Leverage (30 page)

Two of Greg’s men hauled me out of the warehouse and back into his Escalade where I was shoved into the middle row seat between them. A third man jumped into the driver’s seat just before my guards forced a foul-smelling hood over my head. I struggled against them and received an elbow to the chest for my efforts, and from that moment on, I kept my good arm hugged tight around me and winced with every pothole.

I had no idea what was in store for me. It was hard to believe Greg would actually set me free. Surely this must be some kind of trick, and his men were undoubtedly taking me to some stinking landfill where they’d sink a blade into my heart then watch me bleed to death as they stood around smoking cigarettes and chatting in their fucking foreign language.

If that was their plan, I prayed they’d choose a gun instead and mercifully shoot me at the base of my skull before they plowed me under tons of rotting trash. Every scenario imaginable flashed through my mind, and each new mile brought me to a different end. Maybe they’d strangle me with a thin piano wire, or take turns beating and kicking me until I was an unrecognizable mass among the refuse at their feet. Or maybe they planned on chaining me up and throwing me into Puget Sound. I even visualized becoming a permanent part of some new building. My chest pounded harder and faster with each new image, until I thought I might actually die of a heart attack before they had a chance to do the deed themselves.

What I didn’t expect was to be pushed from the SUV a mere block from Tyler’s Seattle office near South Lake Union. With the hood ripped from my face, there was nothing to keep the gravel in the gutter from grinding into my already sliced-up cheek as I rolled to a stop against the concrete curb. My cast was cracked down its length, and it felt like even my bruises had bruises. Every part of me screamed in pain. No way could I take much more abuse. I shook my head and looked up as the fleeing SUV turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

Standing with more pain than I’ve ever felt before, I brushed the filth from my clothing and hair, then, with a deep breath, turned toward the activity disturbing the quiet morning at Tyler’s building up ahead. There’d been a massive turnout following Greg’s slaughter in the parking lot. I wasn’t looking forward to confronting the FBI. I had no doubt I’d be their prisoner every bit as much as I’d been Greg’s. They would think the worst of me before I had the chance to explain what Greg had instructed me to. But this was my part in whatever sick production Greg was putting on. If I ever wanted to see my mother and Katy again, to witness the birth of my child, then I had to play along. But, though I hadn’t quite worked it all out yet, I had my own scene to add to this drama, and hopefully, it would make a difference.

So, I made my way up Fairview Avenue, right into the sightline of Ty’s FBI buddy, Maks Sidorov. He shouted for his men to seize me, and they did, four of them at once, forcing me, face first, down onto the asphalt. I didn’t even bother to struggle. My chest hurt enough as it was. So I relaxed as two knees pressed into my flesh, one at my back and the other in my thigh, while my hands were cuffed behind me, cast and all. They yanked on my restraints, using them as leverage to pull me to my feet. I barked when my bone popped in protest.

“Easy now,” Maks reminded his men, too late to do any good. Ordering them away, he removed the cuffs then grabbed my elbow and spun me around to face him. “Where the hell is Karras?” he seethed. “And what the fuck happened here?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. I didn’t know what they knew or what Greg had done to “clean” it up, as he’d put it. So I decided to play dumb and let Sidorov divulge to me exactly what was going on.

“What d’you mean? What’re you talking about?”

Maks stared at me like he couldn’t believe how stupid I was. He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “What happened to my men? The ones guarding your ass? When they didn’t answer their phones, we came down here to find them stumbling around like idiots. Said they’d been tased, but they don’t remember anything. So what the fuck happened, and where in God’s name is Karras?”

Tased? Shit, could that be true? Had Greg simply tased them? It was possible. I never saw any blood, just the agents, unconscious and motionless on the ground. I’d just assumed, with Greg’s propensity for violence, that they’d been slaughtered. The relief I felt at hearing they were still alive swept over me like a warm breeze, and my chin fell to my chest as I breathed a loud sigh of relief. But if Maks was surprised at my reaction, he didn’t let on.

