Page 115 of Shades of Grey & Gold

“I can see the wheels turning in that big brain of yours, big brother. Because I know what she is to you.” Nico puts his palms on the desk and leans closer to me as the volume in his voice increases as he all-out yells across the desk, “Cut the shit, Cal. Let me get her back for you, let me off this goddamn leash you have me on so I can get her the fuck back for you!”

His words reverberate through the tall ceiling of the room and the corners of my mind.

I lean forward, feel something in my chest snap as I growl back, “I’m getting her the fuck back.”

A feral, delighted smile slides across his face. It’s identical to mine, just a younger, somehow harder version. He stands and adjusts his jacket sleeves, satisfied with the outcome of his prodding.

“Let’s fucking go then.”

Chapter Forty

Cal

Forty-twohours.

That’s how long she’s been gone when Mick pulls the black hood off the man zip-tied to the chair in the basement of one of our warehouses on the east side.

In the first twenty-four hours, we pulled camera footage from six blocks in every direction of the café, cross-referenced three partial plates, traced a stolen car back to a garage in the meatpacking district that we’ve had eyes on before. It’s a known front for the Volkovs' lower operations.

Wepicked up a few of their street guys yesterday. They knew nothing useful. Disposable, the kind of men who are handed a job and an address and told not to ask questions.

Nico had a conversation with them anyway. I stayed upstairs.

This morning, one of our guys spotted a Volkov lieutenant—mid-level, old enough to know things but stupid enough to be eating breakfast at the same diner he’s eaten breakfast at every week for four years—and they picked him up before he finished his pancakes.

His name is Dmitri. He’s forty-three, heavyset, with a scar that runs through his left eyebrow and a gold tooth that catches the single bulb hanging above his head when he blinks against the light, eyes adjusting. He’s scared but not scared enough. His breathing gives it away. Shallow, through his nose, controlled like a man who’s been in a room like this before and is trying to remember how to survive.

And that’s fine.

Scared men talk.

I pull out the chair across from him and sit down. I set nothing on the table between us, just fold my hands in front of me and look at him without speaking. It reminds me of the way I look at a witness before I ask them something I already know the answer to in court.

Behind me, I hear Nico shift his weight. He’s standing by the door with two other guys and Mick. I know he will stay there unless I tell him otherwise.

“Dmitri,” I say it conversationally, easy. “I’m going to be straightforward with you because I think you’re a man who appreciates directness. You were picked up this morning. You haven’t been harmed. You’re sitting in a chair. Those are the nice choices I made.” I let that sit. “I’d like to keep making those nice choices. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

He says nothing. His jaw is set.

“I’m looking for a woman. She was taken from an alley off Fifth Street two days ago by men you probably know. I know it was your family because I watched the car. I know it was coordinated because they were waiting in the alley before she went out there. And I know she’s alive because if she wasn’t, you’d be dead.” I watch his face as I tilt my head towards Nico. “Because we would’ve killed you. So, she’s leverage. Which means someone above you made a decision to take her and is waiting to see what I’ll do about it.”

Still no response, but his breathing slightly changes.

“Here’s what I’d like to do for you,” I continue, tapping the table with my knuckles. “Your life for a location. That’s all. One location and this conversation ends and you go back to your day. I’ll even have the guys drop you back at the diner and buy you a new plate of pancakes, on me. And then we never see each other again.”

He looks at the table.

“Dmitri.”

He looks up.

“I went to law school.” I sigh. “And I know your family knows that, because you’ve all kept tabs on us just like we’ve kept tabs on you. I know how to build a case. I know how to sit across from someone and find the crack in their story and work it open with patience and time. I have patience.” I lean forward and tilt my head side to side and drop my voice. “For now. But what I don’t have is time.”

Something flickers across his face.

I lean back again and smile. “She has this dimple; it’s in her right cheek. It only shows up when she smiles all the way, like a real smile. Brown hair, and these great blue eyes and she orders the same coffee every morning. But the day your family took her,” my voice is low. “She ordered something different because she was having such a great day. And then your family held a gun to her head and dragged her down a street, took the shoes right off her feet, and drove her away.”

The room is quiet. And my mind is, too. Imagining her in that café, in my arms the morning before. And I feel my heart swell and break all at once.