My fingers flew across the keyboard, tabbing through my screens and flipping through all the camera angles I could access.Nothing.
I drummed my fingers on the mobile desk. I was currently sitting in my reconnaissance van, three blocks from the office building where I’d tracked the Italian drug dealer. My van was outfitted with top-of-the-line computer equipment, with three full monitors welded into the side of the vehicle—filling up as much space as physically possible—yet all this equipment couldn’t get my eyes inside that fucking building.
“Mierda,” I whispered to the air while rubbing my eyes. My contacts were dry as the desert, and I left my solution home like an amateur. But I hadn’t expected the Italian to slip inside a warehouse with zero security cameras.
You’d think that most criminals wouldn’t put cameras inside all their shit, capturing video evidence of their crimes. But really, it was wiser to have constant eyes on your…investments. Easier to protect them from both outside forces and inside traitors—both of which happened often. They usually didn’t account for my ability to hack pretty much anything. Their bad.
Except this time, whoever had stored something inside that building had wantednobodyto see it, which made me even more interested.
We’d been hired by a Russian boss who suspected the Italians were poaching their drug supply and had turned their supplier. The Bratva didn’t take kindly to anyone skimming their product off the top and took even worse to suppliers that shifted allegiances in the middle of a shipment drop-off, which was why they needed us to get proof. As the group’s designated tech guy, surveillance and tracking fell to me.
This was what I was good at. This was how I held my spot within the Shadows. My computer skills set me apart from almost everyone; it was the only thing I was truly good at.
Social skills? Zero. Relationships? Pass.
Death and computers were my thing, the only skills that proved I deserved to be here.
Except right now, I couldn’t seeshit.
Last night, Wynn had confirmed that the scheduled delivery of Russian drugs did not show up as expected at their Atlantic City port. The Russians wanted confirmation that the Italian dealer I was trackinghad, in fact, stolen their product before they either put out a contract or settled the score themselves.
So here I was, on a recon job, something that wassupposedto be easy and quick so I could get back home and binge-watch my shows before bed. Yet without the cameras, the proof wasn’t easy.
I should have known better, prepared more, considered all the options. I was usually so much better than this.
I needed to see what was inside that warehouse.
Not simply because the Russians had hired me to get proof—and were paying a million dollars to do so—but because nowIwas curious. Nothing could hide from me.
I quickly ran some code to cut out the cameras thatwereoperational nearby so they wouldn’t record any of my movements or could be traced back to me. Everything in the three-block radius around me, the building, and my van would run a continual footage loop, completely hiding my digital and physical footprints. Then I put my computers into sleep mode, leaving them on just in case I needed to access info quickly, but I made sure they were locked up tight.
My gun was loaded, but I slipped two extra full magazines into my black cargo pants pockets. Next, I made sure I had my garrote, which I wrapped loosely around my wrist for easy access. My foster father had taught me how to wield the garrote after another enforcer in the Cartel had tried to kill me with one because of my speech impediment. A death of the throat. They’d thought they were being poetic, but they didn’t find it so funny when I put a bullet between their eyes.
I slipped through the back alleys, keeping myself entirely in the shadows. There, looming inconspicuously on a deserted corner, was the warehouse my target had disappeared inside. I slipped inside the same back door he had entered, barely a sound behind me as the door clicked shut.
It was dark, obviously. Therewaspower running to the building, even if all the lights were off, and I had tried to trace the billing back to whoever owned the building, but it was a dead end—some shell corporation that Imightbe able to link to the Italians if I had time. It’s not an uncommon thing, but it’s still annoying.
Ultimately it didn’t matter who owned it, only that shit was going down inside.
The Italians in New York had been up to something recently. The criminal underworld was feeling the ripples of regime change, waiting to see what the new head of one of the main Families would do. This contract might be focused on druginformation for the Russians, but it might also be an indicator of how these two families would interact in the future. Were the Italians about to make enemies of the Russians?
I quietly made my way through the building. The layout was, thankfully, accurate to the building plans I’d been able to see online.
A small group of men speaking Italian moved a bunch of product out of the back of the truck and into neatly piled stacks on pallets. On the other side of the warehouse, tables were laid out and covered in equipment to package the drugs into sellable packets. The operation looked like it flowed from receiving the pallets to breaking down the shipment to repackaging the product.
This must be one of the Italian distribution centers. But were those the missing Russian drugs?
As silently as possible, I snuck around the truck. The men talked in the back, without a care in the world, as I quietly poked my head into the cab. There. A stack of papers on the passenger seat. As silently as possible, I ducked in further, swiped the papers, and retreated.
I ducked inside a makeshift office and hid in the shadows to read through the packet of papers. It was a manifest for this shipment and three more going back over the last six months. My eyes skimmed over the ports, the dates, and the location of origin. All matched what the Russians had told me.
“Gotcha,” I breathed as I snapped pictures. Even the location of the Russian port where these weresupposedto arrive was listed.
Looks like the Italians might have been skimming cocaine from this supplier for a lot longer than the Russians expected. The Bratva would not be pleased.
Something else caught my eye. More papers in the office pointed toward other shipments being delivered. But these weren’t Russian. They were receipts for a delivery oflevamisole.
My hand froze as I stared at the name of the additive.