I looked up and scanned the parking lot, and there they were, O’Day and Ford, sitting on the rear bumper of an ambulance, its doors open wide and the medics rearranging their supplies.

“Are they gonna be okay?” I asked Maks, my eyes pinned to the agents.

“Should be. O’Day hit his head and Ford broke his arm. They both have barb marks on their necks. I’d like to know exactly what happened here. And don’t you dare bullshit me, son. I’ll know it if you lie.”

I turned to face him and couldn’t hide my nerves or the fact I knew he could see that. There was little doubt he could tell if I was lying, but what choice did I have? And did I really want to hide that from him anyway? I was only required to play along to Greg’s orchestration. It was out of my control whether the FBI cooperated or not.

I dropped my gaze to the pavement at my feet. “It was Ty. He tased your men.”

I could practically hear Sidorov’s teeth grinding in response, but after simply pacing his anger off, he came back and crossed his arms over his chest with another tired sigh.

“Why?” he asked. “What happened?”

“Well, we were in his office, and he was gathering the stuff he came for in the safe. Then he went online to do some banking or some shit like that, transfer money or whatever. That’s when he saw the email from my mom. So he opened it, read it. Then he got all pissed, started throwing shit all over the place. I asked him what happened, what my mom had said, and he told me that she hadn’t been taken by anyone, that she’d left on her own and didn’t want him to come after her. When he wouldn’t discuss it any further, I went and read the email. She said she knew about the threat and Greg, and she wasn’t gonna sit around and wait for them to grab her again, that she was tired of paying for Tyler’s mistakes, whatever the fuck that means. And I asked him, too, but he wouldn’t say shit. Just stood there, looking like he was ready to explode.”

I paused while Maks swore under his breath and scraped a hand down his face. He shook his head and said, “And then?”

I shrugged. “And then he did. He exploded. Fucking flipped out. Said he was gonna go after her, but he needed to lose those clowns…I mean…your agents. He said no way you’d let him go. So he got his taser from the safe, went outside, and surprised your guys.”

Maks held up his hand. “Why were they outside and not in there with you?”

Another shrug. “Ty wanted privacy, told them they could wait in the lobby or out front. So they did. Agent Sidorov, I tried to stop him, but, as you can see,” I said, nodding at O’Day and Ford, “he wasn’t about to be stopped.” Then I pointed to the newest injuries on my own fucked-up face. “Ty knocked me down. Then he went outside for a few minutes, came back in, got his shit, then told me to go get in his work truck out front, which I did. But we argued the whole time he was driving around, so he kicked me out. I hitched a ride back here to make sure your guys were okay.”

Maks stared at me, gauging me, like he wasn’t quite sure what to believe.

I held up my hands. “It’s the truth, I swear. I have nothing to gain by lying to you.”

Maks looked out over his field of men as he mulled over my words. “Any idea where Ty was going?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, no idea at all. I asked, but he wouldn’t answer.”

Maks nodded, deep in thought as he stared out into space.

“Maks, all this shit that’s gone down, it’s something between Ty and Greg. What do you know about it and how is my mother involved.”

He turned back to me. “I can’t tell you that. It’s work product—confidential.”

“That’s fucking bullshit! This is my family we’re talking about. And my neck is on the line every bit as much as Ty’s. I have the right to know what the hell is going on.”

“And I have the right to know what really happened with my men. So I’ll make you a deal. You tell me what really happened with Ty, and I’ll tell you what I know about how he and your mom met, but you should know up front, you’re not going to like it.”

I didn’t think anything I heard from Maks could be any worse than what I’d already learned from Greg, so I agreed.

Maks laid his arm across my shoulder, turned me toward his car, and said, “Okay then. Let’s go for a drive.”

The conference room grew quiet after Conner was dragged away. Two of Greg’s men remained, one standing guard at the door and the other against the wall opposite me. He ordered my ass back into my chair and my eyes on Greg’s file. I did as ordered, though it was impossible to concentrate on the material, not when I heard Greg’s voice out in the hall. It was a one-sided conversation, brief and to the point, and there was no doubt I was meant to overhear every word. He used Hannah’s name multiple times, his words passive, but threatening, and designed to encourage complete cooperation, which it sounded like he was successful in attaining. He was using our daughter to gain it.

