Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 92843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
I’d allowed Vadim to do whatever he wanted with them during the interrogations. They’d sent updates about Nell to Donna—ones that were being used to track her moves for repetition, to find a way to attack her.
Once you know an everyday movement someone did, you could attack them and leave with less risk of interference or retaliation if you chose the location correctly. That’s what she was looking for.
Vadim and Val were going to look into every last one of our men, sourcing the weakest links that could be used in the future, and obviously anyone else who was involved now. There was no doubt in my mind that we hadn’t found them all, but we would.
Until then, I had a bitter taste in my mouth that Los Segadores knew of Nell’s existence in any way.
As I was washing my hands, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Pulling it out, I was surprised to see a name on it that I hadn’t seen in ages.
Benito De Luca, head of the Italian Mob in Chicago.
He was a good man, but he wasn’t one that you ever owed favors to, so I hadn’t contacted him about this yet.
Hitting the answer icon on the screen, I greeted him warmly. I might not want to owe him favors, but he was a good friend of mine, and had been since childhood.
“Ben, how are you, my friend?”
“Few complaints, man. Life is good, the pickings are hot, the rats are scarce, and the women are plentiful,” he chuckled. Not leaving me the opportunity to answer, he continued, “Something which you can’t say the same about, it appears.”
It wasn’t a shock that he’d heard something, but it wasn’t clear exactly what part of the problem he’d heard about. “How so?”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, brother. Last night, one of my men came to me to tell me about a man who’d contacted him to discuss assisting with a problem. One related to your family.
“As you know, the friendship between us isn’t widely known, so I advised him to get some details as to what kind of problem it was, without giving anything away.”
“And what kind of problem is it?”
“A fucking big one. It appears you’ve tied yourself to an MC called the Road Kings, meaning you now have control of some major routes, amico. Ones that are causing a power war. The man requested a hit on the leading Fedorov Bratva members, not including yourself.”
“Taking out father and Dmitri would pass control to me. The person requesting the hits would need to be certain I’d be their key to the control of those routes once that happened,” I ground out. “Did you get any names?”
“Amico mio, if I had that, you would already have received them.”
This was true. Anything like this was dealt with by retrieving the person and delivering them to the other family. That’s how close our friendship was, and why we worked so well together.
“I recently discovered a problem with Azarov,” I divulged, as I stared unseeingly at the door to the bathroom.
“Ah, the in-laws not feeling the love, fratello. I hear that isn’t uncommon,” he replied with humor. “Unfortunately, my man tells me the person who shares that sentiment with your father-in-law wasn’t Russian.”
That was a surprise. “Are you sure?”
“Si. My man was near them when they switched language mid-conversation,” he paused, “to Portoghese.”
“Portuguese?”
“This opens up a lot of possibilities for you, Fedorov. My man heard him say they needed more men to win the war.”
Many countries spoke Portuguese, so I had to think through the options. The problem was, everyone was a possibility, it just depended on how big they were as to what size of a problem they would be.
“We’re on good terms with almost everyone, even Sousa in Angola and Matos in Cabo Verde.”
Ben whistled down the phone. “Don’t know how you managed that, but I’m impressed.”
“Word of the issues would have reached them by now,” I continued, still thinking out loud, which proved the depth of my trust in him. “I discovered last night Azarov is in bed with Los Segadores, though.”
There was silence from the other end of the line, and then I heard Ben slam something down. “The fuck you say.”
“He’s been monitored constantly, but he managed to hide it.”
There was a muttered curse in Italian. “He has a go between.”
Closing my eyes, I had to bite my lip to stop myself from putting my fist through the wall when it clicked into place. “Ribeiro.”
Ribeiro was a key player in São Tome and Principe, and one of the biggest stains on the world it’d ever had. He was also tight with Abar, one of the heads of Los Segador and a huge pain in my ass. If Azarov was in tight with the gang, he had a link to Ribeiro.