Page 38 of Emerald

I can’t hide the look of shock on my face. For a moment I think he must be lying. But there’s no faking his smugness, his satisfaction.

“Then they’re even bigger fools than I thought,” I say.

I grab the Mamont sitting next to me and take a swig directly from the bottle. The liquor burns my throat but helps steady my hand.

I look Remizov dead in the eye.

“There will be no peace, no agreement between us,” I tell him. “You’re going to pay for what you did today.”

On my right-hand side, the commissioner says warningly, “Petrov, you ought to—“

I hold up my hand to cut him off.

I look around at the other men.

“Remizov’s honor is worth nothing. His deals with you are worth even less.”

I can see the minister looking uncomfortable once more. The other men stare at me, stone faced. They’ve made their decision. They’ve aligned themselves with Remizov, which means they’re my enemies now too.

Especially the commissioner. Our relationship has always been tenuous at best. He’s glowering at me with an expression that tells me clearly that what little courtesy the police offered to my business, to my men, is now at an end.

I stand up.

I’m loathe to leave like this, with Remizov in a position of dominance at the head of this table. With me slipping my gun back inside my jacket, having failed to avenge Karol.

But in this moment, what else can I do?

I can only swear to myself that the next time we meet, I will kill that loathsome cockroach.

* * *

11

Sloane

When I wake in Ivan’s dungeon once more, I’m feeling refreshed and ready to get into trouble. I have to say, I rather enjoyed my interrogation. But that doesn’t mean I’m content to hang around here forever.

The first thing I do is examine the lock on the door and the hinges. It’s an electromagnetic lock, with an armature plate. It appears to be fail-safe, which means that it would automatically unlock if the power failed. But of course, I have no access to the power supply from in here.

There’s also no way to pick the lock, even if Ivan hadn’t taken all my clothes, with their hidden caches of tools.

My next point of examination is the camera up in the corner on the left-hand side of the door. I grab my mattress, dragging it over to that corner and flipping it on its side so I can climb up on top of it and take a closer look.

It’s a fairly standard cam, wired so it can be viewed remotely. Ivan might be watching me right now from his phone. I could disconnect the feed, so he’s blind to the interior of the cell. Then I could try to attack him on his way in. But he’s not sloppy enough to come strolling in blind.

I open up the back of the camera to see if there’s some way to loop the feed, but once again I need some goddamned tools and probably a laptop too.

I’m pretty tricky, but I’m not MacGyver—I need more than a Bobby pin and a stick of gum. Not that I have either of those things anyway.

I take a look at the toilet and the sink—if I could rip either of those out of the wall, it’s possible that the plumbing has a wide enough gauge that I could get out that way. Unlikely, but possible.

However, both are made of steel and are firmly bolted in place.

I drag the mattress back where it belongs and sit down to scheme some more.

I have a lot of ideas of ways to get Ivan to let me out of the room. But when he finally returns, when he unlocks the door and stands there looking at me, all my plots go flying out of my head. Because I see that his face looks furious, frustrated, and something else . . .

Can it be . . . sorrowful?

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