I closed my eyes. It took every ounce of self-control to remain planted in that chair when all I really wanted to do was pound Greg’s face into a bloody pulp. I would die trying if I thought it would do any good. But it wouldn’t. If I wanted to save my family, I’d have to play along for now, and apparently, it was time to perform.

Greg popped his head in the open door and snapped his fingers at his men. “Bring him to the rig,” he ordered then disappeared back where he came from.

Though I assured them their assistance was unnecessary, Greg’s praetorians proceeded to forcibly pull me from my seat and escort me, none too nicely, in Greg’s wake down the dark hall and back into the warehouse. We passed by the arcade games and into another warehouse, about the same size, but empty, save for two red, full-sized shipping containers sitting directly on the dusty concrete floor.

Greg raised his arm toward one of the rigs. “Consider this your classroom and today your first lesson, or rather an assessment test, to be more precise, to gauge your willingness to take orders without question.”

“I don’t need to be tested,” I replied. “Just show me how to use the damn rifle.”

“Not so fast. There’s a prerequisite or two before you’re allowed to take that particular class.” He unlatched the container’s double doors and threw them wide. They clanged back against the metal sides with a great echo reverberating throughout the space. The overhead light in the warehouse didn’t penetrate the inky darkness of the container. Greg disappeared into the murky gloom and switched on a hanging utility lamp connected to a car battery.

It cast an eerie dome of light onto a man strung up directly beneath it, his flesh stripped bare of clothing, yet heavily tattooed from his shoulders to his feet. His hands were tied together with heavy rope at the wrist then hooked above his head to a chain suspended from the top of the container. His feet, also bound, hovered six inches above the dirty metal floor, and a thick canvas bag covered his head and slouched atop his shoulders. Beneath it, he moaned.

Though firmly held in place by Greg’s goons on either side of me, I recoiled at the sight and sound of the man, cringing at his blood splattered and running down the naked tattooed flesh of his torso.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked, pulling back against my restraints.

“This,” Greg said, “is your practice test.” He walked around the man and pushed him weakly so his body swung back and forth like a pendulum. The man groaned in agony. Greg grinned like he was enjoying the show. While I watched in horror, he waited until the man’s swinging body slowed to a small arc. Then Greg pulled out his handgun and pressed the barrel to the man’s head. The man squirmed and whimpered.

I tried to surge forward, regardless of the men who held me in place. “
Stop!
” I screamed. “What are you doing? You can’t kill that man!”

Greg cocked his head to the side and stared at his tortured prisoner, as if seriously contemplating my order. “You’re right,” he replied and snatched the gun away. “I can’t.” Then he walked over to me, the gun turned in his hand, holding it by the barrel. With a malevolent smile, he held it out with the grip in my face. “You will,” he said.

Stunned, I shook my head. “No fucking way!”

“Hmm, I was afraid you might say that,” he replied then looked to my captor on the right. “You owe me ten bucks, Val.” Greg laughed as he turned and took a couple steps away. “But maybe I’m not playing fair. Perhaps I should explain exactly who this man is.”

Val glanced at his teammate on my left and nodded. Greg returned to the hanging man and, standing on his toes, ripped the filthy shroud from his head. The poor bloke’s face was a bloody mess, his eyes swollen, but he looked familiar somehow, though I couldn’t immediately place him. Then I realized I’d only seen a few men in my lifetime so heavily inked.

I peered closer. The man looked to be about fifty or so, but still well-muscled. One tattoo was of a dagger drawn across his shoulders as if piercing through his neck. On his upper chest just below each shoulder, and also on each knee, was an eight-pointed star, four total. Across the rest of his torso was a large, intricately drawn amalgamation of a Russian cathedral with three onion-shaped cupolas, and below it, the head of a roaring tiger beside the iconic Madonna and Child. It was the strangest coupling of imagery I’d every seen, and yet, I remembered seeing it, or something like it, once before. I pulled back, though with Greg’s dogs at each arm, I couldn’t move more than an inch.

