Page 49 of Dressed to Kill
"Izzy Costas gave it to me himself."
He looked up from the folder. “You met with Izzy? Without me?”
“Am I your right hand or not? What’s a right hand for? I’m not here to jerk you off, Nikita. I’m here to do the dirty work so you can keep your nose clean. That’s why I have crosses on my fingers and you don’t. I took an oath to serve. That’s what I’m doing.”
He set the folder down flat and smoothed his hand over it once. “Is it?” He glanced at Fin briefly before meeting my eyes again.
I swallowed. “Of course. This organization comes first. It always has. It always will.”
Nikita came around the desk, buttoning his jacket. He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell the vodka and the cigarettes under his cologne. "You've made your case," he said. "Pavel was suka. The folder is good. Better than good. The Greeks will keep their peace, the Italians will lose their shop, and a traitor is in the ground where he should be." He nodded,almost kind. "On the matter of Pavel, you are clean. I want you to hear that from me."
I waited. There was always a but with Nikita. He just liked you to reach for it.
"But you didn’t kill Pavel for the organization," he said.
"I just told you—"
"You told me a good story. It even happens to be true." He tipped his head toward the desk, the folder, all of it. "You found the proof. You kept the war in the box. All of that is real. None of it is why you hung up on me and put a bullet in a made man without a word to anyone. Is it, Aleksi?”
I didn’t answer.
“Answer me honestly. If I’d asked you to wait, would you have waited?”
“There wasn’t time,” I started. “They were going to—”
“They were going to what, Aleksi?”
I dropped my head and ran a hand through my hair. No matter how I answered, it wouldn’t save me. Nikita knew. He’d known before I’d known how much Fin meant to me. He’d called it days ago when I was standing in his law office, before I even knew about Pavel.
Nikita sighed and folded his hands. “When my father suspected I was with Yuri, despite my marriage to Tatiana, I did terrible things to protect the man I loved. I disobeyed my father’s commands. At the time, I told myself I was doing it in service to the organization, but I knew it wasn’t true. I’ve always been a selfish bastard, Aleksi, so I know a selfish bastard in love when I see one.”
“It isn’t… It’s not like that.”
“You can lie to yourself, Aleksi, but do not ever lie to me. That dishonors us both.”
The room was very quiet. Lyudmila had stopped crying to listen. Nikolai was watching me with that warm, awful attention, enjoying it, and Warrick in the corner had gone still.
I swallowed. “Fine. Then the price is mine to pay.”
“And you’ll pay it.” Nikita made a vague gesture.
Nikolai drained his glass and stood, coming around behind me. I braced myself for the beating I knew was coming when my brother put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he said.
And then Kostya shoved Fin, grabbed his arm and yanked it forward, forcing his hand onto the desk. “What the fuck! Get yer hands off me! Fucker!”
Warrick grabbed his bag and stood. Nikolai pulled me back, and his fingers tightened on my shoulder. I realized with a terrible sinking feeling what was about to happen, and then I realized… There was nothing I could do to stop it.
"Wait," I said. "Wait, Nikita. Stop. Leave the boy. Take your pound of flesh from me."
"It’s not about the flesh," Nikita said. "It’s never been about that."
Nikolai's fingers dug into my shoulder. I could have broken his grip. I'd broken bigger men. But there were six guns on the wall. Kostya had Fin's wrist pinned flat to the desk. The second I moved, somebody put a bullet in one of us, and it wouldn't be me they'd aim at. I knew that. Nikolai knew I knew it.
Fin was still swearing, still pulling, the cords standing out in his neck. "Get off me. Aleksi. Aleksi, tell them—"
Warrick crossed the room with the bag. He set the bag on the desk, opened it, and carefully laid out a few absorbent pads, gloves, surgical clamps, and a bone saw. “Spread his fingers, please. I need the one you want isolated for a clean cut.”
Kostya wrestled with Fin’s hand a bit, enough that Nikita had to step in to keep Fin from headbutting him, but they eventuallygot the ring finger on his left hand isolated and pinned to the absorbent pads.
