38. Lev
Chapter 38
Lev
M ontreal’s a decent city. The nightlife here is full of action. The French influence means there’s a ton of good eating. Except my contacts decide they want to meet in some quiet little neighborhood dive at a corner booth with a stack of poutine and crappy glasses of whiskey.
“Here’s to your father,” my lead contact says. He’s a stocky man named Olivier Bouchard with thinning hair and a thick gold chain. His girlfriend sits at his side and drinks a martini, lips pursed the whole time. I think her name’s Amelie, but Olivier treats her like a little yappy pet dog.
“Here’s to Oleg,” his second-in-command says. Simon’s the more serious of the two of them, taller, thinner, with a serious glare. His wife’s name is Isabelle, and she’s pretty in a tired and pale sort of way. She and Carmie are busy chatting about kids, which is good. Carmie needs a little bit of that.
We toast and drink. I watch Olivier as he wolfs down more food and sends his girl to get another round at the bar. When she’s gone, and Carmie and Isabelle are locked in conversation, he leans in close to me. His breath reeks of alcohol.
“How much did your father tell you about the business here?” he asks, tone very low. There’s a strange, menacing glint in his eye.
“Not much, only that there was a problem.”
He snorts and looks at Simon. “Hear that? There was a problem .”
“He was right, except I doubt he was upfront about the exact nature of that problem .”
“Fuckin-A he wasn’t.” Olivier sneers at me. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I have feelings about your father.”
“I also have feelings about him,” I say, tilting my head. I lay on the charm as thick as I can, practically glowing with it. “Let me guess. He was a big fucking cunt and made your life more difficult than it had to be?”
Olivier barks a laugh and elbows Simon. “Sounds like the kid was here the whole time.”
“His characterization is perfect,” Simon agrees.
“What did he do?” I press, a bad feeling already in my guts.
“Your old man decided he didn’t like the deal we’d already hammered out with Valentin Zeitsev. He came up to my fucking city and started making demands of me and my fucking trucks. But the problem is you and your people don’t have any way to transport your goods from the northern ports down to the lake crossing, and without that overland support, you’re fucked.”
I sit back and study him. Olivier comes off like a brute and an idiot, but he’s definitely not stupid. The man runs a trucking company that’s essentially a front for a ring of ruthless smugglers, gangsters, bootleggers, and thieves. I never knew Canadians could be such cutthroat bastards, but it turns out the French kind are their own particularly hard breed. Maybe it’s something to do with the freezing cold winters.
“What did he want from you?” I ask, already dreading the answer.
“More money. More trucks and manpower. More of everything, and he wasn’t interested in increasing the percentages our way to compensate.”
“He was greedy,” Simon confirms.
I sit back, not happy about this turn of events, as the girlfriend returns with our drinks. Olivier launches into a raunchy story about a hooker working at the truck stops getting into a fight with another lady of the night and how they both ended up knifing each other. He tells it like it’s funny, and I’m only half listening.
Oleg fucked me. He fucked Valentin too. I doubt Zeitsev knew what my father was up to here; otherwise, he would’ve been absolutely livid.
He was trying to cut himself deeper into this deal. And he was risking the whole enterprise to enrich himself.
“Simon, we have to invite Carmela and Lev over for dinner before they go,” Isabella says and touches his arm.
“No, I couldn’t intrude,” Carmie says, shaking her head. “I was just asking about your nursery setup.”
“Happy to help a new mother,” Simon says.
Isabella gets up and drags Carmie toward the bar with a promise of more food. She hesitates and looks back at the girlfriend with a deep frown. “Want to join us, Amelie?”
The girlfriend sighs dramatically and gets up. “Might as well,” she says. “But I’m not talking diaper brats the whole time.”
“I wouldn’t dare bore you for long, darling,” Isabella says, and the three women walk off together.
Carmie throws me a vaguely panicked look as she’s dragged toward the bar.
“I’m going to be direct with you,” Olivier says once the women are gone. “I was losing interest in this deal before your father passed, and now I feel like the whole thing’s fucked.”
“Fucked,” Simon agrees.
