Thief (Boston Underworld #5)(73)

“You know what you have to do,” Manuel tells me. “I can’t pay the debt. The feds took everything, so you have to take it from her. I just beg of you, be merciful.”

I smile at him through gritted teeth. “As merciful as you were to my mother? You remember her, don’t you?”

He blinks, unsettled, and I can see the gears turning in his mind. He is trying piece together which one she was, but I’m content to remind him.

“Irina Lemeza.”

The color drains from his face, and his palm comes to rest on the glass, sticky and desperate. “No.”

“Yes, Manuel.” I lean toward him. “You know the Russians are fond of an eye for an eye. I know you worry about your daughter, but there’s no need. She won’t be the one to pay the debt. I think for once in your life, it’s time to do the honorable thing, don’t you?”





“Nikolai is here to see you,” Magda says.

Alexei is slumped against his desk, drunk again. And though I have spent the past four weeks helping him slaughter every man he deemed remotely responsible for his wife’s death, it has done nothing to ease his pain.

It has, however, come as a welcome distraction while I seek out Nakya.

“Send him away,” Alexei murmurs.

“Too late.” I step into his office so that he can see me. “I have something I believe you will want to see.”

His eyes move to the drive in my hand, and for the first time in weeks, there is a spark of life inside him. He takes my offering and rouses the computer from sleep, bringing up countless images of his wife on the wall-to-wall monitors.

Alexei glances at the images, haunted, and breaks down all over again. I take it upon myself to bring up the surveillance video from the club. The same video of the day he was humiliated in front of his Vory brothers. When it begins to play, he makes an effort to watch.

“I had Mischa look at it.” I bring the cursor to a time stamp on the screen and click on it. “It’s on a loop. Whoever it was knew what they were doing. They were fast, and they came prepared.”

“How long?” he asks.

“Thirty seconds maximum. You couldn’t have noticed it, Lyoshka. It was very well edited.”

He falls back into his office chair as reality settles over him. Someone wanted him to believe it was Talia who betrayed him, but in truth, it was one of his own Vory.

I take a seat across from his desk. “There is something else.”

“What is it?”

“Katya’s guard mentioned that she visited a security store a few months back. He didn’t know what she purchased but found the trip out of character for her.”

“Then we need to talk to her.” Alexei nearly stumbles over himself as he tries to stand.

I signal him to sit back down. “I already tried. She was found dead this morning, bratan. Hanging from a rafter in her ceiling.”

Alexei flops back into his seat and reaches for the bottle of cognac, only to realize that it’s empty.

“She wasn’t working alone,” I tell him. “Someone is cleaning up loose ends. Katya is not smart enough to set up that slideshow, and she was not in the building that day.”

My words settle over Alexei like a dark cloud, and it doesn’t take him long to draw the same conclusion I have. He sinks back, eyes darkening as he utters the name we have both come to hate.

“Sergei.”





“Niki.”

Gianni takes a seat on the park bench beside me, tapping out a message on his phone before he turns his attention to me. I grab another handful of oats from the plastic bag in my lap, carefully dividing it among the ducks as I throw it.

“It’s a beautiful day,” he remarks.

I look up at the clouds, clear and blue. The sun warms my face, and I think that it’s always a beautiful day in Florida. It’s a different kind of heat, though. Muggy and thick. It’s hard to adjust to, just like everything else about my new life.

“How are you doing?” Gianni asks. “Anything new to report?”

“I’m fine.” I shrug. “Nothing new to report. Every day is the same.”

And it is. I go to work, and I don’t talk to anyone over the age of eight. When I’m finished, I go straight back to my apartment and turn on the television or the radio just to avoid the numbing silence. My life in witness protection is not all that different than it was before. It’s still a prison, just a different kind.

“It’s an adjustment,” Gianni insists. “It takes time, but things will get better.”

“I thought it would be different.” I crumple the empty bag in my hand and toss it into the bin beside us.

“Everyone has an idea of what it will be like, but it’s important to follow the rules. They’re in place for a reason, and they keep you safe.”

“I’m not talking about the program,” I mutter. “I’m just talking about the world.”

Gianni takes a sip from his travel mug. Coffee black, just the way he always drinks it. I’ve come to know that about him. Recently, I’ve come to know a lot of things about him. For example, he chews with his mouth open. And he still wears a gold chain, even when he’s not pretending to be a gangster. But the most obvious thing I’ve learned is that he really just wants to be a hero.