Chapter Three
KRISTO
It's no good here.
No interest?
Interest but no money.
Fuck.
Houston?
Not good here either.
Watch your back.
I will
And your front.
Luka detested Houston. The heat, the humidity, the traffic. He couldn’t wait to get back on a plane and return to his quiet, secluded villa.
I shouldn’t even be here.
He didn’t see the point in flying all this way to have dinner with her family.
This was a marriage of convenience. Neither one of them cared about doing any of this bullshit.
Being tied to this family of backstabbing assholes was the price of peace, and he would do his duty, even if it sentenced him to years of unhappiness.
The alternative was something far worse.
A bullet to the back of the head if he was lucky.
A much longer and more creative torturous death if he wasn’t.
It was the same fate that awaited Aleksander Dushku, currently a hostage in the care of the Raffaelli family, if this marriage didn’t happen by the end of the summer.
We’re running out of time.
Instead of dealing with this nonsense about Dafina refusing to leave Houston, he should have been back home handling business.
But Besian had heard through a contact in the front office of the basketball team where Dafina worked that she was planning to come right back after the wedding.
Apparently, she had no intention of staying in Tirana to try to make their arranged marriage work.
Frankly, he didn’t blame her, but there were appearances to keep up and expectations. So. Here he was. Hurtling toward what was sure to be the worst dinner of his life. Trying to think of some way to convince his soon-to-be wife to give up everything she’d worked so hard to earn.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he retrieved it. He glanced at the screen and frowned at the message waiting for him.
I miss you. Call me.
Liliana had been texting and calling nonstop since he broke things off with her three weeks ago.
Some of the texts were simple pleas like this one, but others were seductive nudes.
She wanted him back, and she was making it clear that she was willing to be his side piece.
She ought to have more self-respect. She deserved better than being his mistress. She deserved to be someone’s wife.
Just not mine.
She should have been Kristo’s wife.
Would have been if I hadn’t gotten involved and ruined things.
Ignoring the wave of disgust and shame that roiled his gut, he scrolled to the next message. Because the universe had a sick sense of humor, it was from Kristo.
Cousins born three years apart, they looked so similar they were often mistaken for twins. As children, they had pranked friends by switching places, but during the bloody war with the Dushku family and after, Kristo had often played the role of body double.
And how did I repay him? I left him to rot in a Dubai prison for two years.
He hadn’t wanted to leave him there. He’d fought to get him out, but Zec had said that trying another bribe after two failed ones would cause incredible offense.
As far as Zec was concerned, Kristo doing time in prison was simply a cost of business.
Luka had chosen Zec as his underboss because he trusted him, and no good would come from second-guessing and overriding him.
So, he’d relented and left Kristo there. Sure, he’d sent extra money and made payoffs to ensure Kristo’s time was as easy as possible. That didn’t change the fact that Kristo spent months behind bars while Luka enjoyed freedom.
And his cousin’s on-again-off-again girlfriend.
It had been an accident that first time. He and Liliana had been drunk and sad. They’d ended up in bed in a mutual sharing of pain and grief. It should have stopped there at that one stupid mistake—but, here they were, years later and still mired in a mess.
Kristo had forgiven them. He hadn’t even been angry.
Resigned, maybe, but not mad. He insisted he understood that Liliana couldn’t wait forever, and technically, they hadn’t been together when he’d been arrested in Dubai.
They’d been on one of their breaks, so, really, it wasn’t that big of a betrayal.
Kristo being so forgiving made the whole situation worse.
In a sick, twisted way, Luka had wanted his cousin to beat his ass over it.
He’d wanted Kristo to hurt him, to make him pay for leaving him in that prison, for betraying him with Liliana.
Not being punished made the whole thing so much messier and uglier.
A wet cough to his left interrupted his troubled thoughts.
He glanced at Artan Dushku with thinly veiled disgust and then turned his attention back to the window of the Escalade.
The decrepit old bastard who had ruined so many lives with his conspiring and greed refused to die.
