“He won’t regret anything,” Spocatti said. “Do you seriously believe I don’t know who your contact is at the NYPD? Probably the same as mine. If it isn’t, I can find out in ten minutes. Sorry it has to be this way, Carmen, but business is business. Katzev here has been generous. Looks like I’ll be getting that villa in Capri sooner than I thought.”
She was about to speak again, but this time he took his gun and whacked it so hard against the back of her head, the blow sent her to the gray edges of unconsciousness. She doubled over in pain. She felt faint and dizzy. The floor started to spin. Her knees buckled and she began to fall.
Spocatti stopped it from happening. He put his arm around her waist and lifted her up, holding her still until she was aware of one of the garage doors opening, men leaving, the door closing shut with a clatter and a bang, the sound of her own breathing, the world coming back into focus. She blinked hard. Her mind was a haze of fog and confusion. How had it come to this?
What was more painful to her is that she wouldn’t have her revenge. She was being cheated out of taking out Katzev for what he’d done to Alex and to Chloe. The idea of failing as spectacularly as she had was like death itself. She’d let both down. She always knew she would die because of her work, but she never thought it would be at the hands of one of the few people she considered a friend.
Her head pounded. A wave of dizziness overcame her and she felt as if she was going to be sick. Her knees went again. Spocatti hoisted her up with a brutal jerk and she struggled to focus. Had to focus. Did she have a concussion? What a fool she’d been. How naive she’d been. Her thoughts turned to Chloe, who had listened to all this and who now knew things about her that she never should have known. Carmen knew they were going to kill her, but whatever part of her that believed she could still save Chloe came to the forefront. If she played her hand right, perhaps she could save Chloe, wherever she was.
“Iver,” she said.
“What, Carmen?”
He was off to her right. She could hear him start to walk toward her. And then he stopped.
“Iver. Listen to me.”
“You have her fully restrained?” he asked Spocatti.
“She’s not going anywhere. Except maybe to hell in five minutes.”
“What do you want, Carmen?”
“I want to see you before I die. I’ve never laid eyes you. I want to see what a monster looks like.”
“You see one everyday, Carmen. You see yourself. I’ll never give you the pleasure of seeing me.”
“The pleasure? Please. You don’t have the balls to look me in the eye, Iver. It’s that pussy Scot you have in you. If you were a real Russian, you’d come over here and probably slap me across the face. Or kill me yourself. But you don’t have that big set of Russian balls you think you have, do you? From what I’ve heard, you actually have pebbles down there. And a little cock. It’s why you hire people like me and Spocatti to do your dirty work. You’ve got a small one. I’ve heard all about it. I was told it was like a berry resting in a nest.”
At the far end of the warehouse, the remaining guard stifled a laugh. It wasn’t loud, but if she heard it, they all heard it and she could only imagine the fallout that person would endure because of it.
“Who said that?” Katzev said.
“I’ll never give you the pleasure of knowing, Iver.”
She heard him start to walk toward her. He was moving fast, determined to save face in front of his guard, who likely would mention this moment to the others. She knew he was carrying. She knew this was it for her. Loudly, to the room, she said, “Chloe, I’m sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. Please forgive me.”
Spocatti tightened his grip on her waist. He was strong and held her arms firmly at her sides. She struggled against him, tried to get to her phone to hit a button that would alert Liam to take out Katzev’s family, but it was no use. She reached back to kick Spocatti, but he side-stepped her. “You can go to hell, Vincent.”
“I’ll let you check it out for me, first.”
And then Iver Kester, whom she’d known for years only as the faceless, mysterious Katzev, stood in front of her. He was somewhere in his late forties, not yet fifty, which surprised her because in her mind’s eye, she always expected him to be older than that, probably due to the power and money he had amassed.
His hair was dark and cut stylishly short. His eyes were blue, his complexion pale. He was fit. Probably just under six feet. He wore a black suit with a red tie and, if she was to be fair to him, she understood why Babe McAdoo was physically drawn to him all those years ago. In his youth, Iver Kester must have been something to behold.
“Iver,” she said. “So, here you are. The last thing I’ll see. What a vision you are.”
