Chapter 22 Theo
Nikolai Novikov drives the way he does everything else with absolute surety that he owns the road. The other drivers are simply a nuisance that are in his way.
He drives a black Mercedes that smells like leather polish and aftershave. The aftershave is old-fashioned, something with sandalwood, and it fills the car without overwhelming it. Everything about Nikolai is like that.
I've been in a car with him for eleven minutes and I already understand Dom better than I did after months in his penthouse.
"You're staring," Nikolai says.
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Be less obvious about it."
He takes a left without indicating. The city moves past the windows. It's been a week since the field and the dark.
I'm still getting used to a lot of things again.
The bed, for one. Dom gave me the bedroom.
He sleeps on the sofa now, the same sofa I slept on for a month, and he hasn't said a word about it.
The ankle monitor is gone. The keycard for the front door is on the kitchen counter, where he put it the morning after I came back, and he hasn't moved it and neither have I.
I haven't left the building. Not because I can't but because I haven't wanted to yet. That distinction is new and I'm still turning it over in my head.
Today is the exception.
"He'll be there already," Nikolai says. "Dominic is always early. He gets that from his mother."
It's the first personal thing he's said since I got in the car. I file it away. Nikolai doesn't waste words. If he's telling me something about Dom's mother, it's because he wants me to know it.
"Dom told me she died when he was young."
"She did."
He doesn't elaborate. I don't push. There's a boundary there and I can feel it the way you feel the edge of a table in the dark.
The restaurant is in midtown. Cipriani's. Dom told me about it: neutral territory, owned by a Sicilian beta who pays tribute to nobody. The kind of place where men like Nikolai and men like Bert Castellano can sit across a table without someone getting shot.
Nikolai pulls into a space half a block away. He turns off the engine and sits for a moment, both hands still on the wheel.
"You're nervous," he says.
"I'm fine."
"You're nervous and you're lying about it, which is a waste of both our time." He turns to look at me. His eyes are pale blue, washed out, and they see everything. "Luca Castellano locked you in a concrete room for nine weeks. You are entitled to be nervous about sitting across a table from him."
"I'm not nervous about Luca."
His eyebrow lifts. One millimetre. On Nikolai, that's practically a standing ovation.
"I'm nervous about the part where Dom starts a war."
"Dominic is not going to start a war."
"You sound very sure."
"I am very sure. Because if Dominic starts a war, I will finish it, and he will not enjoy my methods." He opens his door. "Shall we?"
I get out. The air is cold and sharp and my coat doesn't quite close over the bump.
Nikolai walks beside me. He doesn't offer his arm, which I appreciate.
The restaurant is warm. The hostess recognizes Nikolai before we reach the desk. I can tell by the way her smile goes from professional to something more careful. She leads us through the main dining room without a word.
Dom is at the corner table. He's in a dark suit, no tie, the collar open. He sees us the moment we enter the room and his eyes go to me first, then to his father, then back to me. He doesn't smile.
Across from him, Luca Castellano is holding a glass of wine and saying something that involves a hand gesture and a smile.
The smile dies when he sees me. It goes out, the way a candle does when you put a glass over it. One moment it's there, warm and bright and charming, and the next there's nothing.
His hand, the one holding the wine, goes very still.
I walk toward the table. Nikolai is half a step behind me. I can feel the baby pressing against my bladder with every step, which is not the dramatic entrance I had in mind but pregnancy doesn't care about dramatic timing.
"Luca," I say.
He looks at me. He looks at the bump. He looks at Nikolai. Then he looks at Dom, and for the first time since I've known anything about Luca Castellano, I see him recalculate.
"Theo." His voice is steady. The recovery is impressive. "I didn't realize you'd be joining us. Dom said you were—"
"Locked in his penthouse? That's what you were supposed to think."
Dom pushes back his chair and stands. He pulls out the seat beside him. I sit. The bump presses against the edge of the table and I shift back an inch.
Nikolai doesn't sit. He remains standing behind me, his hands clasped in front of him, and the picture he makes — seventy-three years old, five foot ten, white hair, plain dark suit — should not be as frightening as it is.
Luca's two men at the bar have noticed. One of them has his hand inside his jacket. Viktor, who I now see is at the far end of the room, shakes his head once. The hand comes out empty.
"I think there's been a misunderstanding," Luca says. He sets the wine glass down. His fingers leave it slowly, as though letting go of something he might need again.
"No misunderstanding." Dom's voice is level. The voice he uses when he's decided what's going to happen and is waiting for reality to catch up.
The table is very quiet. The restaurant noise continues around us — cutlery, conversation, a woman laughing somewhere near the bar — but at this table, there is nothing.
