by D B Steward
Anthony Moretti never had to sign his work that way either; he was a professional, not a psychopath. He never enjoyed the act of killing, but he was exceptional at it. He instilled in her his own gray sense of morality about life: there was no black and white in real life. Some people in the world needed to be killed. He also taught her that collateral damage was unacceptable and just plain sloppy, so endangering civilians was forbidden. That type of mindfulness and discretion had earned him the respect of his small community of hired triggermen. The powerful elite of the criminal underworld knew that if they wanted a professionally done job with minimal mess, Anthony Moretti was the one to call.
When her father died, she had stepped into his role with ease. Her laser-like focus, and her attention to detail and security made her highly sought after as a world-class assassin. All of her father’s old clients went to her now for the contracts they needed to be done and she continued to be as discriminating as her father had been about what jobs to accept and what jobs to reject. She could afford to be picky because she was the absolute best in the business right from the start, and people paid her high price happily because they knew she was without a doubt the best in the business.
By rights, she should have enjoyed a long and fruitful career and then been able to retire wealthy and financially secure. But then she got the Russian job. She had never worked for them before and was not interested in doing so. The rumors about their extreme brutality were well known and she did not want any part of them. But Don Salvador had asked her for the favor of taking the contract and she agreed only because he had asked her personally. He had been a close friend of her father and she felt duty-bound to accept the offer.
That was how she met the man who would ruin her career and carefully curated reputation forever. That was how she had come to meet Arnold Jefferson.
One week ago
Sonny sat at Arnold Jefferson’s small table inside his shabby rented room in the dark. He was relatively easy to find even though the Russians seemed to have had trouble doing so. She found this contract extremely distasteful because of what they had asked her to do. They wanted his ears and his tongue removed and then his body was to be burned to send a message. Sonny felt this kind of thing was overkill and disrespectful, not to mention unnecessarily sadistic, but the Don had asked her to do it and the money was very good.
She drummed her powderless latex-gloved fingers on the table, the tactical knife resting near her hand. Glancing at the clock on the wall in the rundown hotel room, it showed her that she had been waiting for almost an hour. Just then, she heard the key slide into the lock of the door. She remained motionless as her assignment slowly walked into the darkened space and closed the door softly behind him. She watched as he gingerly stepped further inside and scanned the room, his eyes just beginning to adjust to the darkness.
His hand went to the light switch and turned it on. His eyes bugged out when he saw her sitting there and his breath hitched in his throat. “Please,” he croaked and beads of sweat began to spring up immediately on his furrowed forehead. She put one gloved finger to her lips, signaling him to be quiet, her eyes dulled and motionless, scanning him for danger and finding none.
“Don’t kill me. I-I have some money,” he whimpered as his overweight body began to shiver. She stood from her chair slowly and carefully picked up the knife, eyeing him with the eyes of a stone-cold killer. Arnold dropped to his knees and intertwined his fingers together in front of him. “Tell them I’m sorry! Tell them I won’t do it anymore! I won’t say anything!”
If these were to be his last words, she had heard better. “I just wanted to protect those girls,” he whispered and closed his eyes. Her arm stopped in place and the sharp edge of the knife was still as it waited to be used for its designed purpose. After a moment, he raised his head—the deathstrike had not come. His shaking eyelids cracked open a sliver and he looked at her. Her own eyes had not changed from the cold and detached look from before but her arm was now motionless, hanging stiffly in the tension-filled air of the flop house room.
“They didn’t do anything to deserve this. I might be a crook but I’m not like them. I was only trying to help them.” His face was tear streaked and his lip quivered.
Her arm had not moved an inch, her muscles locked in place. “What girls?” Her voice was low and cold and it commanded attention.
His eyes flickered in comprehension of the fact that his life had just been extended for a few more seconds and depending on his answer to her question, its continuation hung in the balance. “The girls. The ones they use for…” His voice fell to a whisper. He could not read her face, unable to tell if his words were having any effect on her at all, and his remaining hope for survival began to wane.
Her arm slowly lowered to her side, the knife held firmly in her hand. “How old?”
