Page 7 of Enforcer Daddy
Seventy-three broken music boxes lined the walls on custom shelves, each one tagged with acquisition details in my own specific notation system. There was as plaque on the wall, displaying something my babushka had told me. "Beautiful things, properly preserved, last forever."
My grandma had started this collection, all those years ago. Now, it was safe in my hands.
The workbenches were arranged in a U-shape, each one dedicated to a different stage of restoration. Chemical baths for removing corrosion. Ultrasonic cleaners for delicate parts. A jeweler's lathe that could turn replacement pieces smaller than rice grains. Tools that cost more than most people's cars, arranged with the same precision I used to arrange torture implements.
Tonight's patient waited under the magnifying lamp—an 1890s French automaton that had been magnificent once. The ballerina was frozen mid-pirouette, her porcelain face cracked across one cheek like she'd been slapped by time itself. Her tutu, real silk that had deteriorated to wisps, barely clung to the metal armature of her body. When wound, she should dance to Chopin's Waltz in C-sharp minor. But she hadn't danced in—probably—decades.
I'd bought her from an estate sale in Connecticut, outbidding three museums and a private collector who didn't understand what they were looking at. They saw decay. I saw potential. The same way my babushka had seen potential in a violent boy who broke things more often than he fixed them.
My hands—the same ones that had broken Tony's fingers six hours ago—now wielded tools designed for surgery. The main spring mechanism was exposed on the workbench, each component separated and labeled. Springs were always the failure point in these old pieces. Metal fatigue, crystallization, sometimes just the accumulated tension of too many performances.
I fitted a spring gauge thinner than a human hair, testing the main spring's remaining elasticity. The metal groaned, held for exactly three seconds, then snapped with a sound like a tiny gunshot. The twelfth spring I'd tried. Each failure taught me something about the original metallurgy, the alloy composition,the exact temper of steel that French craftsmen had perfected before the knowledge was lost.
"Stubborn bitch," I muttered, but there was affection in it.
Those three boxes sat in a climate-controlled safe behind what looked like another music box shelf. The only things in this workshop I'd never sell, never show anyone, never admit to owning. A Russian soldier carrying his rifle that played "Kalinka"—my grandmother's first acquisition, smuggled out of Leningrad in 1962. A pair of dancers that rotated around each other to "Dark Eyes"—a wedding gift from my grandfather, who'd died before I was born. And the one that started my obsession: a mechanical bear that danced to a lullaby whose name I'd never learned, the one she'd wind for me when the nightmares got too bad.
I made notes in my restoration journal. "Spring steel degraded beyond recovery. Modern replacement required. Consider 1095 high-carbon, artificially aged with controlled oxidation. Must match original tension coefficient." Below that, in smaller writing: "She wants to dance. Just needs someone patient enough to help her remember how."
Fucking sentimental. If Ivan could see this, he'd have me committed. If Alexei knew I spent more on restoration tools than weapons, he'd question my priorities. But this was mine. The only thing that was purely mine, untouched by bratva business or family obligations.
My phone sat beside me, cycling through security feeds from my properties. The legitimate warehouses showed empty loading docks, security guards doing their rounds. The protected businesses were closing for the night, metal gates rolling down like eyelids. Everything normal, everything quiet.
Then the feed from Storage Unit 47B appeared, and my hands stopped moving.
The unit was one of twelve I maintained around the city—caches of weapons, money, documents that couldn't exist officially. But 47B was special. That's where I kept the things that mattered, the things that couldn't be replaced with money or violence. More of my grandmother's collection that I'd recovered piece by piece from relatives who'd sold them for drug money. Photo albums from before everything went to shit. My mother's jewelry that my father had tried to pawn, that I'd bought back with my first protection money.
Plus a fuckload of guns and contraband, of course.
The exterior camera showed nothing unusual—rows of identical storage units, harsh fluorescent lights, no movement. But something felt wrong. I'd developed a sense for danger the way some people developed a sense for weather. The air pressure changed before violence arrived.
I switched to the interior camera, adjusting the contrast to see through the darkness. The unit looked undisturbed—furniture covered in sheets, boxes stacked to create a false wall that suggested nothing valuable was stored there. But in the corner, just at the edge of the camera's range, something had shifted. A box that should have been flush against the wall now sat at an angle.
My chest tightened. Could be settling. Could be vibration from the subway that ran two blocks away. Could be a dozen innocent explanations.
Or someone could be in my unit.
I cycled back through the recorded footage, rewinding to an hour ago, then two, then three. There—a flicker of movement at 11:47 PM. Just a shadow, barely visible, but definitely inside the unit. The motion sensor had triggered, recording three seconds of darkness that might have contained a person or might have been a trick of light.
Then, at 12:13 AM, another trigger. This time lasting five seconds. Something moving behind the false wall of boxes, disturbing the carefully arranged camouflage.
My hands had abandoned the ballerina automaton, already reaching for the drawer where I kept my immediate response kit. Glock 19, two spare magazines, ceramic knife, garrote wire. The tools of myotherrestoration work.
The Morozovs were crawling all over Brooklyn looking for someone with distinctive eyes. Someone who'd stolen from Chenkov. Now someone was in my storage unit, in the exact area where Yuri said Morozov soldiers were heading.
Could be coincidence. Probably not.
I locked the workshop with triple redundancy—biometric, digital code, and physical key. The penthouse's main security system armed automatically as I headed for the door.
The ballerina would have to wait for her new spring, for her chance to dance again. Right now, someone else was about to learn what happened when they touched things that weren't theirs.
The elevator descended toward the garage, toward my car, toward Brooklyn and whatever I'd find in my storage unit.
The Audi waited in the garage, already warm from the remote start I'd triggered in the elevator. Black on black on black, the kind of invisible that cost extra. Bulletproof glass, reinforced panels, engine modified to deliver 500 horsepower when needed. The car equivalent of my tactical loadout—understated until it wasn't.
I took the Williamsburg Bridge at exactly nine miles over the speed limit. Fast enough to make time, not fast enough to attract attention. The city blurred past in streams of yellow light, taxis and late-night delivery trucks creating a river of anonymous movement I could disappear into.
Eighteen minutes to figure out scenarios. If it was Morozov soldiers who'd decided to overstep the unwritten rules, I'd need to kill them all. No witnesses, no reports back to Roman. Bodies would need disposal, evidence would need sanitizing. I knew a pig farm in Jersey that never asked questions.
