20. Nero
20
NERO
“A nything yet?”
Nikolai cusses like a fifteen million wholesale loss isn’t a drop in the ocean compared to what he has in offshore accounts when I shake my head. I understand why. The investigation into the missing coke isn’t about the money. It is the respect he’s endeavoring to return to the Popov name, and the stigma that he isn’t a man you should mess with.
“And not from a lack of surveillance. Roy and Tasha haven’t left our sight for a single second. If they know where the goods are, they’re keeping its location under wraps.”
Miranda helped me convince Nikolai that she was not a part of the sting that stole the equivalent of fifty million in street value from him by using the same investigative skills that’s kept me out of trouble the past twenty-five years.
She’s trusting her gut.
“I think we need to cast the net further. It is someone close to us, but maybe they’re not as close as I once believed.”
I hate the words the instant they leave my mouth. My gut got me to where I am, but I can’t continue waiting for Tasha or Roy to make their move.
The more time I spend on them, the less time I have with Miranda.
I haven’t touched her in days, and it is fucking killing me.
“Or perhaps we should bring them back and force them to speak.”
Nikolai doesn’t seem opposed to the idea. His curiosity and impending nuptials are the only things keeping his head in this game.
“You still think it’s them?”
I half shrug, half nod. I’m the most indecisive I’ve ever been.
There’s only one thing I am certain about.
“It wasn’t Miranda. That is the only thread of certainty I have.”
Nikolai mutters something under his breath about me being snowed under before he sits on the chair behind his big desk and pulls a cigarette out of a pack.
While lighting it, he speaks around the plumes of smoke its lighting inspires. “My ahren believes the same. She thinks you’ve got yourself a good woman. But…”
I could kill him for the delay.
“She knows how far a good woman will go to protect the man she loves.” I’m lost as to where he’s going with this. Thankfully, Nikolai isn’t a man to tiptoe around anything. “Could Miranda have stolen the coke to force you to face the truth on what you truly want?”
I pfft . And here I was thinking I did a good job at hiding my infatuation with my neighbor.
When Nikolai arches a brow, demanding a verbal reply, I say, “No?—”
“Her wholesaler collects goods from the same docks we use to ship stock to the Yurys. She’s done the run with him previously. She’s smart as fuck. It wouldn’t take much for her to put two and two together.”
His attempt to soothe my matchhead short temper with compliments is pointless. “She didn’t do this. She wouldn’t.” I ball my hands, fighting like fuck not to turn our worded exchange into a physical one. “She would tack her husband’s dissected balls to the wall for me, but she wouldn’t…” My words trail off when I recall the last time I mentioned someone’s nuts being tacked to a wall.
“What is it?” Nikolai asks, well versed on my lost-in-thought expression.
We’ve been working together for years. It was more pickpocketing than a billion-dollar drug trade when we were pre-teens, but you get to know people’s quirks relatively fast when they’ve got enough intel on you to put you away for life.
I try to work through my confusion with words instead of violence. “Is Ma still doing the alterations for Justine’s dress?”
Nikolai looks at me as if I’ve grown a second head before he jerks up his chin, mindful I wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t important.
“She came by earlier this week.” Nothing but worship flares through his eyes when he says, “Justine’s stomach is growing more ravishing every day. We’ll have to make a handful more adjustments before Saturday afternoon.” He speaks as if Saturday isn’t tomorrow.
While his eyes stray to the wall of his office, I take a moment to deliberate. I became a part of the bratva because my mother was the head tailor for Nikolai’s father. She made all of Vladimir’s suits from scratch, and although that man rarely respected women, he appreciated my mother’s skills enough to introduce her to his number-one foot soldier.
That man was my father.
Now, my mother wouldn’t piss on my father if he were on fire.
Back then, she was instantly infatuated.
She went home with him the night they met, married him the following week, and was pregnant with me in less than a month.
They had three blissful years until one of my mother’s clients asked if she was nannying for her husband’s wife. She laughed off her claim, finding it hilarious that she would “nanny” her own child.
Her laughter turned to tears when the woman told her about my father’s other wives and children.
My mother removed us from my father’s life as quickly as he entered hers, and she’s not spoken a word about him or to him ever since—neither good nor bad.
I only know their story because respecting the sanctity of a marriage, and the possible outcome she would force me to face for ignoring it, was drilled into me from a young age.
I was so fearful of fucking up when I was a kid that I swore to remain celibate and to never marry.
The first pledge only lasted as long as it took for the females in my grade and those above it to grow boobs, but the last one stuck.
It only shifted when I spotted Miranda for the first time.
If I hadn’t noticed the plain, boring ring on her finger too bland for a woman of her caliber, we would have celebrated our first wedding anniversary last week.
My confession makes me panicked I am more like my father than I care to admit, but my obsession with Miranda ensures I will never betray her like my father did my mother.
I never had sex without a condom before Miranda, and even with no holes evident upon its removal, I aways made my hookups take Plan B the following morning.
I think that was the start of the end for Tasha and me. I had no recollection of our union, and no evidence we had consummated said vows, but I straight up told her she either take the morning-after pill or move her shit out of my penthouse.
She took it, begrudgingly, but I saw the hate in her eyes every time she looked at me. She acted as if I’d stolen her dreams out from beneath her when, in reality, that is what she had done to me.