“Most look about fourteen or maybe sixteen years old.” He was speaking quickly now, grasping at any chance to live. “I saw one…” Her eyes narrowed as he continued talking, the small movement giving his voice momentum. “She was only nine. A little girl. And they were gonna… they were gonna….”
Underneath her armor of discipline, Arnold Jefferson’s words registered what he was saying and a flame began to smolder inside her chest. She sat down carefully, crossing her long legs in front of her and placed the knife on the table next to her. “Tell me everything.”
And he did.
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After the first twenty-four hours of searching had turned up nothing, Kelly decided to try looking at the problem of finding the elusive assassin/drop-dead-gorgeous, damn-near
supermodel from the other side. This ‘Sonny’ girl did not want to be found and she was good enough at her job to not be. So Kelly decided to start by looking at the Russian connection first and then work backward from there. The Popov organization had hired her to kill an ICE agent? Arnold Jefferson? Wait, he’s not an agent, he’s just a clerk. Her fingers click-clacked away on her laptop keyboard as she dug into this Arnold Jefferson person more, checking his online profile and his tax returns. Her experience as a federal agent had given her plenty of tools in her bag of tricks for finding private information on people, mostly involving searching on the Dark Web and other, not at all legal places online.
Arnold Jefferson was single and forty-six years old. He had never married and he was overweight. He was not a particularly important person over at Immigration, a mid-level bureaucrat and classic underachiever. She was not seeing any connection between him and organized crime at first until she looked at his Facebook profile. A little over a year ago, Arnold had started posting vacation pictures; Mexico, the Caribbean, Australia. It seemed that Mr. Jefferson had become a first-class world traveler all in the space of a year. Before that, the most exotic place Arnold had ever visited was St. Louis.
He purchased a new car last summer, a brand new Audi R8 Spyder with all the trimmings. But looking at your tax returns here, you only got a two percent raise, not enough for a brand new Audi. Sorry, Arnold, you did not pass go, you did not collect two hundred dollars. Then she saw one picture that immediately caught her eye. Arnold was having a grand old time drinking and dancing at some club with a guy he tagged in the post as Ivan.
This Ivan guy was a flashy fellow, maybe in his late twenties with an athletic build. Kelly thought he had an average face that perhaps some women might find attractive. She was not one of those women, however. He wore a lot of jewelry and was a snappy dresser, looking every bit the stereotypical Eastern European gangster.
She opened a new tab and looked up Mister Flashy Pants Ivan Popov. This Ivan was a social butterfly—Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, the guy was everywhere and enjoyed showing everyone just how rich he was at all times. It was all planes, trains, and luxury automobiles with this guy and he also flashed more gold than an Atlanta rapper.
Ivan Popov. In her r
esearch into the Popov organization, there was no mention of an Ivan Popov at all. As she delved deeper, she was starting to figure out just why he was not being included in the organization. Ivan was very loud and very loose with his money. Except it was not exactly his money that he was being loose with. Ivan Popov was actually the idiot son of the head of the Popov organization, Petrov. Petrov Popov was the leader of one of the largest organized crime families in Russia and Europe, and he was now expanding rapidly into the United States. He was brutal and smart, nearly untouchable, and he did not make mistakes.
Well, he did make one mistake. He didn’t wear a condom when he conceived his dumbass son Ivan. How it must piss off Petrov to have Ivan running around drawing attention to himself and the Popov family. The black sheep. Kelly sighed; she knew that role all too well.
So, how did Arnold and Ivan connect to Sonny? Sonny was supposed to kill Arnold by order of Petrov but didn’t. Why? Was it just because of Arnold’s ‘party fun times’ with his son? Seems a little extreme to teach his son a lesson. But Arnold wasn’t in any of Ivan’s social media pictures. So maybe Ivan wasn’t paying Arnold. Maybe it was Petrov who was footing the bill. Petrov needed something from Immigration so he puts Arnold on the payroll. Then Petrov wants Arnold dead. Somewhere in between those two events, Ivan and Arnold cross paths. Ivan’s not part of the family so what does he need to hang around Arnold for?
