The police officer crooked an eyebrow, his deep brown skin flickering with hints of gold and red in the dying light of the fire. “I know who you are. You’re not a Russo.”
My answering smile was unkind. “I’m married to one.”
“As of when?”
I blinked. Who the hell did this cop think he was? “What do you think happened?” I asked, bringing the conversation back to the immediate problem of the burning warehouse.
“It’s too early to tell.”
I snorted. “There are two other Russo warehouses on fire in Yorkfield tonight. I’d say we know exactly what happened.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer agreed with me, his air collegial and friendly. “So far, we haven’t found any witnesses. Do you have any idea who might have done this?”
I debated whether to share that Ginevra had been kidnapped hours before. Would it help or hurt? Fuck, this was a Rian decision—my job was piling up the bodies. His job was cleaning up messes.
My phone pinged, giving me a moment’s reprieve. It was a photo of Ginevra, trussed up, her face tear streaked but angry and determined. My eyes flicked over her, noting how exposed she was, and how fierce she looked anyway.That’s my girl. Give ‘em hell, Ginevra.
The cop looked at me, a question in his eyes.
“Are you asking if Antonio Russo is likely to retaliate?” I didn’t know the answer to that question. The embers of the material inside the warehouse glowed red in the dawn as the sun rose over the port. “Officer Ramos, these warehouses barely even rate in terms of the troubles Tony Russo is facing right now.”
Lorenzo meandered back into my field of view, and I waved him over. “Hand the nice police officer your card, Lo.”
Officer Ramos nodded sharply. “I’ll call if I find anything.”
Lorenzo and I slid into his car. I showed him the photo of Ginevra and he swore softly. “Two other warehouses were hit. No way this shit isn’t related.”
“No witnesses?”
He shook his head. “None that I could find. Cormac might have better luck breaking into the CCTV systems.”
Liam: Three warehouses, no witnesses at the port. Cormac, can you check the CCTV?
A few minutes later, Cormac replied.
Cormac: Bratva again. Fuckers aren’t even trying to hide.
Rian: Fuck.
I roared my fury, the sound echoing loudly in the small sports car. Nikolai swore he didn’t know who was behind this, but the hit on the warehouses put paid to that lie. Time to hunt Russians.
29
CORMAC
The photo of Ginevra taunted me, the fury in her eyes cutting at me as I wallowed in my guilt. We hadn’t paid attention at the fight, and these assholes had grabbed our woman.
My office was sleek and modern, with giant windows. An array of monitors allowed me, on my good days, to manage our operation’s information security. On bad days like this one, I monitored every piece of information I could find that might lead to Ginevra. Our servers in the cloud were running Alexi’s and the Russians’ faces through recognition software, cross-checking those results with plain white Toyota Corollas. It was a needle in a goddamned haystack.
Liam stormed into my office without knocking. Lorenzo must have dropped him off. “Ready to go hunting?”
I shoved away from my command center. “Let’s go.” Together, we walked down to the basement, passing the rooms we used for interrogation, and into the vault. I palmed it open.
Liam couldn’t hide his mania as he selected his weapons, guns and knives, throwing ammunition into a duffle bag.
His parents had moved to Yorkfield when he was a kid, so his father could continue his work as an accountant for a local Irish gang. When Liam was sixteen, a gang murdered his parents and young sisters while he was out on a job. He grabbed his guns and went on a rampage. Nothing in this world is more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose, and that night, the rival gang had taken everything from him. After the massacre, Rian’s uncle packed him up and sent him back to Ireland to keep him out of jail and out of the hands of gangs seeking revenge.
For another ten years, he earned his name as the Butcher, working for Rian’s family in Ireland. When he took a job taking out a corrupt Irish politician on the national stage, he got caught. Liam’s knowledge was too valuable to languish in a prison, where he might turn on his masters in exchange for future freedoms. He negotiated a return to the States, to Rian, in exchange for his life.