Page 42 of The Bratva’s Captive Flame

I haven't been out to see the site since the night it burned. We had to give fire officials room to work, and rumor has it they are starting to sift through debris today to start clean up. Once in the car, my mind is consumed with thoughts of Isabela and the things Octavio said. Mishka drives, but he leaves me to my thoughts, which I appreciate. I have too much on my mind to small talk or chat about more problems.

When we pull up the site in full daylight, it’s almost devastating. Half the roof is on the ground. The walls that are still standing are streaked up to the eaves where the heat devoured all but the skeleton, and the crews are still picking through it, lifting beams, sifting the wet ash for whatever the Cartel left us to find.

With as much product as we had in this building, I'm shocked the investigators haven't opened charges against us, though there's a chance Solano had his men take what we had before they lit the fire. And there's every chance it was all burned up with no trace of it left for fire marshals to find.

I get out and walk the perimeter of the building with my hands in my pockets while Mishka falls in a step behind me. It's almost painful to see this rubble knowing two of my men lost their lives over this. Part of me wants to be angry and blame, but who? Isabela? It wasn't her choice that I took Octavio. I made that decision on my own. So I am to blame.

"This is where the second team was," he says, nodding at a stretch of collapsed wall near what used to be the loading side. We pause and turn to see the charred remains of one of the bay doors, now lying prone under a beam. "Yuri and Pavel were both right about here when we pulled them out."

There's nothing to see now but the rubble and a tarp the crews have weighted down with a length of pipe. It's a hollow feeling in my gut, one that I'll never forget. Being injured is easier to deal with than the knowledge that men I sent into battle have lost their lives. They had families waiting at home.

"They were good men, the both of them," I say, looking down at the tarp.

"Pavel was only twenty-two years old." Mishka's voice drops to a somber tone. He's feeling the weight of grief too. We've been in this business long enough to know death is part of it, but it's never easy. "It was his first real posting, and his mother's back in Rostov."

"His mother will be taken care of, every month, for as long as she lives."

"I know…" But somehow, Mishka's tone betrays how empty that gesture will be. I'm sure officials have already informed the families. I'll pay all their final expenses for them and make sure they’re taken care of, but nothing can replace the loved one who sits at your table. They'll mourn for years.

We keep walking the line of the wall while I continue reeling. None of this should've happened. Solano moved too hard and too fast to make this anything other than the first strike of actual war. This isn't a warning or a message to me. He is very angry.

One of the fire crew straightens up and calls to another, and three of them converge on a heap of fallen brick near the back corner where a roof beam has come down across the storage racks.

Mishka pauses as we watch them lift the beam up off whatever's under it, and I already know before they get it clear that it isn't good. They talk in hushed tones, not throwing debris away this time but cautiously placing things until they stop and remove their hats. My gut churns. They must've found another body.

They bring him out slowly between three of them and lay him on a tarp away from the worst of the wreckage. Mishka crosses to look before I do, crouches, and I see his shoulders drop.

I don’t know that I want to keep doing this. It's scraping me raw inside, which only makes me more angry, and when I get too angry, I make irrational choices. But slowly, I make my way over to where Mishka is, and when I approach, his head is hanging.

"It's Rydon," he says when I reach him.

I look down at what's left of the man and see that he's right. It's Rydon, who I posted on the count house, not here. It doesn’t make sense. I can see Mishka working the same problem in how his jaw clenches. His nostrils flare and he looks up at me in concern.

"He wasn't on the warehouse roster at all," I say, looking from the body to Mishka.

"No, he wasn't," Mishka answers, standing and wiping his hands on his coat. "Nobody flagged him missing because nobody had him posted here to miss. Fuck, Demin. He's been under that beam two whole days and not one of us knew the man was gone."

There's no reason he should've been here at all. I stare out over the field behind the warehouse watching fog roll over the tall weeds and grass. It's obvious he was in this building at the time of the fire, though I don't see any obvious reason for death other than perhaps smoke inhalation. And it confuses me why he'd be here at all. Unless he had other reasons to be here besides legitimate work.

"What was he doing here?" I ask, though it isn't really a question and Mishka knows it.

"That's exactly what I'd like to know myself," Mishka answers, picking his words carefully. "The crew that hit this place was a small one, six men or maybe eight. Based on what a few of our guys said, they came straight in, went straight to the racks where the product was stored, torched exactly that, and left."

"My God," I sigh as the pieces slowly fall into place. If Rydon was one of them, on the same team with whoever else has been fucking with me, then we aren't doing our job picking apart this conspiracy against me.

"Like they had a map in their hands…" He clears his throat and turns to me. "It's the same as it was in Madrid, Boss. They knew exactly where to go…"

"Could be a man on the street watched the trucks come in over a few weeks. Worked out where we keep it from the outside."

"That could be so, I suppose." Mishka doesn't believe it, and he's not pretending to. "But the storage racks moved last month, when we shifted the product off the south wall after the damp got into it. Anybody working off weeks of watching trucks would've torched the south wall and burned a great deal of empty shelving, and instead they went straight to the new spot, the one only our own people ever knew about."

I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose to try to think straight. I can't line up who was in that raid with who was assigned to this warehouse. If there's a connection, I'm not seeing it. This thing might be bigger than we feared. Or whoever is at the top is issuing orders as if they're mine and they have high enough ranking to pull it off, so my lower-level men think the directives are coming from me. Which is an even worse problem.

"You're certain in your own mind about the racks moving," I say, watching his face for the answer.

"I moved them with my own hands, me and four other men," he answers while he holds my eyes. "Three of those four are dead now. Yuri, Pavel, and the one under that tarp who wasn't even supposed to be here."

There are only a handful of men who could have access and know these things. I can name only a few—Victor, Mikhail, Mishka, and Bart. But I'd trust these men with my life.