A Dirty Business (Kings of New York #1)(69)



The feed switched to the room where we were in, showing no one in the vicinity as Jess guided Remmi through the doors that were now barricaded. No one put up a fight, even Remmi. It was all done with utmost professional efficiency.

“Rewind it.”

Ashton did, and I studied my sister’s face, noting how she just looked surprised. She wasn’t crying or wincing from pain. Just shocked.

That eased some of my concern.

Ashton had been rewatching with me. “She’s good. No one even knew they were in there until I showed up looking for her.”

“There’s feeds from the back of that room?”

“Back of that room goes nowhere . . .” He stopped talking as a strange look came over him. “But it leads to a basement that we’ve never utilized.”

“Let me guess. There’s no feeds down there either.”

He grunted. “I can’t believe we never thought of that.”

“But I can believe she did. Also, why the fuck do we have a basement that we don’t use?”

He shrugged. “It’s New York. It’s probably bricked up from the Prohibition days.”

We shared a look because why weren’t we using that again? “I highly doubt she’s interrogating or whatever she’s doing to her in the basement. If they’re down there, there’s an exit.”

“You’re talking like she’s taking your sister hostage. This is Jess Montell. We know her day job. She’s going to do whatever she needs to do, and then she’ll cut her losses. She won’t prolong this.”

Which alarmed me even more. I looked around, seeing an exit door. “Come on.”

“Where are you going?”

“Have your guys blow that door down.” I had my phone out, sending off a text to tell Demetri and Pajn to come in and block the other set of doors so no staff could get in. This was the definition of where we didn’t want our Mafia business to cross over into our non-Mafia business. Any staff saw anything, and that would happen. I wasn’t including Anthony because he took off when we showed up. He knew the deal.

As soon as that text was sent and it buzzed back that they had gotten it, I was through the exit door.

Ashton was right behind me, stepping out into the side alley where some of the staff kept their vehicles, those who did drive to work.

“What are we doing?”

I was looking around. “I don’t know, but I can’t stay in there. I can’t do nothing.”

Ashton grunted, moving to walk beside me as we went to the back of the building. “You’re looking for an entrance to our own basement, the one we didn’t know we had.”

“Exactly.” Though I hadn’t formulated it into an actual thought, but yes. That’s what I was doing. Or what we were doing.

The back of our building ended with the side exit door where we’d stepped out, but there was another parking area in the rear. The farthest door leading here was one that most of the staff took, from the main hallway. I had waited here on the night I’d given Jess a ride home. She’d used this door, but there had to be another entrance. Why go into that room?

“Hey.” Ashton had rounded to the other side of our alley, on the complete opposite side of our building. He stood just above a set of small storm doors. They looked like they were leading into the other building, not ours. He indicated them. “I’ve looked at all the blueprints for our neighbors, and these weren’t on them. I just never looked hard enough.”

I swore. “You’re honestly suggesting we should try and open them and go down into a potential basement that we have no idea actually leads to Katya?”

His head went back, and he started to lift his arms. “Well, when you put it like that—”

“We’re doing it.”

I said that at the same time he finished with, “—hell yes.”

We shared a grin, but then reality hit me. “What the fuck are we doing?”

He jumped down, bracing on either side of the doors, and flashed me a grin, his entire face lit up way too much for what we were about to do. “We’re exploring. Call us the New York Goonies.” He bent down, took hold of one of the doors, and hoisted it up.

It wouldn’t go, but there was a little opening.

I dropped down, braced myself, and grabbed the other door. Together, we lifted them, seeing they both had to open at the same time.

After that, total and creepy darkness.

“I can literally hear the rats scampering.”

“Let’s just hope there’s no New York alligators we don’t know about.”

“You know people probably have snakes as pets, snakes that got away through their toilets.”

I suppressed a shudder. “You could be a serial killer. You’re that kind of sick and disturbing.”

He barked out a laugh but pulled out a flashlight and handed it over to me. “Here.”

“You just keep these on you? For days when you might have to explore a creepy basement?”

Another flash of a grin as he pulled out a second flashlight and put it in his mouth, then reached for something else. It was his gun, and he switched his hands, positioning the flashlight over the gun so he was holding both together. He dropped his voice. “I have flashlights on me because you never know what the hell we have to do for our families. Also, you lead.”

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