Page 62 of Kidnapped Bride

21

NIKOLAI

I was sleeping peacefully when my phone rang, jerking me out of Kira's arms where she had finally settled against my chest. I swiped to answer and Vlad's voice barked over the line.

"We got 'em, Boss. Markin's shipment is here… And you're gonna love this. It's packed full of cocaine."

I peeled myself out from under the comforter and found my slacks and shirt in the darkness, not answering him until I stood in the hallway with the phone pinched between my ear and my shoulder, sliding my pants on. "Does the manifest show where it's going?"

"No but we got the origination. Looks like it's Cartel drugs."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes. Don’t do anything until I'm there." I hung up and pulled the door shut quietly, then paused for a second. If I left her unguarded, would she run? But she had access to my phone the whole time I was off getting Anya to help her with her sour stomach and she never attempted to call for help. I had to risk this and trust that she finally knew she belonged with me.

I moved silently through the house, finding my car keys and my gun, then slipped out.

The shipping yard was chaos when I pulled up. Vlad had two of our dock guys standing guard near a container on the eastern end of the yard that had been separated from the rest and moved behind a row of empties where it couldn't be seen from the main road. Gregg was there too, leaning against the container with his arms folded, and when he saw me walking across the gravel he pushed off the container and straightened, looking more alive than I'd seen him in weeks.

"Tell me what we've got," I grumbled. I didn't like being dragged from my sleep in the middle of the night, but if it meant bringing my worst enemy down, then it was worth it.

"Manifest says machine parts out of Guatemala but the weight was off by six hundred kilos, so our guys pulled it for inspection like you ordered." Gregg and I paced toward the door of the container and rounded the front to see Yakov and Vlad there. "When they popped the seal and moved the front crates, it took about thirty seconds to find it."

Vlad had the container doors open, staring into them with glassy, fatigued eyes. The front half was packed with legitimate wooden crates stamped with Spanish labels and customs markings, all of it looking exactly like the industrial equipment the paperwork described. But behind the first two rows, stacked floor to ceiling, were wrapped white bricks, tightly sealed in plastic, packed into black duffel bags that had been wedged into every available inch of space behind the decoy cargo. One of them had spilled open during transport, and a few bricks lay scattered on top of the parts.

"Blow, Boss," Vlad said. "A lot of it. We estimate two hundred kilos from what we can see, and there's easily space for double that in there."

I whistled through my teeth as I stepped into the container and pulled one of the duffels forward and unzipped it. The bricks were uniform, professionally pressed, with a small stamp on each one that looked like a playing card. "You're not wrong… The Salazar Cartel sent this shit… And we're sitting on fifty million at least if you're right about there being almost eight hundred kilos." I turned, locking eyes with Vlad. "Whose name is on the manifest?" I asked.

It was obvious to me that this was the shipment from a big player, and I knew very few families who thought they could move this much nose candy, and I was one of them. After he took my shipment off the road, he owed me. Maybe not this much, but how was he going to stop me?

"Vostok Trading LLC…" Gregg nodded at the black duffels. "But this came from Rizone Pharmaceuticals."

"A known player for the Cartel." I sighed, staring at the mess. Fucking with Cartel drugs wouldn't end well for us, but Salazar would never know who took his drugs, especially if we sicked him on Markin as the fall guy. And I knew just how to do that without getting caught. That was assuming Salazar hadn't been paid yet.

I zipped the duffel, dropped it back onto the pile, and stepped out of the container. Yakov watched me with stoic eyes, waiting for orders, but Gregg was antsy. As green as he was in shit like this, and after having been shot while fighting these bastards, he wanted revenge.

"I say we call the fucking cops," he said. He was too young and eager. He thought it was that simple, but I'd been around in this business long enough to wince at how stupid that sounded. "We let them take Markin down. He goes to prison and this whole war is over."

"And then what?" I glowered at him and he blinked. "You think the Cartel who shipped this isn't gonna get wrapped up in the shit?" I stalked toward him, knowing he had to be taught properly. "Salazar's fingers are all over that and the DEA would shred every container on this dock. We'd have our own shipments seized in a raid.”

The kid dropped his head, cheeks blazing with anger as I tore into him.

"If we turn this in, every criminal organization in this city finds out we narked. The Cartels come after us first. Then every crew that's ever moved product through this port pulls their business because they can't trust us to keep our mouths shut. We'd be finished inside a month. Not from Markin. From everyone else."

"Yeah," Gregg mumbled, sulking because I put him in his place. "But what do we do with it, then?"

"This much blow?" I shook my head and almost laughed. "Markin's on the fucking hook… No way he paid the Cartel that much money already. When this goes missing, he'll know who took it and he'll be the one hunted down when he can't pay them back."

"They're going to come looking for it," Yakov said.

"Let 'em. By the time Markin figures out where it went, it'll be locked down somewhere he can't reach." I took a step back and stared into the dark container as Vlad pulled out his phone.

A shipment this big dwarfed what he stole from me. There was still a chance Salazar would come looking, but if we played our cards right, the only thing that would happen would be us taking over Markin's deal with the Cartel and Markin going belly up.

Vlad got a truck lined up while I helped the men unload the rest of the bags from the container. It took us thirty minutes, and by the time we had the final bag of what appeared to be well in excess of the estimated four hundred kilos, I was drenched in sweat.

The truck backed into place, along with a decoy truck to be driven by Gregg, and we started the process again, lifting bag after heavy bag of plastic-wrapped powder into the truck. By two in the morning, the shipment was secured and we pulled the door of the truck shut.

"Get on the road and tell me when this is secured. We'll store it in the hangar for tonight and parse it out in smaller moves over the next week. By next Monday, that shit will be hitting the stores and we'll be raking in the cash." I ran a hand through my sweat-damp hair and Vlad jerked his chin up, gesturing for Gregg to follow him.