“Put them on the ground.” Sergei gestured at the man he’d shot. “Out of his reach.”
The Italian glanced at his wounded partner, then crouched and laid his weapons where the other guy couldn’t reach them. Hands up, he stood again.
Sergei nodded sharply toward the car. “Open the trunk and get in.”
“What?” The guy laughed, a borderline hysterical sound. “You crazy? I’m not—”
Sergei leveled the gun at the goon’s face. “Get in the fucking trunk.”
His eyes widened, and his tanned Italian complexion paled. Then he shoved his would-be victim aside, sending the man crumpling the rest of the way to the ground, groaning and clutching his chest. The goon eyed Sergei and the open trunk, and then he climbed inside.
With his foot, Sergei nudged the one he’d shot. “You too. Get in.”
“What?” The Italian blinked up at him. He clutched his knee, blood soaking his pant leg and streaming from between his fingers. “I can’t walk, you fuck!”
“Stop being a *.” Sergei aimed the weapon at his other knee. “Or I’ll make sure you can’t crawl, either.”
The man struggled to his feet, using the car bumper for support and whimpering whenever he moved his wounded leg. He started to climb into the trunk but couldn’t bend his knee.
“Fuck. I can’t…”
Sergei shoved him unceremoniously into the trunk, and despite their significant size difference, he knocked the sobbing Italian on top of his partner. Sergei didn’t even flinch when the guy’s head smacked against the trunk lid. By the time both men were completely inside the trunk, the wounded one was howling in pain, and from the smell, Sergei was pretty sure one or the other had pissed himself.
Whatever. Wasn’t Sergei’s fault they’d chosen this alley out of all the other options in this town. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from the trunk and put a piece over the screaming man’s mouth, but it didn’t muffle him all that much.
“Shut the fuck up,” Sergei snarled. “Or your other kneecap is gone.”
The man shut up. Tears were streaming down his face, and he was hyperventilating now, but he was more or less quiet.
Sergei bound the first guy’s hands, and then put duct tape over his mouth too. Thank fucking God—another minute of his bullshit, and Sergei would’ve shot them both then and there. Even now he was tempted just to rid the world of two more Mafia scumbags like the ones who’d murdered his family.
But not here. Not this close to the club.
He slammed the trunk and turned to the other thorn in his side—the guy they’d been roughing up. Leaving him here wasn’t an option. The cops were too jumpy to ignore a battered Italian, and they’d start prowling around in this part of town. A little too close to home for Sergei’s taste.
He didn’t care if the man lived or died as long as he didn’t do it here, so Sergei crouched beside the wounded man and quietly asked, “Can you walk?”
“Don’t know.”
“Let’s see if we can get you into the car.” Sergei offered him an arm, keeping his pistol firmly in his other hand in case the wise guy decided to try something funny, and helped him to his feet.
He didn’t try anything. The poor bastard probably had some busted ribs, maybe even some bleeding on the inside, judging by the way he doubled over and kept an arm around his middle. With Sergei’s help and a pained sound, he lay back across the backseat.
Sergei shut the car door and scanned the dark alley. As far as he could tell, no one was around. No one had seen a thing. He fully intended to keep it that way.
None of the men in the car were going anywhere without his help, so after he’d collected the weapons and kicked some gravel over the blood, obscuring it enough that it wouldn’t draw attention, he headed back inside. He took the chair away from the door and strolled into the club.
He found his boss by the bar, and flagged him down. “Hey, Paco. I need to step out for a bit. Take care of something.”
Paco raised his eyebrows. No doubt Jesse had told him about the shit going on in the alley. “You need a hand?”
“No, I’ve got this. Just need some time.”
Paco didn’t ask questions. People in Mafia-run towns usually didn’t—the less they knew about shady shit, the better.
With his boss’s blessing, Sergei left the club. In the car, he found a pair of leather gloves in the glove compartment and put them on so he didn’t leave any more fingerprints in or on the vehicle. Then he drove the goons’ car out of the alley and safely away from the row of clubs. He continued along the waterfront, past a deserted park and down to the marina, where he stopped.