“Oh, come on,” Greg said to his henchmen. “Let the poor sod go.” Then, as his men did as he bid, Greg, with his eyes locked on mine, held out the gun to me once more. “Don’t you want to take down the man who killed your brother?”

With bile rising in my throat, I tore my eyes from Greg’s and stared at the man swinging from the chain. Visions of Nick’s head slamming into the concrete floor of Dmitri’s fight cages flashed through my mind, then the loud pop of bone breaking when his opponent twisted his ankle until it snapped.

Running my fingers through my hair, I dropped my gaze to the floor and backed away from both the hanging man and Greg with his gun.

“No,” I hissed and shook my head. “No, I…I won’t.”

Greg’s brow shot up. “You won’t?” he asked, seemingly shocked at my reluctance. “Perhaps I need to refresh your memory, after all, this is the man who threw blow after merciless blow at your baby brother’s handsome face, head-butted him in the chest as if he were an enraged bull, then punted Nick’s head like a bloody American football.

“Can you not see him? Nick’s beaten body slumped lifelessly in a puddle of his own blood, his sightless eyes staring into space? I remember it all quite well myself, the way you so tenderly scooped his poor broken body into your arms, wiped the blood from his battered face, clutched him tightly to your chest as you rocked back and forth, wailing your utter despair as the heartless crowd above watched in amused fascination.”

Each memory, expertly recalled by Greg, careened into me, and with each one, a newly enflamed rage blazed to fiery life, filling me with an inferno of anger so intense, I thought I would explode. Without even thinking, I accepted the gun Greg was offering me, barely aware that each of his bodyguards had drawn their own firearms and were pointing them directly at me. But I didn’t care. I focused only on the man swinging by his wrists as I rushed toward him.

I stopped two feet away and raised the gun to the man’s forehead. My hand shook like I had Parkinson’s, and with it, the gun, making Greg’s guard, with their weapons at the ready, even more jumpy. I suddenly realized I was crying. Tears trailed unheeded down my face as those old feelings of revenge swelled through me, flooding every muscle, every cell, pricking every last nerve with a surge of electricity so acute, I felt like a red neon sign, overcharged and blazing bright.

I wanted to kill him. I
needed
to kill him. I wanted his body to take the place of Nick’s in my memory. I wanted his blood to collect in a pool so deep, I could run my fingers through it and wash away the pain, the rage, and all the bitter helplessness I felt at having failed my brother. The need pounded through my veins like thunder across the sky, creating a cacophony of noise that filled my head. I clutched at my hair with my free hand while I kept the gun, trembling in the other, trained on Nick’s executioner. But the turbulence in my skull amplified, and I smashed the gun into my own head to quell it. It brought a flash of light and sting of pain that sparked a flood of new images.

Hannah… The day we were reunited up on the hilly trail, our intimate wedding in the chapel above Puget Sound, the day she told me she was pregnant with Nicole...

Confused, I took a step closer to the man and raised the gun once more, mere inches from his face. My finger tightened about the trigger, and I blinked to clear my vision. What I saw instead was the video Greg had shown me of Hannah giving birth. I focused on that, imagining her holding Nicole in her arms, running her hand over our child’s head, counting her fingers and toes, and dipping her head and placing feathery kisses along Nicole’s tiny brow.

I closed my eyes and, with a weary sigh, let my arm drop. The gun felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. But Greg’s voice, shrill and angry, pierced the newfound calm in my head.

“Shoot him!” he railed. “Kill that bloody son of a bitch!”

I opened my eyes and saw Greg storming toward me with his fist in the air.

“Shoot that motherfucker!” he ordered as he came to a stop next to me.

I shook my head. “I can’t. I…I won’t.”

