Sold to the Bratva King novel · Chapter 6 of 32
Chapter 6: Clean Slate
I could feel Matvei go still beside me.
"I know him," I said. "He lives in the pool house at my brother's."
"Lived," the detective said. "As far as I know he still does. Does he ever bring things home? Boxes. Cases. Things that came off a ship?"
I thought about the pool house. I'd cleaned it every Tuesday for six years.
"He keeps cartons in the second bedroom," I said. "Watches. Cognac with labels I can't read. Handbags still in the plastic. He told me if I touched them, he'd break my fingers one at a time."
The detective wrote that down without blinking.
"Somebody's been lifting from Zorin containers at Atwater Marine for three years," she said. "The paperwork says Mr. Zorin's own crews did it."
"My crews don't steal from me," Matvei said pleasantly. "It's bad for their health."
She gave him a long, flat look. "I didn't hear that."
"Are you working the crane operator?" I asked.
Her pen stopped.
"That was ruled an accident two years ago. I'm working theft." She studied me. "Why?"
The camel strip was in the red can, four floors up the channel, behind a lock on my side of the door.
"No reason," I said.
She handed me her card anyway.
After she left, I sat on an overturned bucket on my clean floor and turned the card over and over in my fingers.
"You could have given her the coat," Matvei said.
"She'd have lost it in a drawer. It was ruled an accident."
He didn't argue.
"I'm going to start a company," I said.
He raised his scarred eyebrow.
"Trauma cleaning. Crime scenes. Unattended deaths. Hoarders. Floods. The things nobody else will touch." I looked at the drain. "There's a state certification. I looked it up on my phone at five this morning."
"I'll fund it."
"No."
"Halle..."
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