Page 155 of Dominance

Yay.

Otherwise, Moscow’s just like I remember it the last time I was here. Cloudy. A little rigid.

I’d be happy to never see it again.

Wagging my head back and forth a few times, I clear my head, focusing on the task at hand.

Need to locate the contact that Dom sent me to find, and Adriano told me to see through. According to the burner phone text I received, he should be meeting me in this old rust bucket shithole that looks like a Cold War weapons factory.

Exactly where I want to be late at night, alone, in Russia.

On the upside, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve, including the Desert Eagle and the .38 that I was able to retrieve from one of our old stashes from years ago. Hopefully the quick once-over I gave the weapons will keep them from jamming up on me.

If all else fails, I’ll stab and run.

My fingers trace over the various blades I keep strapped to me, the two in my belt, two in my shoulder holsters. And the dagger at my hip.

But hey, maybe this will be the “meet and greet” that it’s supposed to be and I won’t have a care in the world.

Yeah.

Right.

This guy isn’t even supposed to be my mark, just an informant that’s going to point me in the right direction. Dom’s old friend and cohort, Viktor Popov.

Then there’s the real reason I’m here.

Or at least the reason Adriano used to get me clear of his wedding.

He wants me to make contact with the Bratva. The head of one of the families, Andrey Sokolov. They were once allies of ours, years ago, before Aless came up. And he wants me to reestablish the old truce.

Which is a very transparent way of Adriano saying, I want you out of harm’s way.

I should have gone to Fiji.

The two days I’ve been here, I’ve had zero luck making contact.

So maybe this punk Nikolai knows something.

Or he’ll be as talkative as the rest of the warm, smiley folks I’ve run into so far. So much sarcasm.

After making a lap of the area, I spot my target up on a raised walkway inside the warehouse, smoking a cigarette in the dark, the only light a single bulb hanging over the warehouse floor below him.

There doesn’t appear to be anybody else around, but there’s plenty of hiding places.

Lots of cover.

Doesn’t make me entirely confident about the situation. All the same, I climb an adjacent roof, hop the low wall, backflip down onto a covered walkway, and slip in through a cracked window, letting myself down ever so carefully. Right behind Nikolai.

“Hi, Niko.”

“Fahkinggavno!” Nikolai jolts, spinning around and freezing until he sees that I’ve only got finger guns raised.

“Bang.” I flick my thumb down.

“You Italiansvolachare sneaky as they say.”

“Hey, I knew my mother and my father, at least briefly.”

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