Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Brighton Beach
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Jade didn't pull her hand away from the underside of the counter. Even if the shells were rock salt, at three feet a twelve-gauge blast would still take half of Enzo Moretti’s collarbone off.
"I don't know any Viktor Volkov," Jade said, her voice cold and steady despite the thunderous hammering of her pulse against her ribs. "I got this tattoo in a parlor in Providence when I was nineteen after too much tequila. Take your change and get out of my diner."
Enzo didn't budge an inch. The rain drummed relentlessly against the plate-glass window behind him, casting wavering shadows across the harsh angles of his face.
"In 2008, Viktor Volkov’s older brother, Grigori, ran the Red Sparrow house in the Catskills," Enzo said conversationally, as if discussing the Red Sox score. "Twelve kids bought from debt-ridden families across the East Coast. Trained from age five in lock-picking, surveillance, blade work, and Russian Sambo—including the exact inverted wrist-lock and hip-throw you just used to put me on my back. You didn't learn that in a Providence bar, Anya."
Hearing that name spoken aloud after eighteen years felt like taking a hollow-point round to the center of her chest.
Anya.
Nobody in the world knew that name. When she had crawled out of the burning woods of Sullivan County at eight years old with her left ear bleeding where she had tried to slice the tattoo off with a paring knife, a retired state trooper had found her on the highway shoulder, gotten her placed under a sealed juvenile witness name—Jade Mercer—and hidden her in three different foster homes in Maine until she aged out at eighteen.
"How do you know about the Catskills house?" Jade whispered, her fingers finally tightening around the wooden grip of Mack’s shotgun beneath the counter.
"Because eighteen years ago, my father was the one who tipped off the FBI to raid Grigori Volkov’s compound the night after you set the barracks on fire," Enzo replied, his slate-gray eyes locking onto hers with sudden, razor-sharp intensity. "Grigori died in that fire. And for eighteen years, his younger brother Viktor thought Number Nine died in the basement ashes—until three days ago."
"What happened three days ago?"
"The retired state trooper who hid your juvenile file in Augusta—a man named Frank Miller—died of a stroke last week," Enzo said coldly. "When the county probate clerk digitized his private safe-deposit box on Monday, an old encrypted flash drive with your foster placement records hit the state server. Viktor Volkov’s hackers in Brooklyn flagged the keyword Sullivan County 2008 within four hours. By yesterday afternoon, Viktor put a two-million-dollar open contract on the dark web for a twenty-six-year-old woman named Jade Mercer living in South Boston."
The greasy air of the diner suddenly felt impossible to breathe.
Frank Miller was dead. The gruff old trooper who used to send her a fifty-dollar bill in an unsigned birthday card every November was gone—and the paper trail he had guarded with his life was now sitting on Viktor Volkov’s desk!
"Then why are you still standing here instead of collecting the two million yourself, Moretti?" Jade challenged, pulling the sawed-off shotgun out from under the counter and leveling the twin barrels squarely at his chest. "Or did you walk into this diner at three in the morning looking for me?"
A slow, dark smile curved Enzo’s mouth. He didn't even blink at the double barrels pointed six inches from his heart.
"I walked in here at three in the morning because my car blew a radiator hose two blocks from the docks and this was the only light on," Enzo said truthfully. "I had no idea what Jade Mercer looked like—until you broke my soldier’s wrist, put me on the linoleum, and showed me the mark behind your ear."
"And now that you know?"
"Viktor Volkov has been trying to push Russian fentanyl through my South Boston piers for six months," Enzo said, his voice dropping into a lethal register. "Yesterday I had two of his couriers sent back to Brighton Beach in a meat locker. If Viktor wants you badly enough to pay two million dollars cash, it means you know something from that house in 2008 that can bury him forever."
"I was eight years old!" Jade snapped. "All I knew was how not to starve and how to use a knife!"
"Liar," Enzo murmured softly, leaning an inch closer to the barrels of the shotgun. "Grigori Volkov didn't carve Roman numerals behind kids' ears just for show. And right now, those two white cargo vans that just pulled up across the street with their headlights off aren't delivering hamburger buns."
Jade’s eyes darted to the rain-streaked plate-glass window.
May you like
Across the deserted intersection, two unmarked white Ford Transit vans with New York plates had just glided to the curb in the dark. The side sliding doors rolled open silently, and eight men in black waterproof tactical jackets stepped out into the downpour carrying suppressed Kalashnikov rifles.
Viktor Volkov’s cleaners had arrived.
