The Name of Honor Read online

  After he snugged a black silk tie at his throat, he looked like a serious businessman about to conduct serious business.

  In the sitting room, he fastened a gun belt around his waist—he hated gun belts, but that was what he had—slipped a 9mm into the holster, holstered a .32 at his ankle, and checked the sheaths on his knives. Over it all, he slipped on a black cashmere top coat, because January in Ukraine was fucking cold.

  Tony and Trey stood there like statues, covered head to toe in black.

  “You ready, Ninja Twins?” he asked.

  They nodded, and Angie picked up one of the gun bags. “Get the other, and let’s motor.”

  ~oOo~

  Luckily, Ukrainians drove on the right, like God intended. Angie drove the little Renault out of Kyiv, following the GPS, preprogrammed by the Zelenkos. They were putting a hell of a lot of trust in a provably unreliable ally, and worry nagged at Angie. He was naturally suspicious—he had to be to do his job—and all his Spidey senses were tingling.

  But he had a secret weapon. Something not even Trey and Tony knew about. It was the one thing that had sold him on the possibility of success on this job, the one thing that had convinced him the Zelenkos were worth the risk. So he kept that in mind and drove into the Kyiv suburbs.

  Bondaruk’s neighborhood looked pretty much like any upper-tier suburban neighborhood back home. In the States, there would probably be a golf course on the grounds somewhere, but otherwise they were pretty similar. The lawns were roomy, the streets well paved and well lit, and several properties were bounded with stately iron fences.

  The feminine GPS voice with the British accent announced that they would arrive at their destination in two hundred meters, and Angie cut the lights and pulled over in a lot beside a wooded area that seemed to be a small community park. Bondaruk’s place abutted this park on the opposite side, and his fence had a small gate leading to the park—locked, but guarded only by the perimeter watch.

  Angie checked his watch. They were a couple minutes early. “Let’s run it through one more time. Highlights only.”

  Tony piped up first. “Wait in the woods until the watch is clear. You pick the gate lock. I go in, head to the back. You and Trey to the front. Two guards at the front gate, three on watch, two at the front door.”

  “We pick guys off as we go,” Trey threw in. “Stay in shadow, come up from behind, use our knives, put ‘em down. All goes well, we meet up in front.”

  “And if they see us comin’ and it gets loud?”

  “Then shoot fast and get to the house.”

  Trey was talking a pretty cool game for someone who’d never killed in cold blood before. A memory rose up, of the Golden Boy choking hard in a Bondaruk fight a few years back. He could’ve gotten himself and a whole lot of other people—including two dons, Nick and Vio Marconi—killed that night.

  He’d been in the fire a few times since and had kept his head on straight. But this was different. Angie wondered if all those runs through Tony’s John Wick room were enough to really prepare Trey for this work. Mentally as well as physically.

  Well, they’d find out soon enough. Tonight, Trey would prove he was ready to face his destiny.

  Or they’d all be dead.

  Angie was really hoping for Door Number One, thanks.

  He checked his watch again. “Okay, time to roll.”

  ~oOo~

  The lock picked easily. Angie closed the gate again softly, and by the time he turned around, Tony was already running in a crouch to the back.

  Trey was waiting for him. With a nod, Angie urged him forward, and Trey took the same stance Tony had and headed toward the front. Angie followed.

  He meant to stay back and let Trey handle as much as he could, only step in if the kid fucked up, or if the gate guards were too close together for one man to get them both down quietly.

  If they’d timed this right, Tony would have handled the three on inner perimeter watch by then.

  The fence exterior was rimmed with dense, chest-high shrubs, probably intended to discourage anyone from attempting to scale. But that wasn’t their intention, so the greenery served as cover while they made their way around to the front.

  All those who’d been invited to Yuri’s birthday dinner had arrived and were parked inside the fence. They should have sat down to eat fifteen minutes ago and were hopefully well into their ridiculous toasting ritual by now, probably toasting the health of their pets or something.

  According to Trey, who’d neglected to explain until they were all reeling after puking up their boluses of Ukrainian vodka, Ukies took their toasts very seriously. They drank a whole hell of a lot, and used booze to test the mettle of their new acquaintances. But they didn’t usually slam them back with such speed, not among themselves.