He pulled back his hand and slapped her hard across the face. The force was so great and the slap so loud that Carmen rocked back against Spocatti, who held her firm. She used the distraction of the violence to press down and to the left on her right shoe, which silently released a blade that was two-inches long. The blade was tainted with tetrodotoxin, the poison of the pufferfish, which essentially was a sodium channel blocker that paralyzed its victim’s muscles while they remained fully conscious as they went through the death throes. With the poison in their system, the victim would quickly be rendered unable to breathe. Death from asphyxiation would ensue within twelve seconds.
She lifted her eyes to Katzev.
“You’re going to kill me now. We both know that, so understand that what I’m going to tell you isn’t a lie because there’s no reason for me to lie. I’m finished. I’m off to check out hell for both of you and the rest of the syndicate. But here’s what you need to know, Iver. Alex never betrayed you. Whatever you thought he knew about you or the syndicate died with him—if he knew anything at all. And I doubt that he did because he would have told me. The tragedy of his death comes down to why he really died—your own paranoia.”
“There was a breach—” Katzev began.
“I don’t give a damn what you thought there was. Alex knew nothing and you killed him. That’s what matters to me. I came back to New York to have my revenge. And now look at me. Held back by a man I thought was my friend. Beaten. Facing death.” She paused for a millisecond. “And still having my revenge.”
In a flash, she kicked Iver Kester in the leg, buried the knife in the side of his calf, where the meat was, and left it there so the poison could leach into him.
Stunned by the act, Kester fell to the ground, his eyes already wide open and freezing into place as he stared up at her, struggling for breath, while she pulled out the blade.
Spocatti was swift. He released Carmen, swung his arm around and shot the guard Kester left behind before he had time to process what was happening.
Carmen got down on one knee and put her mouth next to Kester’s ear while his face started to turn pale blue from lack of oxygen. “You’re dying, Iver,” she whispered to him. “Soon, you’ll leave your body and face Alex. I wonder what kind of meeting that will be?” She cocked her head at him while his eyes remained transfixed on hers. They were filled with tears. The beauty of the poison is that he could see her and hear everything she said.
She spit in his face. “I wonder if that meeting will be as pleasant as what’s happening to you now?”
He started to make an odd gurgling noise. His tongue began to swell. She knew she had only seconds to act before she lost her chance. She reached into her pocket, removed her cell phone, and recorded the last few moments of Iver Kester’s miserable life before it left him in one clotted, rattling last breath.
She clicked off her phone and lowered her head to her raised knee. She was exhausted and in pain. She breathed deeply and, looking down at Kester, whose face now was purple and without life, she realized how thankful she was that she could still breathe.
“What do you plan to do with that?” Spocatti said.
She planned to send the video to the syndicate with a warn
ing that included all their information, but even though she knew now that Spocatti treated her roughly for show because he knew about her shoe, she didn’t want to talk to him. She felt he took things too far. She messaged Liam in Aberdeen and told him to stand down. Now, all she wanted to do was to find Chloe. That was her focus.
She walked away from Spocatti and into the center of the warehouse, where she started to call out Chloe’s name, telling her it was safe to come out, until she finally did. The girl had crawled beneath one of the cars. Since so many of the cars sat low to the ground, it was an effort for her to release herself from it, but because she was so slight, she managed to do so. When she was free, she stood shakily to her feet and Carmen noticed that her left shoulder was drooping. It was dislocated. She saw the pain on Chloe’s face as she ran toward Carmen with her gun still held in her hand.
“You’re hurt,” Carmen said.
Chloe slipped her right arm around Carmen’s waist, put the side of her face against her chest and they embraced. “It’s just my shoulder,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
“I’m sorry,” Carmen said. She held her face in her hands, saw the bruises and the split lip, and felt sickened by it. She looked down at Chloe’s gun and took it away from her. “What did they do to you?”
“They hit me, but I can take it. It’s not as if it hasn’t happened before. I also killed a man, but he deserved it.” She paused and looked Carmen in the eye. “They said you’re an assassin. Is that true?”
