Maldonado nodded and motioned for Lars to leave.
“Slow down but don’t stop pedaling or get off the bike. Your heartbeat would spike,” he warned. “You need to continue pumping oxygenated blood into your legs.”
Like he could get off by himself with all the wires Lars had strapped on him to monitor his heart, and those damn shoes that locked into the pedals.
“When you recover from the cycling, we’ll do some weights.”
Damn Swede, fucking worse than the Gestapo.
“One of these days I’m going to shoot him. Let’s see how he recovers from that,” Maldonado grumbled after Lars left.
Nico smiled, but didn’t say anything.
“Kill please that damn music,” Maldonado ordered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “It’s driving me nuts.”
Nico turned it off. “Death metal. It’s a Scandinavian thing.”
Who the fuck thought pedaling to death metal was a good idea? That shit didn’t even have a rhythm. Salsa, bachata, mambo; that was something one could pedal to.
Wouldn’t it be ironic that after relocating to Florida for security reasons—mainly to avoid getting shot by any of the thousand hired guns of rival cartels—he’d die here of a heart attack, at the hands of this vigorexic asshole?
“We have a problem. Police got a search warrant and have impounded the jet.”
Nico stilled. “The jet is clean. I personally supervised it.”
“I’m sure it is. What worries me is the why. Was everything taken care of?”
By everything he meant everyone. Nico didn’t need explanations.
“I was told so by your men. Pilot, driver, the chick at the airport. The middlemen were disposed of too. Everyone who could have tied Aalto to the jet is gone.”
“Well, those morons missed someone. My sources tell me the police have a witness linking me to Aalto’s murder.”
“Do we have a name for that witness?”
Maldonado shook his head. “You know what to do.” That witness could not be allowed to live; Maldonado had enough headaches as it was without this new threat.
Nico nodded.
Damn Aalto and inflight snacks.
He’d planned to make the politician see reason. If the old fart couldn’t be swayed with money, then he’d resort to blackmail and show him all the footage he had on his kinky extramarital escapades. Convince him how beneficial it would be to forget about his latest proposal and support a less radical path. Unblock the port. Then the bastard had choked on the olive he was eating when Maldonado had shown him the pictures.
“Let me, boss, I got this,” Emiliano had said as the man was turning blue.
He’d yanked him up and attempted to Heimlich the shit out of the politician. Which he did, managing to break his neck in the process.
Old people broke so damn easily. Especially when the Heimlich maneuver was done wrong and the poor bastard was shaken like a rag. In Emiliano’s defense, he did get the olive out of Aalto’s throat.
Pity they had miscalculated and his body hadn’t hit the Atlantic Ocean. He would have been lost forever. But no, another mistake in a long line of mistakes.
“Nico?” he called as the man was walking toward the door. “I want this handled fast and quietly.”
“Of course. I’ll take care of it myself,” the Russian answered.
Maldonado had always followed his instincts, and getting Nico to work for him had been a jackpot.
If he’d been on the plane, things would have gone differently, and they wouldn’t be in their current predicament. But he’d been supervising the labs and dealing with shit back home while Maldonado was left with incompetent imbeciles who not only snuffed the only hope of resolving their logistical issues but were incapable of cleaning up their own messes.
He should have listened to his gut feeling and shot Emiliano when they were just kids. Family brought nothing but trouble.
“What about the last shipment?”
“Still stuck in the port. Paperwork hasn’t come through yet. Controls have tightened.”
Damn. Counting the one the police intercepted at open sea, that was the second shipment they’d lost in ten days. “Business is suffering. We need to deliver the product and get paid for it.” They couldn’t afford more losses. He was beginning to be strapped for cash. Suppliers had to be paid. Funding that never-ending territory war back at home wasn’t cheap. “Payment is overdue. I can try buying some extra time but this situation better resolve quickly.”
They needed to find more effective ways to move the product. Especially now that Aalto was gone and with him the possibility of using the old bastard’s kinkiness to Maldonado’s advantage.
Maybe his successor would be more agreeable. Thank God there were so many ready to take Aalto’s place. Politicians were like cockroaches: they were never in short supply.