high ceiling.
He comes to Kirill with his hand out, pointing to me.
“She stays.”
Kirill looks at him. “What?”
“As collateral.” He says it like it’s the most reasonable word. “I’m offering this in good faith, Pakhan. I think it’s fair to ask for some in return. Your most trusted person. A guarantee that you’ll hold your end.”
“Not her.”
“I’m a fan of Miss Yana,” he says. “She’s the perfect collateral. You hold your end and hand over the route?” He looks back at Kirill. “She comes home.”
“I’ll give you anyone else,” Kirill says.
“I want her.”
“No,” Kirill says.
“Deal,” I say.
Kirill turns to look at me.
I meet his eyes, and I hold them, and I try to put into that look everything I can’t say out loud: I know what I’m doing. I know what he is. There is no negotiating with this madman, and I know it, and Annika is in that house, and Dimitri is in that house. Kirill’s jaw tightens.
He says nothing, which is, from Kirill, the same as yes.
The man turns back to his audience on the ceiling. “Clap,” he says again, louder this time with a kind of furious joy, “you absolute fools —”
The applause is more committed this time. He turns back to Kirill and takes his hand again and shakes it with both of his with enormous warmth, as if they’ve just agreed on something wonderful.
“A genuine pleasure,PakhanPavlovich,” he says. “Truly.”
Kirill points at the tablet, and Giovanni laughs. “Oh yes, you have about six hours before it automatically explodes. Just cut the wires, and it goes off.”
He says it causally. He is crazy. Over Kirill’s shoulder, his eyes find mine.
Kirill turns, and his voice comes. “Pakhan, if she doesn’t show up in two days… you don’t want to know the tricks I can pull out of my sleeve.”
Kirill rushes out, and I follow. He was right under our noses the whole time, and all I had was a vague nudge. I resist the urge to look back at him. Annika and Dimitri first.
Chapter Four
Yana
