The Deadly (Part 3 of the Syndicate Series)

Chapter 10- An Offer

Allegra:

My declaration seemed to comfort most of the men in the room. Aldrich seemed to accept it as well, and moved ahead to listing out other men that were suspected of running oher rings adjacent to the Russians. The list was growing longer by the minute and I think poor Mason was starting to feel overwhelmed with the amount of people he was going to have to research, but Phoenix seemed to be helping him along relatively well. We were at it for another couple of hours before anything broke us from our rhythm.

The doors swung open, and instinctively I went on alert again before realizing that I recognized the man. It was Aldrich's right hand, Christopher, that I had previously met at the Italian headquarters and in the bar. He nodded to me before realizing that the rest of my team was there as well.

It almost gave him pause, but he continued to the front of the room where he handed Aldrich a stack of papers, "Took a minute, but there they are."

Aldrigh nodded his thanks before turning to the board on the other side of the room and beginning to hang the individual pages there. Each one had a face in the corner and information, like a rap sheet. I noted the one face that I did recognize, Niklov.

"Alright," Aldrich leaned back against the table once he had finished putting everything up. "There have been a lot of changes over the past couple of years in the Russian system, a lot of men have left and a lot have been killed. Niklov has no problem getting rid of men that he doesn't see as valuable anymore."

"And their cyber security is infuriatingly good," Phoenix noted, knowing from experience.

Mason, who was still looking a little overwhelmed, threw his hands in the air as if he had just won a victory, "Yes, thank you! I've been saying that for weeks now. I haven't been able to get through at all and I'm pretty sure they're going to murder me for it."

Christopher furrowed his brow and Aldrich rolled his eyes. The motion felt oddly childish to see on someone of his position, but it almost made me smile. A couple of the other men in attendance seemed annoyed, but I had the feeling they didn't mind the kid hanging around. He was a pretty good comedic relief.

"Anyways," Aldrich continued. "We're all familiar with Niklov of course, but what I'm more interested in is his second in command, Dimitri. He's not as prominent in the organization from what I can tell, it doesn't look like Niklov consults him as much as one of his enforcers, Michail."

"Those are the ones that Alessio was talking about in his meeting," Christopher muttered almost to himself.

One of his other men sitting a few chairs away pointed to a picture of a woman who didn't appear very happy at all in the photo, but to be fair, most of these pictures weren't exactly headshots. They were just photos from public appearances or secretly taken on scouting missions. "The girl?"

"Alessio had a guest there.... Eliana, her name was, and she said that she had contact with a woman named Scarlette while being held captive by the Russians. Niklov doesn't keep any female employees but one of our scouts has confirmed that the woman in this picture was seen recently in Niklov's house."

The picture itself wasn't planned, it looked like it may have been shot from outside of a house through a window at high resolution. The woman seemed to have some discoloration on her face but it was difficult to be sure with so much shadow cast across her body, but she seemed bruised. A deep frown pulled at her lips as she seemed to be glancing back at someone over her shoulder.

"So what is she doing in the house?" One man asked, squinting from the back of the room to look at her picture.

"Eliana said that she was Niklov's most recent... acquisition," Aldrich hesitated, trying to find the proper words.