To start at the beginning of the story go here.
There wasn’t any getting out of this. I stripped off the trench coat and down to my undershirt, kicked off my shoes. A few of the Russians watched me, narrowed eyes traveling up and down my bulk, my size making them reconsider whether their boss boxing with me was a good idea.
Brick surprised me by stepping forward to help me with the gloves, lacing them up in a competent and speedy manner. In a delaying action I said to him, “You’ve done this before.” He nodded and I asked, “You a boxer too?”
He smiled savagely and nodded again, adding, “But not like Mitnick.” He slapped my shoulder like we were pals. “You are doomed.” I climbed into the ring anyway.
In the ring, Mitnick moved his feet in a quick dance that shuffled him around me, producing more anticipatory chuckling from the crowd. I tried to keep to a corner, but Mitnick circled me, throwing a few jabs that were easy to avoid, but pushed me into the center of the ring before I realized what he was doing. I had to rotate to face him, keeping me off-balance.
In between a few glancing jabs he said, “You have made my houseguests angry.” I opened my mouth to reply, but Mitnick interrupted with the first solid blow. It rang my bell.
He continued, “I ask them to send Mikhail to help you, Mikhail disappears.”
I kept my hands up to ward off his fists. “Pyotr goes to ask you about this and you assault and rob him.”
Mitnick stepped closer and landed a series of body blows that that I mostly kept at bay with my elbows. “You bring police here, insist to meet Nika and now –” Mitnick punctuated his next sentence with fiercer jabs. “Nika is gone and the police have begun raids against me.”
With the pattering of blows, I felt my anger begin to rise. I focused on Mitnick’s comment about the most important thing.
I poked my head out from between my gloves. “The police?” Mitnick rewarded me for dropping my guard with a quick tap that glanced off my forehead.
“Yes! The very same night the police you brought to my house – what was his name?”
It took me a moment to find it. “Rotella.”
“Yes, the very same night you brought him here, his comrades in the police began.”
“You told me to bring him here.”
“Indeed. This Rotella, he must have hidden his intent.”
“From both of us. Let me go find him and you can play with him in here.”
Mitnick laughed as if nothing would please him more. “Did you not hear me? Nika is gone.”
“Nika’s gone?” The constant barrage from Mitnick made it hard to think of anything smarter to say.
“Yes! She stole one my automobiles and drove down the mountain.” Mitnick spoke like a parent cheerfully discussing a child’s mischievous behavior. “She is so clever! Not one of us is able to find her.” Mitnick hit me like crushing disappointment. “How could she, a stranger to this place, manage to stay hidden?”
“We’re all strangers here,” I replied. Mitnick’s smile floated above his own guard, wistful and bright. I took the opportunity to try and land my own jab and nearly got him, but he swerved away. Thinking of Sergei’s bruised corpse, I wondered if he had to endure this before his death. “Maybe you should have had someone watching her.”
The series of jabs this provoked were more forceful, but I had anticipated them, retreating out of reach. His cheer diminished, Mitnick replied, “We have all been watching her. Escape is always possible. But how has she stayed hidden? She has no passport, no money.”
Artfully answering Mitnick’s questions was made imposible by his fists. However, the busy hours he’d had since midnight, didn’t escape me. Dodging a glove, I tried to use that as a distraction, “You think the police raiding your operations has something to do with it?”
“The world is filled with things I do not know.” Mitnick emphasized his point with a solid gut punch that nearly knocked me over. “It is odd to me, though, that after such a good demonstration of faith the inspector should do this.”
With pain radiating from his last blow, I dropped my guard and Mitnick pummeled me. I hobbled on my feet as he shuffled away and said, “I think he is a liar. I think I am surrounded by liars.”
I tried to keep my hands up, elbows close to my body. “If she said she was a prisoner, why wouldn’t Rotella just arrest you for kidnapping?”
“Indeed. Do you know the Corsican boy?” The change of subject confused me as much as the fists. “His name is Lanzo? You met him him after he pestered me in the casino.”
“I remember his friends, the ones you sent to kick my ass.” Two jabs distracted me from a right cross that caused the edges of my vision to blur. I wobbled back adding, “You could have just saved everyone a lot of time and done it yourself.”
Mitnick laughed again and I tried to catch my breath, ribs aching. “Dur and Zakhar found you at his uncle’s shop the first time they brought you here.”
“Yeah. I was told to make sure he got the message not to come around the casino anymore. Your boys interrupted me.”
“So you have not seen this Lanzo since?”
Through my rising heartbeat and the pain crowding my brain, I tried to think. Had one of Mitnick’s men seen me with Lanzo? Had he made a connection?
Instead of answering I channeled my anger into moving closer to Mitnick, taking him by surprise with a series of fast, wild counter-attacks. After landing a few punches, I asked, “Who cares about that idiot?”
Mitnic dodged away. “He has caused much trouble outside of the casino.”
“That’s probably why Atwell wanted me to talk to him. I dropped by his uncle’s a second time, but he didn’t see me.” His uncle couldn’t see me. He was dead.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
To read the author’s published work, go here.
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