Carmen wasn’t sure how to proceed. For years, she had tried to be a positive influence on Chloe’s life. But what was she to her now? An assassin. A murderer. She never wanted her to know that this life existed anywhere but in the movies, but now Chloe knew better. She had blood on her own hands. She may have acted in self-defense, but tonight she nevertheless killed a man. Carmen knew that moment would be with her for the rest of her life.
“This happened to you because of me,” she said. “We’ll talk later about who I am. There are things about me that you need to know, but they can wait. Right now, we need to get out of here. I can fix your shoulder myself, but it will hurt.”
“So, you’re also a doctor?”
“I’m not a doctor, Chloe. But I can fix your shoulder.”
Spocatti was at the garage door, waiting for them.
“Ready?” he asked.
Carmen, angry with him, nodded.
He lifted the door and when he did, Jake, whose real name was Fred but who wisely went by Jake, was standing just outside the door, obviously distressed, hatred in his eyes, blood spattered on his face, his gun poised at Spocatti, which he quickly lifted to the man’s head.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Get back,” Jake said. “Drop your guns.”
Carmen dropped her gun and took a step back with Chloe, holding the girl behind her for protection while noting that the blade on her shoe was still extended. Her eyes flicked up to meet Jake’s. Was there still poison on the blade? Certainly there was some, but how much did she need to kill him?
Spocatti started to move, but in an unexpected flash, his gun tipped upward and the bullet he put through Jake’s jaw also nicked his brain and sent him into another world.
Carmen watched, unbelieving. It was so swift. Effortless. Jake fell to the floor and started to twitch and convulse as life left him. Vincent kicked his gun away and watched him for a moment before he took a step forward and leaned over him.
“Came to make a big scene, did you? Probably had it all planned, too. Sorry about that, buddy.”
Blood bubbled up and started to seep out of the man’s ears and nose. His brain was hemorrhaging. Carmen looked beyond him. They were exposed to the outside. Dozens of cars were behind them with their headlights on. If anyone saw them, they’d also see what was happening.
She quickly stepped forward, grabbed Jake by the back of his collar and pulled him in so she could shut the garage door. It closed with a bang. Finished, she looked up at Chloe and saw the horror on her face.
“I wonder what your speech would have been, Fred,” Spocatti said. “I’m sure you had one ready to deliver to me and to Carmen. Must suck that you can’t say anything. Or, for that matter, that you’ll never be saying anything again.”
Jake, or Fred, whose last name was unknown to them, struggled in his last moments of life to look at Spocatti. It was an unfocused look. There was no longer hatred in his eyes. Instead, there was only the fight to stay alive, which he was losing.
Spocatti moved toward the garage door. He looked at Carmen, who was retracting the blade in her shoe. “I didn’t come all the way from Capri for his bullshit,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He opened the door and, before closing it, he turned back to look at the man who had come to kill them. “I’ll make sure they put ‘Jake’ on your tombstone, Fred.” Then, to Carmen, he said, “I know I was rough. I apologize, but I had to make it look real if he was going to come around and face you. I knew you planned to use the shoe. You did well by Alex. And by Babe, whom I fear is dead given the blood on Jake’s face. I think both would be proud of you right now.”
Carmen reached into her pants pocket and removed her cell. Since she was alive, there was no need to wait. To her contact at the NYPD, she sent him everything she knew about the syndicate, which was enough to shut it down forever, and added a note that he should come here now if he wanted to receive the promotion both knew he wanted and deserved.
“We’ll take our own cab,” she said to Spocatti.
“Are we good?”
“We’re in limbo.”
“We should talk.”
“Maybe in a year. I don’t have time for you now.”
Without another word, she put her arm around Chloe’s waist, pulled her close to her and walked away, leaving him to close the garage door behind them and to escape into the night, just as he had done so many times before.
###
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Books by Christopher Smith
on Kindle
Fifth Avenue (Book One in the Five Avenue Series)
Running of the Bulls (Book Two in the Fifth Avenue Series)
From Manhattan with Love (Novella Three in the Fifth Avenue Series)
The Fifth Avenue Series Box Set
The Bullied Series Box Set
A Rush to Violence
From Manhattan with Revenge
From Manhattan With Revenge Boxed Set Page 24