Greg stuck his beet-red face right up into mine. “Oh, but you will,” he seethed. “That man is the reason you are here, why you are mixed up with all of this. Do you think that night he killed Nick was the first time he attempted to do so?” he asked, spit flying from his mouth. “That old man worked for my father for over twenty years, back when your father betrayed the company and put my uncle away in prison.
He
discovered that Mikhail’s missing accountant was residing in Melbourne.
He
tracked you boys up to San Francisco, and when they found out your parents were coming to visit,
he
was commissioned to take your father out.
He
was responsible for Nick’s accident.
He
killed your parents and sister.”

Agitated, Greg walked in quick circles, his head down and his lips twitching as if he were talking to himself. Then he chuckled, like he’d just recalled something funny.

“He wasn’t supposed to touch your mother, you know. My father was
very
upset that he did. He worked for years to pay that debt off, and Nick’s demise was to be the final installment, paid in full. Do you understand?” he asked, finally looking up at me. “This man, he’s responsible for wiping out your entire family. So you fucking kill him, right now.”

I stared at Greg, my mind jumbled with all the details he’d just laid bare. He smiled and nodded, but I broke away, my gaze spinning until I finally collapsed to my knees on the floor. It was too much. I’d finally reached that point. Complete and total overload. My whole body began to shake again with rage. I shoved the back of my hand against my mouth as I dry-heaved with each and every memory—disconnecting my little sister from life support, burying her with my parents, and Nick, his injuries and recovery, his addiction and the robbery, everything that had led to his involvement with the Russians. He’d forfeited his freedom to protect me, gave his very life, the last of my family to fall to the animal hanging from a chain before me.

I gripped the gun tightly at my side, stood, and turned my head toward the man. The thought of everything he’d done forced my lip into a sneer. Then I charged. I bashed the gun twice into the man’s face. I felt his bone crush as the man’s blood sprayed onto my face and hands. He shrieked an animalistic cry that softened into a desperate moan.

The sound of his pain sickened me, but I wanted to do it again, to beat him until he disintegrated beneath me. I wanted to cut him down and boot him in the head as he’d done to Nick, to feel his neck twist then break. I wanted to flay him until the tattoos along every inch of his flesh were unrecognizable. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him in agony.

I wanted him dead.

But I could not do it. I could not shoot him.

I didn’t realize I’d been screaming with every angry thought, until I pulled back, breathless, and realized how quiet it had become. I gazed at the man, at what I had done to him with just two blows. The only noise he made now was the coughing and spitting of blood. He could only breathe through his mouth.

Thoroughly pleased, Greg clapped his hands. “Well done, my good man, well done. Now…finish the fucking job and shoot him.”

Still barely able to take a normal breath myself, I raised my hands and studied them, turning them over and examining each blood-covered side. Then I touched them to my face and smeared tracks through the blood there, as well. I listened for the voice in my head, the one that told me what was right and wrong, good and bad. It was silent now, and I felt abandoned, utterly and completely empty. A void.

How could I feel nothing?

I dropped the gun to the floor, disgusted that I felt so barren.

Greg stood beside me, his face crestfallen. “You disappoint me, Karras. You’re not half the man your brother was.” He shook his head. “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, though, of course, I was afraid it might, which is why I made contingency plans, just in case.” He sighed and his shoulders fell. “What a shame it has to come to this.” He nodded to one of his men who immediately turned and left. “I tried to warn you of the repercussions of inaction and ill-made decisions. I truly am sorry.”

Now, I felt something. It wrapped around me and clung to my skin. Fear. Piercing and incontrovertible, it ran up my spine as a dark, cold chill, and every single hair on my body stood on end. Greg’s man returned with his iPad, and my heart tripped to a near stop in my chest. The guard held it out for Greg, who swiped his finger across the black screen, once again pulling up a live feed. Greg held out the device and pushed it up into my face. Through the blood, sweat, and tears, I couldn’t quite yet make out what I was seeing, but I could hear a woman crying, pleading in muted sobs.

Hannah.

I blinked and drew my arm across my eyes. I could see a woman, dressed as Hannah was earlier, but in a different room now, a dark one with cinderblock walls and a concrete floor with a drain in the middle and a small pendant light overhead. She sat in a chair, her wrists tied to the arms and her ankles to the legs, and a wet towel was wrapped around her head, obscuring her hair and face.