I hadn’t touched a woman since the day my eyes landed on Miranda, and although I had no memories of my hookup with Tasha, I felt dirty. Like I had cheated.
It honestly made me feel ill—as I’m certain it would my mother if she hadn’t learned the story of my supposed “affair” in the right manner.
After working my mother’s many lectures and warnings through my head, I raise my eyes to Nikolai. He’s watching me, his gawk a mix of attention and unease.
His smirk turns malicious when I say, “Promise me if I bring back the coke untouched, you won’t prosecute the person who took it.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t her.”
“It wasn’t.”
He watches me for a handful of seconds, silently reading me, before he asks, “But you think you know who it is?”
It kills me, but I jerk up my chin.
The coke was stolen from Clark’s. Only those privileged know of its whereabouts. That’s why I took Miranda there. I wanted her to know this isn’t just a rebound thing for me, and if she’s willing to look past the stigma of my life, I’m just as willing to pretend she isn’t too good for me.
Nikolai leans forward, balancing his elbows on his desk. “Is she close to you as believed?”
Again, I nod. “That’s why I need your word.” When he doesn’t look close to agreeing to my terms, I say, “I’ll bring back the coke and pay the loss of revenue for it not being distributed over the past six days.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the money. It is the respect?—”
“That’s also what this is about,” I interrupt, talking fast. “The sanctity of marriage and the consequences when you break your vows.”
It takes Nikolai not even a second to click to the cause of my panic. “Your ma.”
He isn’t asking a question, but I nod as if he is.
His eyes bounce between mine as he asks, “Why would she throw Miranda under the bus like this?”
“Because to her, Miranda is the one at fault here.” I wet my lips before delivering a confession I’d planned to take to the ground. “For decades, she has blamed herself for my father’s betrayal. She said if she had asked the right questions, he wouldn’t have strayed.”
Nikolai looks lost. I understand. I’ve kept quiet about my family’s dramas because it isn’t my burden to share.
“My father was married when he met my mother. She was wife number three.”
“So?” Nikolai murmurs, still confused. “Having more than one wife is the norm in the bratva.” Suddenly, his cheeks whiten. “Just don’t tell my ahren that.”
His hand itches to trek his knife across my throat when a singsong voice asks, “Don’t tell me what?”
Justine waddles into his office.
No, you didn’t hear me wrong. Her stomach is the size of a beach ball.
“Hey, Nero,” she greets before she accepts the chair Nikolai is offering her. It doesn’t have legs like the ones Nikolai and I are seated on—unless you include the one about to rise to attention when Nikolai buries his nose into her neck and breathes in deeply. “What aren’t you allowed to tell me?”
Nikolai doesn’t bother lying. You lose interest in being deceitful when you’re strung out on a drug stronger than any on the market.
“That having more than one wife is the norm in the bratva.” He pops his head up and stares straight into her eyes. “Something you’ll never have to worry about. I have enough troubles keeping up with the needs of your insatiable cunt, Ahren . I don’t want or need more.”
Justine mutters something about him being crude before she flicks her eyes to me. There isn’t an ounce of worry in them, proving she believes she is more than enough for Nikolai.
How do I know this? It is the same gleam Miranda’s eyes got when I told Nikolai I’d walk from the millions he’s lining my pockets with before I would ever place Miranda in the firing line for a crime she didn’t commit.
“Why are you discussing sister wives? Is that something you’re considering?”
I gag. “No. I refuse to share Miranda. Point blank. I don’t care if it is with a woman or a man. She is mine and no one else’s.”
Justine’s cheeks inflame over the rant I should have stopped after the first word.
Nikolai looks like he wants to be sick. He faces no issues pushing through the clump of vomit in his throat, though.
“Nero thinks his mother stole our missing coke.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
He twists his lips. “It isn’t the words you speak, Nero. It is the confirmation on your face.”
The nonchalant way he refers to our world reveals why I was so at ease with discussing its semantics with Miranda.
If the darkness of our industry doesn’t scare away the women we love, nothing will.
Justine’s brows lower as her nose crinkles. “Your mother?”
When I nod, I use the sorrow on her face to my advantage. “But Nikolai won’t pardon her mistake, even if she only did it to teach me a lesson.”
“Nikolai!” She glares at him like he’s a naughty puppy who chewed up her favorite stiletto.
His ego feeds off every narrowed glare, but he tries to act coy. “Pardons aren’t how I operate, Ahren .”
Justine showcases some of the gall she hit the Popov crew with when she helmed the crusade to bring Nikolai home alive only months ago after he was taken by his enemies. “Then I guess it’s lucky you said she stole our coke. That makes it as much mine as it is yours, which frees me to say”—she locks her eyes with me—“your mother won’t face any prosecution from the Popov realm if the missing items are promptly returned.”
“ Ahren …” Nikolai’s tone is full of silent warnings, but there’s no true heat in it. He loves when his angel fans her wings as much as I love when my butterfly stretches out hers.
I know this, and so does Justine.
She peers at her husband-to-be with a sultry grin stretched across her face before she says, “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
I don’t know what her saying references, but Nikolai is more clued on. A smirk plays at his lips as a gleam I never wish to see again passes through his eyes.
I’m out of his office before his demand for privacy leaves his mouth, my strides as confident as my belief Justine has what it takes to make Nikolai abide by her pledge.