They were both straight as far as Kelly could tell, so they were not secret lovers. Ivan was always surrounding himself with scantily clad hot women in his pictures, and Arnold had only one girlfriend ever mentioned on his timeline and they had broken up years ago. Unless they were experts at being in the closet, she could not see that kind of connection between the two men. Maybe Ivan subcontracted some services from Arnold. Services that papa Petrov didn’t approve of.
Kelly closed her laptop with a sigh. She would not find out what she needed from Facebook. She picked up her phone and dialed the number from memory since she could not put this particular person in her contacts. It rang and a familiar voice answered.
“Yeah.”
“It’s me. Can you talk?”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Tony said.
“What was Ivan Popov into?” Kelly asked.
Tony chuckled in admiration. “You’re the best in the business, Kels.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. Now, what was he into that his father disapproved of?”
Tony breathed. “He brings girls from over there to over here.” His answer told her everything she needed to know.
“Got it.” She hung up quickly. Human trafficking. With girls. That probably wouldn’t raise the ire of his father though. But Tony said girls, not women. Ivan probably didn’t have the infrastructure to bring them over in large numbers like his father could. No, he would have to do it one or two at a time. Which meant papers and Immigration. Enter Arnold who was already working for the Popovs. Ivan goes into business for himself and Papa doesn’t like it. He puts a hit on Arnold to send a message to his son. But Sonny doesn’t complete the contract. She leaves Arnold alive…why? A few days later, Arnold goes missing anyway.
Kelly ran her fingers through her short red hair in frustration. She just could not look inside this beautiful woman’s mind and see what was going on in there. Kelly was just going to have to go with a hunch because she was quickly running out of options. She was going to have to go looking for Ivan Popov.
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One week ago
Sonny surmised that she had two choices: either kill Arnold and take down Ivan, or let Arnold live and take down Ivan. There was absolutely no option in Sonny’s mind to allow Ivan Popov to continue pimping out little girls, so there was no way she would let him live. It made her stomach turn to even think about what he was doing to those helpless little girls. Arnold Jefferson had information about Ivan’s operation and what he knew could be useful for her new mission to terminate Ivan Popov. And now that knowledge was the only thing in the world that was keeping her former target alive.
Although Sonny’s calm face did not reflect it at all, she was becoming furious as her understanding about Ivan’s sick business grew. Her father had taught her to never get emotional at work, to never allow your feelings to override your situational awareness. Emotions clouded your judgment and in their line of work, where every decision or action was critical, that could get you killed. She worked on her breathing, taking slow and even deep breaths while she stared at the quivering mess that was Arnold Jefferson.
She put her tactical knife back in the sheath on her belt then pulled her Glock 19 pistol out of her shoulder holster and pointed the barrel at Arnold’s chest. “Get off your knees and sit cross-legged on the floor, hands in your lap, and don’t make a sound. Answer the questions I ask you in a low tone. If you scream once, you will not scream again. Do you understand me?” Her voice was cold and deliberate.
Arnold nodded his head vigorously. “Yes, yes, please don’t kill me.”
“Where are these girls kept?” she asked evenly.
“A couple different places. I-I don’t know for sure. I only ever went to one of them and
even then I just waited in the car when Ivan went inside. We-we were headed to a club and he got a phone call that made him mad so he had the driver stop at this house and he got out and then he was in there for a while and when he came back out, he was pissed off for a long time until we got to the club.” The words tumbled out of Arnold’s quivering mouth like an avalanche.
“Enough.” She stopped his rambling with a curt word and a raised hand. “Is there anyone else involved in this that you know about?”
“Uh-uh. He had a woman who I saw once or twice. She’s not a part of his father’s crew. I only ever saw her with Ivan. She met him outside the house that one time before they both went inside.”
“What is her name?” she asked evenly and mechanically.
“I-I don’t remember.”
Her eyes were locked on his with an intensity that made his mouth go dry and his throat clench from terror. “On the phone when he got the call in the car, he-he had called her Elaina, I think. No! No, it was Amina! Yeah, Amina.” He was grasping at any lifeline he could, anything that would please the assassin and spare his life.
“What does she look like?”