  A test, as Angie had guessed. Well, the Italians had a saying about it for a reason.

  When Trey arrived at the fence corner, he paused, and Angie came up behind him and rose up enough to see over Trey’s head. The short lane at the gate was clear, and the two guards were about ten yards apart from each other, one on the public sidewalk, the other at the gate itself. Neither was holding a ready stance. They were just hanging out, looking bored.

  They weren’t on alert, not expecting trouble. The Bondaruks were secure in their alliance with the Zelenkos and thought the Paganos had been cowed by the attack on Quiet Cove. They had no idea three Pagano men were in Ukraine. They thought they were safe.

  Time to correct their understanding of the situation.

  Angie set his hand on Trey’s shoulder and lifted a finger toward the guard at the street. The shrubbery followed the driveway as well as the fence. If Trey could get to him before he moved, he had a chance to take him down before the guard at the gate knew any better.

  And Angie decided right then not to simply observe Trey. The chance to get the guard at the gate at the same time was too good to pass up.

  Trey nodded. They split up, and Trey crabbed along the shrubs, toward the street. Good.

  Angie followed the fence, letting his San Fratello knife—a gift on the day of his making—slip from its sheath on his arm into his hand.

  The man at the gate turned toward him, settling an AK in his arms like an infant. He wasn’t ready to use it, but he could be in a second. Angie crouched low, into the shadows, and waited. He turned and got eyes on Trey, who was crouched near the street, about five feet, maybe less, from the guard standing on the other side of the hedge. Shit. If he made his move now, the gate guard could catch it in his periphery. Could Trey know that? Would he think to check his six?

  Come on, kid, stay cool.

  He shot a glance toward his man. Still facing his way. Angie hunched in a bit more and popped the strap on his ankle holster. Smaller gun, but he’d get to it faster. Fucking gun belt.

  Then his man sighed and turned away, strolling across the driveway, rocking his head back and forth, like he was tired of being on his feet.

  One quick check to the street—guy facing away, Trey still crouched—and then Angie made his move, crabbing silently, lifting up in time to leap over the shrub and clear it completely—take that, forty-nine—and hooked his arm across the guy’s head, covering his mouth and drawing his scalpel-sharp blade across his throat. As soon as the body went limp, he dropped low again, controlling its fall. Then he swiveled on the balls of his feet and saw Trey dragging the other guy around the hedge. He was standing too tall, considering he was right at the street, but Angie grinned anyway. He’d done it, and not even Angie had heard the scuffle.

  As he watched, Trey got the body tucked behind the hedge, dropped low again, and began crabbing his way forward.

  There ya go, Golden Boy. That’s how a Pagano man handles his shit.

  Not one shot fired.

  Angie stayed low and rolled the body of his guy off the driveway, into the shadow of a big tree, whatever the Ukrainian version of an elm was.

  When Trey got to him, Angie saw the kid wasn’t
as cool as he looked. His eyes were round and haunted, and even in the odd light thrown by the street lights and compound security lights, Angie could see he was pale.

  Killing a man changed you. Once you’d taken a life, you became something you hadn’t been, something most people never were. More than that, there was something unique about holding a man in your arms when you killed him, feeling the life actually leave his body. That marked you. Not just a shift, but an impression.

  Some men felt that as a horror, right from the start. Trey was obviously that kind of man. He would never make an enforcer. Some men felt it as a rush of power. Those men were to be feared above all others.

  Others, like Angie, felt both. His first close, cold kill, he’d felt the rush while the body was still in his arms. His heart had gone off like a Roman candle, and he’d laughed. Giddily. Not with humor, but with an overwhelming blast of emotions that had needed some kind of release and found laughter first.

  Then he’d gone off and found a woman and fucked her until they’d both passed out.

  The next morning, the horror had hit him, and he’d puked his guts out and locked himself alone in his apartment for the weekend.

  He’d killed many men since then. Many. He knew the number but never let himself think it. Because causing death was his job, and he couldn’t do it if he felt them all. He’d had to build up a callus over that part of himself—the part that had felt the rush, and the horror. Death was his job. He was the Reaper of the Pagano Brothers.

