If The Seas Catch Fire(3)

“Stop being a *.” Sergei aimed the weapon at his other knee. “Or I’ll make sure you can’t crawl, either.”

The man struggled to his feet, using the car bumper for support and whimpering whenever he moved his wounded leg. He started to climb into the trunk but couldn’t bend his knee.

“Fuck. I can’t…”

Sergei shoved him unceremoniously into the trunk, and despite their significant size difference, he knocked the sobbing Italian on top of his partner. Sergei didn’t even flinch when the guy’s head smacked against the trunk lid. By the time both men were completely inside the trunk, the wounded one was howling in pain, and from the smell, Sergei was pretty sure one or the other had pissed himself.

Whatever. Wasn’t Sergei’s fault they’d chosen this alley out of all the other options in this town. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from the trunk and put a piece over the screaming man’s mouth, but it didn’t muffle him all that much.

“Shut the f*ck up,” Sergei snarled. “Or your other kneecap is gone.”

The man shut up. Tears were streaming down his face, and he was hyperventilating now, but he was more or less quiet.

Sergei bound the first guy’s hands, and then put duct tape over his mouth too. Thank f*cking God—another minute of his bullshit, and Sergei would’ve shot them both then and there. Even now he was tempted just to rid the world of two more Mafia scumbags like the ones who’d murdered his family.

But not here. Not this close to the club.

He slammed the trunk and turned to the other thorn in his side—the guy they’d been roughing up. Leaving him here wasn’t an option. The cops were too jumpy to ignore a battered Italian, and they’d start prowling around in this part of town. A little too close to home for Sergei’s taste.

He didn’t care if the man lived or died as long as he didn’t do it here, so Sergei crouched beside the wounded man and quietly asked, “Can you walk?”

“Don’t know.”

“Let’s see if we can get you into the car.” Sergei offered him an arm, keeping his pistol firmly in his other hand in case the wise guy decided to try something funny, and helped him to his feet.

He didn’t try anything. The poor bastard probably had some busted ribs, maybe even some bleeding on the inside, judging by the way he doubled over and kept an arm around his middle. With Sergei’s help and a pained sound, he lay back across the backseat.

Sergei shut the car door and scanned the dark alley. As far as he could tell, no one was around. No one had seen a thing. He fully intended to keep it that way.

None of the men in the car were going anywhere without his help, so after he’d collected the weapons and kicked some gravel over the blood, obscuring it enough that it wouldn’t draw attention, he headed back inside. He took the chair away from the door and strolled into the club.

He found his boss by the bar, and flagged him down. “Hey, Paco. I need to step out for a bit. Take care of something.”

Paco raised his eyebrows. No doubt Jesse had told him about the shit going on in the alley. “You need a hand?”

“No, I’ve got this. Just need some time.”

Paco didn’t ask questions. People in Mafia-run towns usually didn’t—the less they knew about shady shit, the better.

With his boss’s blessing, Sergei left the club. In the car, he found a pair of leather gloves in the glove compartment and put them on so he didn’t leave any more fingerprints in or on the vehicle. Then he drove the goons’ car out of the alley and safely away from the row of clubs. He continued along the waterfront, past a deserted park and down to the marina, where he stopped.

As the engine idled, Sergei drummed the wheel and gazed in the rearview, debating how to handle the wise guy in the backseat and the two idiots in the trunk. If they hadn’t killed the guy, they were either inept, or they’d only intended to send a message. Pity for them they’d chosen the wrong post office for that message.

And one way or another, they were inept. They were also competition. More importantly, their ineptness could get them caught, and once the cops got their hands on anybody in this f*cked up underworld—especially with bodies washing up on the beach—everyone remotely attached to La Cosa Nostra were in danger, and that included independent contractors like Sergei. If these morons were stupid enough to rough someone up this brazenly with a police station six blocks away, then they were a liability to everyone.

They had to go.

Sergei got out of the car. He opened the trunk, and without any fanfare or hesitation, unloaded two bullets apiece into their foreheads. Then he slammed the lid again.

As he’d done in the alley, he smeared his footprints in the gravel. With a towel he’d found beside the two dead men, he wiped every surface to make sure he didn’t leave any fingerprints on the inside or outside of the car. There could be no trace of him here; though the rounds were nearly impossible to trace and even the .22 would be in the ocean before sunrise, he took no chances.

And now he was left with the beaten up guy in the backseat. In theory, he could’ve offed him and walked away. One less Mafioso to pollute this town.

But Sergei didn’t kill indiscriminately. Even when he was absolutely certain a man was Mafia—and thus fair game for a bullet—the fact remained that offing the wrong guy could mark him for death if anyone ever connected him. He was good at covering his tracks, but he refused to take unnecessary risks.