Chapter 5
“For the weekend,” she said, as if my sentence needed a clarification I forgot to add.
“For however long I want.”
She pinched her lips and nodded, but I could almost see the wheels turning in her head.
It annoyed me that I couldn’t read her as clearly as I read most people.
She didn’t “speak” with facial expressions or gestures, and she definitely didn’t speak much with her mouth.
I ought to take her to Vegas and sit her on a poker table.
Nobody would see that shit coming. I bet she’d rob them bitches blind.
In the corner of my eye, I caught Neven’s gaze on her ass trailing, slowly, up and up, and I waited until he saw me watching him. Our eyes met, and he swallowed and suddenly found his fingernails more interesting.
“Locate your bathing suit and put it on,” I barked.
Blue eyes widened.
Before she got up to walk naked around my house, I grabbed a towel and covered her. “I can kill all my men, or you can cover yourself. Up to you.”
She rolled her eyes and stood, then walked inside the house wrapped in a towel.
My phone pinged a message, and I read the name of a hospital.
That was it. The name, all Ludi sent since he likely didn’t appreciate having to clean up my mess with the Russians on weekends, days he reserved for his wife.
I scrubbed my face, pissed I had to leave, but I would leave nevertheless.
On my way inside the house, I met Lana coming out in a bathing suit, the same skimpy little thing she wore last night. She stood in front of me, looking up, lips parted, awaiting something, maybe an explanation of where I was headed, but she’d get none ’cause I didn’t work for her.
“Don’t go anywhere. Don’t drink too much. I’ll return with lunch.”
She stepped closer and ran soft hands over my chest, up to my neck, and interlocked her fingers behind it. She pulled, trying to force my head down.
When I wouldn’t bend, she jumped me. Not leaving me much of a choice, I held her up with a hand over her ass, my fingers positively itching to slip under the skimpy suit and stroke her folds. I bet they were wet. I bet my dick would slide right in. I bet she’d feel tight and warm.
“I feel like Chinese,” she said.
Whaaa— A coincidence? Connection? Signs. “Hm?”
She swiped her tongue over my lips and made noises as if tasting what her tongue came away with.
“Orange chicken,” she said.
I tasted like orange chicken. Wow, this girl was weird, but I liked weird, so that was good. She slid off me and joined her friends as I stood there, frowning, trying to figure out the Chinese connection and orange chicken.
“Beef teriyaki for me.” Ivana passed me on her way upstairs carrying a plate for my dad. “I’ll send you what the girls want by the time you’re at the place.”
Fantastic. I ate sweet pussy last night and woke up a runner boy. Women. God help us with them. God help us without them. Grumbling, I walked up the stairs after my cousin, knowing she’d have more to say. She didn’t disappoint. At Dad’s door, she paused, not turning around. “This is serious.”
“I know it is.”
“Then you know what you have to do.”
“I’m taking her.”
Ivana spun, horror registering in her eyes. “What do you mean, taking her?”
“Don’t know yet, but she’s not leaving. Send Lovac for her things.”
Ivana gaped. “No, Nikola, you have to return her and apologize, offer something Mikhail is gonna like. If she were your niece, Mikhail would have to do the same.”
“Or I could marry her. You said it.”
“I was joking. You can’t marry her.”
“Why not?” Dad shouted from behind the door.
“Ooooh,” I shouted back. “Now you can hear? When I’m telling you which medicine is for what, then you’re deaf.”
Ivana pushed inside, slamming the door with her foot.
I stared at it, thinking I’d have to punish her someday.
She bossed men around better than most men, but when she got into the boss mode with me, I disliked it.
Her place was beside me, not in front of me.
I’d have to address this door slamming in my face. But first, a hospital visit I dreaded.
I didn’t want to face Mikhail with a half-baked plan and tell him I’d hold the girl at my house until I overthought my decision and strategized the next decade of my life.
The hospital visit to the man I beat up went as well as expected. Better than expected, actually, because nobody got shot and Mikhail had left by the time I arrived.
On the way back home, I picked up Chinese for everyone and a box of chocolates for Lovac, my driver, as a way of showing him I felt bad for making him bleed, even though he should’ve known better than to talk like that about a girl I showed clear interest in.
When I got home, Lovac accepted the chocolate and apologized for mentioning the girl’s pussy, stating he hadn’t known it would offend me “that much.” Now he knew, so it was all good.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Anything new?” I asked.
“Ivana sent me to get some of the girl’s stuff. The Russians set up shop in her apartment.”
“Did you get her stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“And they let you leave with it?”
“Yeah.”
We walked into the kitchen, where seven men awaited, Ivana pacing back and forth.
Our armory sat on the table. They stared at me, expecting orders.
A glance outside told me nobody was at the pool.
I didn’t have to ask where the girls were.
Anticipating the worse, like Russians gunning down the house, Ivana sent the girls home.
Lovac took the bags of Chinese from my hands and put them on the bar, then took his food.
Starving, I ripped open my container and stabbed an orange chicken with a chopstick while walking to my table.