  His father had been a grocer, a butcher, and Angie had known from his earliest understanding that he never wanted to live his father’s life, spending his days in a bloody apron. But he’d become a butcher anyway. Sometimes, he even wore an apron. It was, apparently, in his blood.

  Il sangue non mente.

  “You good, kid?” he asked Trey.

  A distracted nod was the answer. Then the kid blinked, took a breath, and nodded with more conviction. “I’m good. I’m good.”

  Angie grabbed his shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze. As he did, Tony showed up on the other side of the gate. A few drops of blood on his face were the only indications that he’d just done a turn of the property and put down three men.

  “Clear?” he asked Tony as they all met at the small, unlocked gate beside the larger cantilevered model that spanned the driveway.

  Tony turned the lock. “Perimeter clear. Two left at the door.”

  Angie stepped through the gate. “Perfect.” He pulled the burner phone from Kuzma and sent a text. A thumbs-up.

  Ten seconds later, gunfire erupted inside the house.

  “That concludes the stealth portion of our program,” Angie said and pulled the Makarov from his gun belt. “Time to party.”

  ~oOo~

  The door guards had run into the house at the onset of the shooting; Angie and Tony took them out in the hallway. By the time they arrived at the dining room, the shooting was over, and bodies lay in a scatter around the table and against the far wall. An elaborate meal had been destroyed, dishes shattered and food and drink splashed over white linen. Sprays of blood and gore plumed over every surface.

  Angie had never lost the sense of awe at how much damage bullets could do in so little time. Less than thirty seconds from the first shot to the last. Maybe less than twenty.

  In the midst of that carnage, four men were still alive: Kuzma. A man Angie didn’t recognize but quickly guessed to be a Zelenko body man. And two older mean he’d seen only in photographs: Ilya Zelenko and Yuri Bondaruk.

  Kuzma, Ilya, and the random Zelenko were standing. Yuri sat at the head of the table. Kuzma had a gun pointed at Yuri’s head.

  The Zelenkos had come through.

  Now it was time for the secret weapon. Angie glanced at Kuzma, who gave him a subtle, almost imperceptible, nod.

  At that, Angie aimed the borrowed Makarov and shot Ilya Zelenko in the gut.

  The old man let out of woof and dropped.

  Yuri shouted incoherently and slammed his hands to his head, hunching into a cower.

  Tony and Trey, at Angie’s side, both jumped and, out of reflex, aimed at the Zelenkos left standing. Tony yelled, “Ange! What?”

  But neither Kuzma nor his body man even flinched. Kuzma kept his gun trained calmly on Yuri Bondaruk.

  Ilya, Kuzma’s grandfather and pakhan, noticed that right away. He rattled off a bunch of Ukrainian in a suffering wheeze.

  Kuzma returned a few words. Angie didn’t know the language, but he thought he understood the meaning well enough. Something along the lines of Nothing personal, just business, he imagined.

  This was the side deal Kuzma had made—kill his grandfather to make room for him at the head of the bratva. With only his best friend—the rando Zelenko, Angie assumed, who was still breathing and clearly on the same page—in on the plan and slated to rise to Kuzma’s right hand, Kuzma could take over without controversy if the Paganos pulled the trigger. Then, sitting at the head, Kuzma controlled whether his bratva would retaliate against an apparent Pagano betrayal of this alliance.

  He could use their extremely profitable partnership with the Romano Family to sideline talks of retaliation without appearing soft right out the gate.

  It had been Angie’s secret weapon because they had this deal on record, and Kuzma knew it. He had a lot of reason to hold to this plan and not double-cross Angie’s team. And neither Nick nor Angie had any problem double-crossing a two-faced shithead like Ilya.

  With his borrowed gun still aimed on the soon-to-be ex-pakhan, Angie went into the room, stepping over bodies and puddles of gore until he stood before Ilya Zelenko. The old man would die from that shot, but not quickly. He was in agony, which was exactly how Angie wanted him for now.

  “You speak English, old man?” he asked.