“The thing is your father was a piece of shit. No disrespect, but fuck him. Now you come up here to my turf and you think you can repair the damage that’s already been done? I put time, effort, and money into preparing my fleet for your organization’s business, and so far I’ve got nothing to show for it. I’m about to cut my goddamn losses.”
“There’s no need for that,” I tell him.
But Olivier’s not listening. “This is the problem with you selfish fucking American assholes. You think the world revolves around you. But this is Montreal, not Philadelphia. This is my city. Your bosses don’t mean a duck’s barbed dick here.”
I struggle to maintain my composure. “I understand my father wasn’t the easiest negotiating partner.”
“He was a straight-up cocksucker,” Olivier declares.
I hold up a hand. “That’s enough.”
“You said it yourself, friend . You called him a cunt, and you were right.”
“Very right,” Simon echoes. I’m tempted to break his fucking jaw, the useless asshole.
“That’s because he’s my father and I get to speak about him that way. I understand the kind of man Oleg could be sometimes. But he’s still my family, and you should be more respectful.”
Olivier’s jaw twitches. “Sounds like a bunch of demands I don’t really give a shit about.”
This is spiraling. Or maybe this relationship was always broken and I didn’t realize it until now. The damage my father did might be impossible to repair, and I’m not even sure I want to if that means taking more abuse from this worthless, truck-driving Canadian asshole. There are other crooked transportation options in this goddamn country. I should break his neck and move on.
“Everything okay over here?” Carmie asks suddenly. She’s standing at the end of the table like a waitress and hands over a fresh drink.
Olivier throws back the dregs of his second and accepts the latest offering. “All good, mon chéri, merci beaucoup.”
Carmie glances at me, her smile getting bigger and faker. “How about you, Lev? Doing good?”
I plaster on my best smirk. “Fantastic.”
“Since we’re all getting along so well, why don’t we meet up again tomorrow night? Simon, I don’t think a house visit is going to happen since we’re not in town for long, but maybe you boys can take us somewhere else that’s local?”
Carmie beams at them and I swear, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was just a pretty, na?ve girl inserting herself into a bad situation.
But she knows me by now, and she must be able to tell I’m struggling over here. This is her way of giving me an out and an opportunity to regroup.
“I don’t know,” Olivier says, frowning at his partner. “Maybe we could go to the Bald Pelt?”
Simon seems unhappy about that. “You spend too much time there already.”
“We’ll show them a good local spot.” Olivier’s sneer is ruthless. “How’s that sound, Carmie? You in for the Bald Pelt?”
She does not seem in for it at all, but she makes herself nod and politely accept, and I’m left to hammer out the details with our two French-Canadian friends before she drags me back out into the Montreal evening.
“I’m going to kill them,” I tell her as we walk back toward the hotel.
“Go easy.”
“And I’d kill Oleg again if he were still alive. He’s been trying to strong-arm them for weeks. He was the goddamn problem.”
“Now that he’s gone, we can fix it, right?”
“Olivier and his ass-kissing second-in-command both seem like they’re not all that interested anymore. They were insulting me to my fucking face.”
Carmie puts a hand on my arm. “This is why we’re here,” she says softly.
I know she’s right. Fixing this deal with Olivier and Simon is why we came up to Montreal. It’s the only way we can make Valentin lift his silence order and accept me as the head of the Federov branch. If we can’t make this happen, we’ll have wasted our time and I don’t know how we’ll ever manage to fix this shitty situation.
But God, I hate those sneering pricks.
“Fine, I’ll meet with them again, but I’d rather just shoot them both in the skull and move on.”
She stops in the street and puts her hand on my chest. Her lips press to mine in a soft kiss. I love that little smile on her face as she touches my cheek.
“That’s why I know you’re going to be a good leader.”
“What, because I’m not going to murder a couple Canadian cocksuckers?”
“You’re putting the family ahead of your own personal needs and pride. Even though you don’t like it, you know figuring this out with those two is what’s best.”
“Yeah, well, murder’s not entirely out of the question yet.”
“I know. Just keep it in your pants a while longer.” She kisses me again, but this time it lingers. “Now, can you please take me home? I’m tired and I want you to fuck me in that big jacuzzi tub. Then rub my feet when you’re done.”