Page 77 of Bad Medicine

I could feel my heart rate climbing, excitement that my suspicions were correct warring with the growing feeling of dread that Gregor was exactly who I had assumed him to be.

“It’s him? Gregor Belikov is the goddamn Chemist?”

“You bet your fuckin’ ass he is.”

When Mia had told me the story of how she had actually met Gregor—who she had only ever known as Greg—in college, I got a little niggling feeling in the back of my mind, a feeling that told me I was missing something. Something big.

But it wasn’t until last night, when Trick sent me the photo of Gregor standing beside Ivan, the drug dealer that Enzo and I had hauled out ofLusta few weeks ago when Francesca caught him pushing his product on our dance floor, that things finally clicked into place.

At the time, the truce with Anton still held, and Enzo was forced to hand the Russian over to Anton for questioning, even though Anton swore up and down that he didn’t know the guy at all.

He also swore to us that he’d killed him, eliminating a problem and keeping the peace with Enzo all in one move.

But it looked like Anton had lied, because Ivan appeared to be very much alive, and I had a very big problem with that.

“What’s the status, then?” I asked, feeling energy coursing through me and wanting to hit something.

Someone.

“We followed one of the douchebag dealers from Fremont back to some dumpy little house over on Sunrise Street.”

Son of a bitch.

That was the street Sway lived on. Switching Masi to speaker, I fired off a text to Lexi, asking her to track him down. I wanted him as far away from that shit as possible.

“You know the type,” Masi continued. “Shithole house with seven abandoned vehicles in the yard? Well, turned out they were storing their shit in the trunk of one of those busted up cars.”

“Sounds volatile,” I deadpanned, pretty sure storing dangerous chemicals in the trunk of a junker car in the heat of the desert was a pretty stupid thing to do.

“Yeah, well, wasn’t very secure, either. We dragged that asshole and his trunk full of product off to The Shed in under thirty minutes.” Masi let out a low laugh. “The Chemist is gonna be pissed when he realizes we jacked all his shit.”

“Nice work, Masi. You and Trick got it all squared away?”

“Yeah, Rock. We’re at The Shed now. Just finished unloading it all into the lower levels. We gotta look up how to destroy it properly and shit, but this batch of Frost Bite is officially outta commission.”

“Fantastic,” I said, exhaling a relieved breath. That shit was beyond toxic, both the drug and the way Gregor was selling it. “I’m about to meet with Anton now, so stay in touch. And rally the troops. I have a feeling retaliation is not far off. Gregor doesn’t seem like the type to take shit lying down.”

I ended the call and immediately dialed Mia, who, of course, didn’t answer. She was probably with patients, but that didn’t stop me from worrying. I texted her to keep her eyes open, then messaged Benny to swing by the hospital and keep an eye out for her until I could get there.

My next call wasn’t going to be any fun either, but I swallowed my pride and dialed Enzo.

“Well, I guess you do remember that I exist.”

“Hey, boss man,” I said apologetically. “Sorry. Had a lot of shit going on lately.”

“Anything I need to know about?”

“Actually, yeah,” I answered, knowing that before I did anything else, I at least owed it to Enzo to bring him up to speed.

When I finished, he didn’t speak right away, and I was left chewing on the inside of my cheek while I awaited his judgment. Enzo and I might be friends—best friends—but he was still the man in charge, and with things getting hairy, I was grateful to have him to talk to.

“Have you killed him yet?” he asked suddenly.

“Who? Gregor or Anton?”

“Both, actually,” he replied, and I could hear the anger in his voice. “I gave Anton every opportunity to make the right choice, and he chose to lie to me.” I could hear the din of voices in the background, the honking of horns letting me know that Enzo had exited whatever building he had been in and was now standing on the streets of Manhattan, giving me instructions to kill a man like it was as easy as ordering a pizza.

Maybe in this case, it was.