  Ilya didn’t answer.

  “He does,” his grandson said.

  “Good.” Angie crouched and faced Ilya directly. “Then you will understand me when I say Don Nicolo Pagano sends his regards. He knows you made the call to ally with the Bondaruks, and he knows it was Zelenko men serving that alliance who came through his town and desecrated it. Let this be a message to you as you die”—he looked up at Kuzma to deliver the next line—“and a lesson to those who come after you,”—he returned his attention to the old man—"that he will go to the ends of the earth to render justice. He does not forget, and he does not forgive.”

  Angie stood. He shot Ilya Zelenko in both knees, let him feel that for a second or two, and then put a bullet right in the center of his forehead.

  Then he turned to the other old man in the room. “And finally, Yuri Bondaruk. Zdrastuyte.” He glanced back at Trey, seeking confirmation that he’d gotten the word for ‘hello’ right. His eyes still round with shock, Trey nodded, and Angie turned back to the man he’d crossed an ocean to kill.

  Bondaruk sighed and lifted weary, defeated eyes. “You kill them all. My sons. My family. My friends. All.”

  “You know, I noticed that.” Angie shrugged and pulled up a chair to take a seat at the table. He leaned back as if he were relaxing after a big meal. “What can I say? This is what happens when you fuck with the Paganos. You were warned repeatedly, but I guess you’re not very bright.”

  “So, you have win. And now you kill me.”

  “Well, not now, exactly.” He plucked a pristine roll from a basket on the bloody table, and he took a bite. Around it, he said, “Eventually, yeah. But we got some time. And we owe you more than a death, Yuri. A lot more than a death.”

  He shoved the rest of the roll in his mouth. “Huh. That’s pretty good bread.” After he swallowed, he picked up the nearest glass of vodka, ignoring the slim spiral of red working its way to the bottom, and tossed it back. Then he picked up a bloody napkin and wiped his mouth with a clean corner. He stood, dropped the napkin on the table, brushed his hands of any crumbs.

  “What do you say we get started?”

  ~ 4 ~

  Giada nodded as her ho
usekeeper finished refilling her guests’ glasses and stepped back. “Thank you, Jonathan.”

  With a smile, Jonathan left the room, headed back to the kitchen, no doubt to prepare the next round of ‘light’ snacks.

  Deandra Giocali, wife of Tommy’s consigliere, Bruno, watched Jonathan walk away. “Such a shame to waste that beautiful ass on men. Are you sure he’s gay?”

  Giada sipped her Passito. “He’s married to a man, so yeah. Pretty sure.”

  “C’mon, Deedee—who’s gonna ‘preciate a fine ass better than a gay guy?” Fallon, Tommy’s wife, asked, her tone typically loud and nasal.

  When everybody laughed with her, she flung her arms wide, sending white wine flying from her glass, and gave her hips a vulgar jerk. All Giada’s guests laughed dutifully for the don’s wife—they were drunk, too, so they might have legitimately thought the display amusing.

  “Oh, sorry, Giada! Sorry!” Fallon made a drunken and totally ineffectual swipe at the spilled wine on Giada’s blush-pink leather sofa and then abandoned the effort to resume drinking.

  “It’s okay—it’ll clean. That’s why I serve you lushes white.” She said it with a wry smile, and her guests laughed like it was the best joke they’d heard in ages.

  “It’s so good!” Mia Busto enthused. “You always have the best food and wine. I swear I gain five pounds every month on this night alone. I gotta start fasting for pre-game—Fabi’ll kill me if he sees me gaining.”

  Several heads nodded, oblivious to the subtext of that remark. Julie Uberti said, “I see what you’re doin’, though—you get us boozy and fat so we never talk about the book, since you never read it!”

  Again, her guests laughed, this time, peppering in good-natured jeers about Giada’s habitual neglect of the stated purpose of these evenings.

  No, she never read the book club book. She’d been a reader as a child, an avid fan of all kinds of stories, but she hadn’t read a work of fiction in decades. When she had time at all to read anything more than the news online or real estate contracts, she chose histories or treatises on contemporary politics and culture. She had no room in her life for fantasies and fictions.