Page 76 of Sigma
“Sasha, stop.” I hold his gaze. “You’ve stood guard over our family for twenty years. What happened was done in such a way that no one could have seen it or stopped it.” I squeeze his hands again. “Did your attention lapse? Did you go lax in your dedication to your job?”
He shakes his head. “Nyet. Never.”
“Then you didn’t fail.”
He drops his head. “Thank you.” He steps back. “If you and Mr. Roth did not have priority claim over me, I would demand the right to end this bastard myself.”
“Get in line, comrade,” Duke growls. “Walked past me too.”
Harris lets out a piercing whistle. “Enough. Blame and self-recrimination and vows of vengeance have no place here, gentlemen. We are professionals. This may be personal, but we will approach it with the same objectivity and rationality as we would if this was a job we were hired for. Put your anger aside. It will not help us, here.” His blue-green eyes go to mine—this is meant for me as much as them; and to judge by the intensity in his gaze, he means it for himself just as much.
There’s a silence, and I can see each man going through a mental process, putting the personal aside and putting on the professional detachment like he would a piece of body armor.
“We have a location,” Harris continues, after a moment, “and we have some intel.” He glances at Lear, who has set up his laptop on one of the twin beds. “Lear?”
“Intel is a loose term,” Lear says. “I’m sending to each of you a file. You should have it in your inboxes. It’s the totality of what we know. Here’s the briefing version: Apollo Karahalios, grandson of our old buddy Vitaly, son of the mad bitch herself, Gina. Apollo is a legitimate businessman first, by all accounts, and a crime lord second. He does things differently, and he’s shaking up the scene over here. This is good and bad for us, because he doesn’t like violence if he can’t help it, but it also means he’s unpredictable at best. Also working against us is the fact that he was heir to a massive fortune from his grandfather and mother which he only multiplied through his own efforts. He has contacts in the European underworld and enough money to damn near rival even the big boss, here, Valentine Roth.”
My husband snorts. “Not quite, Lear.” He assumes the mantle of authority merely by speaking. “He’s worth an even billion, I’d say, which is not chump change by any stretch of the imagination. But that’s no closer to my net worth than someone worth a million is close in value to someone worth a few hundred million. Let’s not give this guy more credit than is due him—he’s got money, he’s got resources, but is he on par with me? No.”
Lear chuckles. “Dick measuring aside…” he glances at Valentine with a snicker; Valentine just glares. “Teasing, boss, just teasing. Trying to lighten things up in here. Not working, got it. Anyway.” He sets the laptop aside. “He’s got soldiers. A lot of them. Well-armed, well-trained, and well-paid. And the location? A legit, real-deal fucking castle. All approaches are open—surrounded by vines in every direction for miles. Middle of nowhere, too, fuckin’ miles from anything. So, approach by helo is out, ’cause they’d hear us coming and it won’t be anyone but us. One road in, and you can’t bet your sweet bippy that road will be monitored, if not actively guarded at several locations. Satellite imagery shows the doors are for sure fortified. So, even the seven or eight of us, being elite professionals with decades of experience, this is damn near impossible to approach. A frontal assault is not an option. Stealth insertion isn’t much better. You could drop in from HALO height, sure, but that’s not going to get you inside, and it bears repeating, every door I could get imagery of looks fuckin’ massive, and I mean not even Thresh his ownself is gonna be kicking that shit in. You’d need serious explosives, and once you do that, you’re swarmed.”
“So what you’re saying,” I cut in, “is that there are no good options.”
A shrug from Lear. “Near to it, unfortunately.”
“He doesn’t seem interested in negotiating,” I say. “We don’t have much idea what hedoeswant other than revenge on Valentine and me for his mother’s death. And his grandfather’s, I would assume.”
Valentine holds up his hand, and both Lear and I fall silent. “I think there’s only one real play.”
I know what he’s suggesting, and I nod before he even lays it out.
“Kyrie and I approach, alone, on foot, unarmed. We exchange ourselves for Rinna. You guys will be waiting as close as you can get. We do our best to talk this Apollo character out of doing anything too…rash.” He shrugs, hands lifting palms up as far as his shoulders, then flopping back down to his thighs. “Maybe we could get him to come outside, and Anselm, you could be in a helo with your rifle at the farthest distance you feel confident in taking a shot, and…bam. Done.”
Anselm nods. “It is possible.”
Harris growls. “I don’t like it. You got no guarantee he’s not going to just kill you both.”
“Better us than Rin,” I say, my voice hoarse. “She’s innocent in this. We’re not. It was brought on us, but I get how he may not see that. We just have to hope he’s something like reasonable.”
“That, or hope we can get him within range of Anselm’s rifle,” Valentine says.
I look around, a thought occurring to me. “Wait, where are Layla and the kids?”
Valentine and Harris exchange looks.
“Took a hell of a lot of convincing all around, but we managed to get Layla to stay with them at a different location here in the city,” Harris says.
“Cal in particular was pissed off at being excluded,” Valentine says, wincing, “but when I made it clear to him how this was going to go down, he finally agreed to stay with Layla. And let me tell you, she’s no happier at being what she sees as sidelined than Cal is.”
I sigh. “I can only imagine. But there was never a chance of this being a guns blazing operation.”
“And he was never going to be a part of that even if it was,” Valentine adds. “So they’re in a safe house, guarded by two dozen of A1S’s best.”
I nod. “Okay. So, we approach by car as close as we can. Then you and I go the rest of the way on foot, and just hope he doesn’t take us both hostage along with Rinna?”
“We set it up ahead of time. Get close and then get in contact with him. Agree to an exchange.” Valentine shrugs and sighs. “I can’t see a better way.”
“I still don’t fuckin’ like it,” Duke says. “We went in guns blazing last time. Don’t see how this is any different.”