Russian Boss’s Secret Baby by Bella King
Ch 34
SLATE
It’s been two months since Mia was abducted by Katya. We both chose to lay low for the first few weeks while we figured out her placement during the pregnancy, and I wanted to make sure that Katya didn’t know where to find us if she did have the balls to come back looking for us.
Mia wants her gone for good, though. It’s time to start thinking of a plan.
Since the incident, I’ve brought on twenty new people to operate specifically in the area of the city that Katya and her men were working the most. I had to find a new right-hand man to replace Eli, obviously. His body had disappeared by the time we returned back to the house on the night of the abduction, but I didn’t tell Mia that I had no idea what happened to it. She still assumes that I had it taken care of on my own.
Mia’s been having a lot of sickness the past few weeks, so I’ve had to be extra attentive to her and haven’t had a chance to come up with a contingency plan to take Katya and her men out for good. I’m nervous about the unknowns of this mission, because I have no idea how many other gangs she could be working with to bring me down given my notoriety.
My new second in command is named Luke. Based on first impressions, he’s already more honest than Eli, and definitely less of a showoff when it comes to managing the operations of the Family. Just in case, though, I made sure to let him know what happened to Eli after I found out he was working as a double agent.
“What are we going to do about Katya, Luke?” I ask him, more rhetorically than anything. I don’t expect him to have an answer for me. Instead, I’m surprised to hear that he’s got a detailed understanding of where she’s been hiding and what her next moves are.
“Well, that depends on how you anticipate taking her out,” he begins. “Simple poisoning would be easy since she frequents a bar called Amphora in the downtown area. You could probably catch her there any random weeknight. If you’re trying to take them all out at once, I may have located the place she’s operating from. It’s a derelict apartment complex on the East side. So conspicuous that is isn’t, you know? I need to give her credit there.”
“How do you know all this?”
“When you showed me a picture of her, I knew I had seen her at Amphora quite a few times when I was going there regularly. She’s a messy drunk for sure. Anyway, when you told me you were looking for her because she’s a terrible person who’s threatening your girl and baby, I figured this could be how I prove my worth,” he says.
“Go on.”
“Anyway, I started following her. It wasn’t difficult, she’s very flashy about the kinds of vehicles she drives, and she loves to show off her money. Something tells me she’s very new to this game, yeah?” he asks, looking at me expectantly.
“Well, yeah, but that’s because she inherited the game from a guy she was dating to get back at me. I killed that guy, and she must have taken over his empire with no clue what the fuck she’s doing. I’m almost tempted to just leave her and watch her destroy herself, but I have Mia and the baby to worry about, so I can’t take any chances,” I reply.
Katya could easily get blown to bits for making a snide remark to the wrong person. She has no decorum, no sense of how to conduct herself. If she weren’t a terrible waste of oxygen, I would almost feel bad for the predicament she’s found herself in.
“Okay, then that means you’ll probably want to go for her entire hive at once,” Luke says. “Just fuckin’ blow the place to bits. An old building like that, nobody would assume shit. Could just be a controlled demolition so the city can post up a new apartment building that’s three times more expensive. Thank the lord for gentrification,” he says as he laughs.
I carefully consider what he’s saying. If I know where she is, and I know where she’s operating from, it could simply be a matter of logistics regarding whether or not we would use explosives or mow them all down with bullets. I almost hate to admit that the prospect of being able to do either excites me.
Luke and I drive out to the location of the apartment complex where Katya and her goons have been staying and operating out of. She has decent taste at the very least; the building is an old high-rise that was purchased to make into offices. Just like most empty, expensive buildings in Miami, the plan to renovate it fell through, and now mobsters and drug addicts share the levels, each camp claiming one floor or another.
We stay in the car as we circle the area. Who is going to be hurt if we fuck up? The building is surrounded only by other extensions of the same apartment complex that have been put up for sale, millions of dollars’ worth of living space going to waste because of a bad business deal.