I sat and ate. “Where is my girl?” The single possessive noun, when used on purpose, spoke more than a paragraph.
“Playing chess with my uncle,” Ivana said.
I snapped my head up, and, mouth full of chicken, I said, “What?” The chicken went down the wrong pipe, and I proceeded to choke, coughing and snorting. Tears in my eyes and shit, I beat my chest and took a drink of water from the glass Ivana handed me.
I cleared my throat. A chicken almost killed me. “Who let her in there?”
“Your father.”
“We have a chessboard in the house?” I asked.
Lovac put down his container. “She asked for hers from the apartment.”
“Huh.” A thought occurred to me. Chess was a game of strategy, moves calculated not only to protect the king, but to beat the opponent at the same time.
It was a game of mental agility, and Dad played it well.
It was a favorite of his. I’d need to watch one of their games, maybe even the one they were playing upstairs today.
That decided, I moved on to the Russians, who waited at her apartment, and let Lovac leave with her stuff. “Lovac, you gonna tell me what’s the message or keep me in suspense?”
“Mikhail said you’ll pay for this.”
“How?”
“How do you think?” Ivana said and crossed her arms over her chest. I stood and got two containers of the chicken before I headed upstairs.
“What the fuck, Nikola.” Ivana followed me.
“Grab your dinner and meet me in Dad’s room.”
She cursed in Serbian, which was never a good thing. We weren’t born there, hadn’t grown up there, but, when really pissed, we expressed ourselves clearly, all cursing directed at our mothers. I entered Dad’s on quiet feet, noting Ivana disobeyed and didn’t come with me.
Propped up in his bed, a crease on his wrinkled forehead, he studied the board. On the other side of the bed, Lana sat with her back to the door. Minutes passed, and Ivana didn’t show, Lana completely ignored me, and Dad never looked up from the game. People were testing me today. Fine.
I dropped their food on the nightstand. Saying nothing, I sat in the nurse’s recliner. Lana got up and moved around the bedroom as if she was born here. Fascinated by how comfortable she was in my house, especially my Dad’s room where only a few people were allowed, I watched her every move.
She picked up an ottoman and carried it from the other side, then dropped it in front of my chair. I rested my feet on it. She got her food and sat on the ottoman beside my boots.
“Checkmate,” she said.
Dad slid me a gaze. “Underestimate her at your own peril.”
“You’re looking perky today,” I said to Dad.
“I’m perky every day.”
“Really?” I drew out the word.
Dad winked at me. I wouldn’t put it past him if he’d been fucking with me for the past two years of my life. One never knew with old snakes, and my dad was a snake. Cold and calculating. Kind of like me.
“And?” I asked.
Dad tilted the board and flipped it, then started placing the pieces inside the casing. “And what? I know nothing. I forgot,” he said with a smile.
“Kind of like the selective hearing?” Once he’d finished with the board, I handed him the box of chicken with a fork we kept in the drawer in his nightstand.
“Most wars,” I said, “start over women. Women in little dresses. Women with too much life and too little life experience. Isn’t that right, sweet girl?”
“She didn’t start anything, son.”
“I didn’t walk into my den and ask to meet the boss.
I didn’t wear a little dress and spread my legs inviting anyone to fuck me.
I didn’t drink.” But she didn’t eat her own pussy or ask to come out of her mother’s womb a Russian mob member’s daughter, and as for the dress, it was my job to keep my temper and my cock in check.
I didn’t say that because I wondered whether she’d planned this. I wondered if she had played me, was using me. I’d find out.
“What happened happened. What are you gonna do about it?” Dad asked.
“I’ll think on it.”
Having trouble swallowing, Dad ate slowly, making sure to chew well. “If you keep the girl and resent her for losses you’re gonna take, then it’s all for nothing.”
I grunted.
“If you war with my uncle, the cartels will move in, and we’re all done,” she said.
Well, well, well, she didn’t say much, but when she did…
I placed a hand over the back of her neck and pulled her closer so her back hit my chest. “Why did you come to me?”
“I had no choice.”
“Because?”
“Because one of the Italians asked for me, and Mikhail would have closed the deal with me on the table.”
“What deal?”
“The one you negotiated.”
“That deal is closed.”
“Yes, but with the dead Italians.”
“Do you mean to tell me Mikhail is aiding someone else’s ambitions and helping the Italians reshuffle their organization?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
I grabbed my phone and dialed Sokol. He picked up on the third ring, and I said, “Get everyone out of New York right now. Find a jet if you need to, but clear out within one hour.” When the shit went down over there, I didn’t want anyone pointing fingers at us. We wouldn’t be there.
Last night, Mikhail had sent Maks to give me some clues, but it was all obtuse and speculative, the truth only coming out now from a girl who’d fucking played me. Fuming, I hung up, stroking the back of her neck when I should snap it.
“A smart pretty girl is always an asset, son. A keeper, I’d say, but you already know that.”
“My men will die.”
“So they die. That’s how the business works.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it. Let’s go.”