COVID and pneumonia had nearly killed him, but Artan was too fucking obstinate to give up.
At this rate, the Dushku patriarch was going to outlive all of them, probably fueled by pure spite.
In the front seat, Ben Beciraj, his cousin, expertly navigated the traffic. Devil, a Houston street captain, rode in the passenger seat. Half his face was a wreck of twisted, puckered, discolored skin.
Luka checked his watch. They were a fashionable twenty minutes late for the dinner party.
His plans were simple. Try to get to know his soon-to-be wife a little better.
Avoid her mother. Eat dinner. Make a short speech to show he cared.
Flee and retreat to the guest room at Besian and Marley’s house.
The only bright spot of the trip was the small family reunion earlier that afternoon. Seeing Rina, Besian and Marley and meeting Ben’s wife and new baby had been the highlight of an otherwise hellish week.
But his little sister had noticed immediately that something was amiss.
Not even her excitement for sharing all that she was learning and accomplishing as a student at university could cloud her radar.
She had always been good at reading him, annoyingly so, and she had zeroed right in on it the moment they were alone.
There wasn’t much he could or would tell her.
Woman trouble was part of it including his breakup with Liliana.
They had never been serious, and he had been clear from day one that there was no future with him.
He had a duty to marry Dafina Dushku, and he intended to honor that promise.
He would be faithful and loyal to his wife, even if he didn’t like or love her.
But Liliana had other ideas. She had thrown a tantrum when he ended things, demanding that he keep her on the side. It had been a reminder that she never really knew him at all. If she had, she would have known that he would never be unfaithful to his wife.
But I didn’t keep faith with my cousin. I broke that loyalty. Why would she think my marriage vows would be any different?
His messy relationship with Liliana had brought some very uncomfortable political heat.
Selim, her father, was a high-ranking government official who wasn’t happy his daughter had been set aside.
He seemed to be under the impression that marriage had been the eventual outcome of his daughter’s dalliance.
Now that it wasn’t, Selim was using his government ties to slow down shipments and dig into bank accounts.
And that was one place Luka didn’t want anyone looking.
The family coffers were running dangerously low.
There were problems with payments up and down the line.
Product and cargo were piling up in their warehouses.
Normally, they could sit on things for a bit, wait out any trouble, but there were other problems.
The unallied northern mafia families were trying to encroach on his territory.
They had a powerful and anonymous backer, someone with deep pockets who wanted to sow chaos and upend the shaky peace that had existed between all the families for almost two decades.
He could feel the pressure building. Something had to give—and it wasn’t going to be him.
Luka shifted uneasily in his seat. In the last few years, he’d made too many mistakes. Mistakes that had cost the family money. Mistakes that had caused him to lose the respect of his men.
Besian had forgiven him for that crypto blunder, but Zec had not.
Probably never would, honestly. Zec still held a grudge about another deal that had gone bad nearly four years ago.
The family’s fixer had worked his brand of black magic to salvage the situation, but it had come at a great expense to Zec.
Luka couldn’t prove it, but he’d always suspected Kristo’s stint in prison had been payback for that.
Zec would never dream of rebelling or stepping totally out of line, but he wasn’t afraid to push back or be a little underhanded when the situation called for it.
He knew his worth, knew his power and connections could not be easily replaced.
If I’m not careful, he’s going to lead a coup. If that happened, Luka wouldn’t survive. Neither would Rina or Drita or Kristo. Besian and Marley would be left alone, but only because Zec and Besian were closer than brothers. Those men had bled and nearly died together on more than one occasion.
And no one on the street level would shed a tear if Zec took my head. It was a painful thing to admit, but there it was. Everyone doubted his ability to lead the family. He wasn’t the right man for the job.
His gut soured at the prospect that he wasn’t. He had been so young when he took up his father’s mantle. Too young, really. Still a boy. He had tried to learn from his uncles and the older men in the organization, but at some point, he had to sink or swim.
And I’m fucking drowning.