Torrid (Sordid 2)

Great. He was jittery from too much sugar and caffeine, which meant he’d find some other way to annoy me in thirty seconds.

I couldn’t stand unnecessary noise. Fingers drumming on a table made me clench my jaw until it ached. A pen clicking incessantly filled me with rage. And when Alek opened his dumb fucking mouth to say some dumb fucking thing, everything went red.

“How much further?” I raised my voice to John, my driver.

He glanced at the navigation system. “Five minutes.”

Rain pelted the car, but otherwise the interior was quiet. The Lexus was a nice ride. Maybe I’d tell the dealership not to put it on the website for a few weeks. I was getting tired of the Porsche I’d loaned out to myself, and I needed to move it soon. Smart people didn’t buy sports cars during the winter in Chicago, and smart people usually had money.

It was dark on the street. Either there weren’t any streetlights, or they’d been disabled. Either way suited me. I didn’t want anyone looking too closely at what was about to go down. I shouldn’t even be here. This was beneath me, but my son of a bitch uncle had ‘asked’ me to oversee the Russian meet and greets, so I had no choice.

When Goran Markovic gave an order, it got followed.

I was going to change that someday, but for now I obeyed. I played my part.

John pulled up to a curb, put the car in park, and glanced out the passenger window. “You want me to leave it running?”

“No,” I said, staring at the warehouse. I had a feeling this was going to take a while.

Alek got out on the sidewalk and looked up at the sky as if surprised it was raining on him. “Vasilije, you want me to get an umbrella?”

Even the way he said my name was irritating. He said it Vah-seal-eh, putting weird emphasis on the middle syllable, when everyone else said Vah-sill-eh. Because it was my fucking name.

I ignored him and got out of the car. It wasn’t a downpour, but huge drops fell like they were being hurled at us from the moonless night sky. The warehouse had one yellowy light perched over the door, which barely lit the keypad beside the handle.

While Alek banged his fist on the door, I scanned the surroundings. No lights on the street, and no cameras, either. We were on the south side of the city, but it looked deserted and miles from any kind of life. Almost something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. I’d bet my left nut most of the warehouse space on this block hadn’t been leased in the last decade.

The door swung open and Filip, my uncle’s head enforcer, stuck his head out.

“We’re getting rained on,” Alek whined.

Filip wiped the raindrops from his bald head, shoved his gun in the front of his pants, and pushed the door open further, moving out of the way. “You got here fast. Wasn’t expecting you for another ten minutes.”

I ducked out of the rain and stepped into a shitshow.

The first body was only a few feet inside. The guy was face-down with half his head splattered on the wall. “This one,” Filip flicked a finger at the body, “tried to run.” He spoke in Serbian. “Little Russian pussy.”

Filip’s men chuckled and murmured in agreement. There were at least seven of them I could see, and the other two were probably off herding the women. Including himself, Filip always ran a ten-man crew. He’d been working for my uncle for a long time and was sharp as a knife. I respected him, but had to be careful. Every action or phrase was reported back to Goran.

My uncle didn’t trust anyone, including his own family.

Of course, there were a lot fewer of us these days. His son was four years into a twenty-year sentence at Wabash Valley Correctional. My father was dead, and my brother fled town. My aunt’s husband wasn’t blood, and he didn’t have the stomach or the head for the business, anyway. I was a twenty-four-year-old college dropout and general fuck-up, and next in line, much to my uncle’s displeasure.

If Goran had his way, he’d live forever as the reigning king of the Markovic empire.

Yeah, well, fuck that.

The only light on in the cavernous space was by the door, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the low visibility. There were two more dead Russians, laying in heaps on the bare concrete floor. Cleanup should be easy. It looked like tonight was the first time this place had seen any action in weeks. Brown beams stretched up as columns, supporting the roof.

“Did we know any of them?” I asked.

“No.” Filip watched me carefully as I looked down at the body by my feet. “I don’t recognize them.”