"Once I got the scanner unlocked, I went ahead and applied a tourniquet to what was left of his arm."

Maya was surprised, but for once decided to wait for an explanation instead of demanding one. Seeing the look on her face, Dominic quickly granted her wish.

"Korshev wanted the guy alive, remember? Plus, I still had those questions I wanted to ask him, and I figured he'd be feeling a little more...generous, now that we'd gotten aquainted.

"I wanted to know how he'd found out about Alexei's being an informant, and how he knew Tony had gotten ahold of information she wasn't supposed to have...and how he had advance knowledge of our attack."

"I thought he found out about his daughter when she took the bait and came to the warehouse?"

"That's he how confirmed it, but the fact that he set her up like that in the first place meant that he already had strong suspicions about her. He knew we were hunting for him, and making that phone call meant bringing her into the situation. Maybe I was giving the guy a little too much credit, but I figured even he wouldn't have put her in danger like that without a strong reason to suspect her.

"Plus, even if he didn't care about her safety, contacting her was still a risk on his end, because if she hadn't know what he was up to, then the question itself would've let the cat out of the bag to some extent."

"Gotcha," Maya nodded. "So, how'd he know about all of that?"

"To some degree, it was
pretty much the answer I'd expected - - he had some 'friends' in the local PD. What I hadn't expected, though, was just how far things had gone. Not only had they given up the boy as a CI, but they'd also provided Gregor with both the labor and the materials needed to bug his own house, as well as several others - - one of them being his nephew's."

"So...he probably knew that Alexei was about to go public with the information he'd been able to gather working as a CI."

"Yup," Dominic nodded.

"But wait - - he was even bugging his own house?!"

"Mm-hmm. Even had spyware installed on Tony's computer, which is how he knew she'd been hacking into his emails and accessing the police servers. The stuff he'd gotten ahold of was good enough that even she hadn't realized it was installed.

"In addition to the spyware and phone taps, he also had video and audio bugs throughout the house, which were how he knew about our meeting with her, and what we had planned."

"Ok...let me see if I have this straight: he's a wannabe mob boss, is cheating on his wife, and is willing to kidnap and torture his nephew, and even kill his own daughter...but he feels the need to spy on them?"

Dominic chuckled. "Dobro pozhalovat' v moy mir."

"What?" Maya arched an eyebrow.

"Welcome to my world."

"Wait a minute...how much Russian do you speak? That was Russian, right?"

"Yeah. And I'm fluent. Why?"

"Did you know Russian when you were doing that op?"

"Yes.... What are you getting at?"

"Then why'd you ask Tony to translate that letter if you were already fluent?"

"Oh, that," he smiled. "It's an easy way to tell if someone's being honest with you or not - - ask them a question you already know the answer to, but that the other person thinks you don't know the answer to. I wanted to see if she was going to hold anything back."

"There's the irony again," Maya commented, pursing her lips slightly. "You had to hold back in order to find out if she was holding back. This whole thing is like a chess game."

"True," Dominic nodded, a pensive look on his face. Clearing his throat, he resumed storytelling. "After he answered my questions, I needed to get the money situation taken care of. I counted up everything in the storage room, then searched the rest of the building. I found a pretty good amount of extra cash scattered throughout the place."

"What did you do with all of it?"

"Nothing," he shrugged, "I already had something else in mind for the money. In any case, once I finished that, the only thing left was to secure our wannabe mob boss and clear out of there. Normally, I probably would've just bound his feet and cuffed his one remaining hand to something secure and been done with it. But I was worried he would try to remove the tourniquet and let himself bleed out...plus I was kind of in a bad mood...so I just hogtied him instead." Dominic smiled ever so slightly, and there was that glimmer in his eye again. He wasn't about to hide how satisfying he found the thought.

Continuing, he said, "By the time I got back, Korshev was wrapping up his end of the deal. They'd cut the kid loose just in time, and my team was prepping him for transport to a private medical facility. I got a chance to speak with him before they sent him off, and I let him know we'd do everything we could to save his hand, and hopefully reattach his finger.

"After everything he'd been through - - kidnapped, tortured, held captive - -you know what he said? 'I'll be fine, as long as I still have my two most important fingers.'"

"Two most important fingers?"

"His ring finger, for his girlfriend, and his middle finger...for everybody else."

The two laughed, Dominic shaking his head as he added, "That kid was something else."

"He was," Maya smiled, her voice softer than it had been for most of the conversation.

Dominic immediately noticed the shift, but knew better than to get ahead of himself, so he played it cool and continued with the story.