He looked up at the ceiling nervously like the answer was somewhere up there on the water-damaged surface. “She’s like maybe in her sixties or something. Gray hair tied in like a bun in the back. Tiny woman, like real thin and short, like maybe five feet or something. Skinny. Wrinkly face and real mean looking.”
Sonny committed the physical description to her memory. “What does Ivan need you for?”
Arnold gulped out of nervousness and without moisture in his mouth, it was very painful. “I work in Immigration. Petrov uses me when he needs to get someone in the country and I let him know if Immigration is sniffing around any of his operations. Ivan came up to me and said he would pay me to help him bring some people over. He brings them over like no more than four at a time. Coach flights. Nothing flashy or conspicuous. And then I make sure that their paperwork goes through to get them in and then I lose the girls in the system.”
“How often does he bring them in?”
“Maybe twice a month? I guess? Yeah, about two trips a month.”
“When was the last time he had you do this?”
“Couple weeks ago, I think? Yeah, yeah, about two weeks.”
She looked at him in silence for a long minute, her face a mask of indifference, revealing no indication to Arnold whether he had taken his last breath or not. Then with a smooth motion that did not reflect the burning fury that was rising inside her, she put her pistol back in her holster. She stood smoothly, almost like a robot, and strode past Arnold to his door. He looked at her with confused, eyes that burned with sweat and tears. His jaw trembled and threa
tened to shake the teeth loose from his mouth as he spoke. “You’re not going to kill me?”
She turned the knob and walked out of the apartment, closing the door behind her softly and never looking back at him or acknowledging his existence at all.
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“My name is Kelly King and I have a gambling addiction.”
“Hi, Kelly.” The other eight people who sat in folding chairs underneath the harsh fluorescent lights of the church basement spoke in unison. Stale coffee and dampness hung in the air of the large multi-purpose room.
“So last week it was my father’s birthday. He would have been sixty-two. He was a good guy. A good cop. Brian Kelly. I always looked up to him and I always wanted to make him proud. That’s why I joined the FBI, to make him proud, you know? He was a great father, he took care of me after my mom ran out on us when I was seven. He gave me everything, and what did I give him? A fuck up for a daughter. My addiction got me fired. I was broke and I was chasing the dragon, so I took a loan from some people I shouldn’t have. It was bad. So fucking bad. I had already shot my credit to shit and hocked everything I had that was worth anything. I knew these guys were criminals but I didn’t care, you know? I hit a rough patch and I couldn’t win to save my life so it wasn’t long before they owned me. I started giving them stuff in exchange for them knocking some money off my debt. Information on investigations and stuff, telling them about wiretaps and stake-outs. I was dirty. I knew it and I didn’t care. I just knew that I was going to win. Eventually. Every time I laid down a bet, I was sure this was the one, the one that was going to get me back on top. But even when I won, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough for me. Finally, I got caught. I was fired, and I pled down to six months in prison. When I got out, I had no money, no job, no friends, nowhere to live, and no father. He died when I was in jail. Heart attack. We hadn’t talked since I got in trouble. I didn’t try to call him and he didn’t try to call me. I was so ashamed. He was perfect in my eyes. He had been a great dad and I just let him down in every way possible. In a way, I was glad he was gone. I never had to face him. I never had to own up to it. I went to my dad’s place and found his service revolver. I put one round in and spun. I was going to place one more bet. I put the barrel to my head and closed my eyes. I don’t know what made me open my eyes but when I did, I saw a picture of me and my dad at the park. I remembered that day. I was nine years old. It was great; we tried to fly a kite and broke it. We had so much fun that day. And that’s when I broke down. I put the gun down and I just collapsed. I think I cried for maybe two hours and then I fell asleep. When I woke up, I started crying again. I kept going until I was dehydrated and there were no more tears. That was it. That was my rock bottom. I was going to kill myself. In my father’s house. With my father’s gun. After that, I got my shit together. I joined the program and although I’ve had a few relapses since then, I’m doing pretty good. I’ve been sober for two months now. Anyway, thanks for letting me share.” She slumped back in her seat, exhausted and emotionally spent.