“What are you thinking we would do? I’m aiming for explosives, but that way we would have to know when they’re all gone so we could set the shit up,” I ask Luke as he drives.
“It’s definitely safer than something more personal, might not be as satisfying though,” he replies.
“Don’t be a sick asshole,” I say sarcastically. He knows I want this just as badly as anyone in my place would.
We return to the headquarters and settle in to make the plans necessary to carry this out. Luke seems to have a decent grasp of Katya’s whereabouts, so learning where her entourage will be at any given time should be easy enough. One of the men I brought into the business has a history of making pipe bombs when he was in high school, but I’ll need him to really up his game if he’s going to help me take out Katya.
“The floor they’re working on is in the middle of the building, which I assume they did on purpose for situations exactly like this. They didn’t want to be on the ground because it would make them too vulnerable to attacks, but they knew it would be better not to be at the very top for the same reason. Plus fires, maybe,” Luke says as he scrawls a crude drawing of the building we’ll be attacking, labeling it in more detail than I thought even he would know.
“Have you been inside this place at all?” I ask, growing suspicious.
Luke stares straight ahead as he considers his response. “I was one of the addicts who lived there for some time. I’ve been on most of the floors, depending on who was getting busted worse. We had to migrate around the building a lot to stay safe. So yeah, you’re lucky to have me for this mission in particular,” he says, looking me straight in the eyes.
Damn, I had no idea. Looks like Luke might know more about the trenches of the city than I anticipated. He’ll be even more valuable than I thought. Given this information, I think I’ll be easy to come up with a plan that we could carry out easily, practically without touching her.
“How well do the addicts know each other? Would they notice an unfamiliar face if they saw one?” I ask.
“I’d say it really depends, there are pockets of people who are into different shit, like the junkies stick together, the crackheads stick together, etcetera,” he says.
“So what if we sent in a few men to rig the explosives below their headquarters? That way we can stay far enough away from them to avoid suspicion and we can blend in well enough. Katya’s never seen anybody that works for me, except for Eli, maybe. But he’s gone now. She’ll never know what’s coming,” I say, the whole plan coming together in my head.
“That’s entirely doable. I think you might have just solved our entire issue,” he says. “I’ll follow Katya around for a few days, more closely this time. That way I can try to get a feel for what her motives are in the next few days. It’ll be easier to infiltrate the building if she isn’t there, but it’s not necessary.”
As I’m considering the ramifications of sending my new men into a crack den to set up explosives in order to kill my ex-girlfriend and potentially dozens of others, Mia walks in with a cup of coffee.
“That better not be for you!” Luke says to her jokingly.
She smiles a bit. “No, this was for Slate. What are you guys talking about?” she asks indirectly, trying to see who will give up the information faster.
Luke is happy to oblige her request, almost to my annoyance. “We’re coming up with a plan to kill Katya so she never has the chance to hurt you or the baby,” he says, smiling obliviously.
“Wow, that’s… a lot at once,” she replies, eyes wide.
“No objections though,” I add.
She smiles a bit. “No, no objections here,” she replies, placing the cup of coffee in front of me.
“How are you feeling?” I ask her. She seems to have more color to her face today than previous days, which I take as an encouragement.
“Better, I think. I’m getting out of the worst days of it, at least that’s what my doctor says,” she responds, understandably trying not to think about it. “Do I want to know what this plan is?” she adds, looking at me inquisitively.
Luke and I exchange glances. “I mean, it’s not a SAW style torture chamber, if that’s what you’re expecting,” Luke replies. Such a funny guy.
Mia smiles uneasily. “Is it something I don’t want to hear about, babe?” she asks me, finally allowing me the space to respond without one of Luke’s interjections.
“We’re going to blow up her headquarters. Is that okay?” I ask.
Is that okay? Such an absurd fucking question.
Mia shrugs. “I’m not sure, as long as I never have to see her again, I’m fine.”
