They have Liza too, although that whore is complicit in this. Denis is dead, luckily for him, because otherwise I’d have made him spend days wishing he were.”
Andrius blows out a breath. “Where are you? I’ll come over.”
“Listen, Andrius I have to tell you… The guys who took Cassie are the Armenians… They want you for her.”
Nothing. No response.
I carry on. “They want you, my friend. This is all about you. My belief is they tried to get to you on Corfu, and obviously failed. Pays to live in a fortress. Your house must be like a castle.”
“So is yours, but they got in here,” he says.
“Not the same. I have good security, yes, but I don’t have biomarkers and other things, which you do. I will be getting it, though. I don’t have a team of trained men always on the property the way you do. They hacked me, and that’s how they turned off the fence and the alarm, and opened the gates. They used my own system against me. I presume they must have tried the same with you.”
“Ah, this makes sense,” he says. “About two months ago, I noticed two or three attempts to get into my system. Damen checked it out, beefed it up so it’s even harder to crack.”
“Do you think I can trust him?” I ask.
“Damen? Shit, yes. If you trust me, you can trust him and Alesso. Markos too probably, but I don’t know him as well. Stamatis … he will look out for himself and the business. But Damen and Alesso are my friends, and there are very few people I say that about. Wouldn’t hurt to meet with Damen. Wouldn’t hurt at all.”
“I need some help,” I say, hating to sound weak.
He pauses. “Okay, listen. Firstly, I am coming to you right now. You are my fucking brother, K, and these fuckers don’t get to do this and walk away. Secondly, if they want me, they aren’t going to stop until they get me. Is it Tigran?”
“How did you know?”
“Because he has good reason to want me dead or maimed. I’m on my way to you.”
“Okay, see you soon. I’m at the Royal George Hospital.”
He hangs up, and for a moment I sag against the brick wall behind me. He’s going to help, which means Cassie has a chance. We need men, though, good men. Andrius can’t pull them off his place in Corfu because he’ll need everyone there to make sure Violet is safe.
I have plenty of men working for me in Moscow, but if I bring them all over here that leaves Moscow wide open to takeover attempts.
I can hire men, but it’s always risky to do that. When this is over, I’m building an army, but we need men now. Would the Greeks come and help? They might, but I doubt it. Stamatis won’t want that, I don’t believe, and it would leave their women vulnerable at a time when the sands are shifting beneath our feet. Powers are realigning, the same way the earth’s crust does every now and again, and it is going to cause earthquakes before the dust is settled.
By the time Andrius arrives, I’ve got the legal side of things sorted, with a couple of cops on my payroll dealing with things. I’m sitting on a hard, plastic chair in the waiting area when the doors swoosh open, and Andrius storms in.
People turn to look; he has that effect.
He’s wearing a gray, three-piece suit, probably for his meeting with Allyov. Andrius always wears his armor for business, and he looks big, rich, and hard.
I look harder, and bigger and I am richer, but right now, I don’t appear it. Certainly not wearing the sweatpants I threw on in a rush to get Vasily to the hospital.
Andrius sits by me and shakes his head. “The house is fucked,” he says.
Don’t I know it.
I find myself unable to say anything else, what the fuck can I say? The house is the least of my worries. My worries are Michael, Cassie, and Vasily. Nothing else right now.
“You’re going to need men. Men you can trust to ensure your safety,” he says.
“I know, but not sure where the hell to get them from.”
“You have Bohdan, yes?”
“He’s busy right now,” I say.
“Speak with him, see if he thinks business can take care of itself with some of the ground troops running things, and if he does, bring him here. I think you need him.”