Luca's expression is doing something complicated. "I was going to come back," he says. "With a proper offer. I wasn't going to—"
"You weren't going to what? Keep him forever?”
The front door of the restaurant opens.
Luca's head turns. Everyone's head turns.
Bert Castellano is not what I expected. He's shorter than his son. Heavier, with a broad chest and thick forearms visible below rolled sleeves. His hair is steel gray and his face is tanned and seamed and he walks through the restaurant the way Nikolai drives.
He's flanked by two men who are larger than Viktor, which I didn't think was possible.
Luca stands up. The chair scrapes. "Papa. I didn't—"
"Sit down."
Luca sits.
Bert reaches the table. He looks at Nikolai first. Something passes between them. Two old men who have known each other for decades, who built empires on parallel tracks, who made an agreement a long time ago and have kept it through wars and recessions and the ambitions of their children.
"Nikolai," Bert says.
"Bert. Thank you for coming."
"You said it was important."
"It is."
Bert pulls out the chair at the head of the table, between his son and Dom. He sits heavily. He doesn't order anything. He doesn't look at the menu. He looks at Luca.
"Tell me," he says.
Luca's mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
Bert 's gaze moves to me. His eyes are dark, almost black. They take in the bump, the pallor, the fact that I'm sitting at this table beside Dom with Nikolai standing behind me. He reads the whole story in three seconds.
"You're the omega."
"Theo Holland."
"How far along?"
"Twenty weeks."
He nods. A single nod, heavy with something I can't name. Then he turns back to his son.
"Nine weeks?" he says.
Luca's jaw works.
"I called you." Bert's voice hasn't risen. It doesn't need to. "I called you and I asked you directly. I said, 'Luca, do you know anything about this?' And you said no."
"Papa—"
"You lied to me. You lied to me and you lied to Nikolai and you put a pregnant omega in a hole in the ground for two months and you nearly started a war between our families."
"It wasn't a war. It was leverage. I was trying to—"
"You were trying to prove you're smarter than everyone in this room and you have proven the opposite."
Bert plants both hands on the table. His palms are flat on the white cloth, thick fingers spread. He breathes in through his nose. The restaurant has gone quieter around us. The nearby tables haven't stopped eating but they've stopped talking.
"Nikolai." Bert doesn't look away from his son. "I owe you an apology. My son's actions were not sanctioned by me. They were not sanctioned by my family. The agreement between our families stands. It has stood for thirty years and it will stand for thirty more."
Nikolai inclines his head.
"As for compensation." Bert 's voice drops. "The expenses incurred in recovering the omega. Medical costs. Lost revenue from the casino operation. Emotional distress, if you want to put a number on it. My family will cover it. Whatever the figure, send it to my office. I will not question it."
"That's generous," Nikolai says. "We'll send a figure."
"And my son." Bert leans back. "My son will apologize. To Mr. Holland directly. Now."
Luca's face has gone through several colors in the last two minutes. What's left is a man in his early thirties who has just been dressed down by his father in front of his rivals and who knows, with absolute certainty, that nothing he says will fix this.
He turns to me.
"Mr. Holland. I apologize for what happened to you. It was a misjudgment."
I look at him. I think about the folding chair and the pleasant smile and the empty eyes and the way he said I'm a patient man, Theo as if patience were a gift he was offering me instead of a threat he was making.
It's not enough. It will never be enough. But Bert Castellano is sitting at this table offering to pay for what his son did and reaffirming an agreement that keeps two criminal empires from going to war, and I'm smart enough to know that this is the best outcome available.
I nod. “Thank you.”
Luca exhales.
Dom hits him.
It's fast. I don't see his hand move. One moment Dom is sitting beside me with his hands on the table and the next his right fist connects with Luca Castellano's jaw and the sound is sharp and wet, bone on bone, and Luca's head snaps sideways and his chair tips and he catches himself on the table edge, one hand gripping the cloth, pulling it and the silverware and the wine glass sideways.
The wine glass goes over. Red wine spreads across the white cloth.
Luca's two men are on their feet. Viktor is already between them and the table, one hand up, palm out. The room goes very still.
Luca straightens. There's blood on his lip. He touches it with his fingertips and looks at the blood and then looks at Dom.
Dom is shaking his right hand. His knuckles are red.
"That wasn't sanctioned either," Nikolai says.
"No," Dom agrees. He flexes his fingers. "But it was necessary."
Bert Castellano looks at his son's bleeding mouth. He looks at Dom. Something moves in his face that might, if you were generous, be amusement.
"I think we're done here," Bert says. He stands. He buttons his jacket. He extends his hand to Nikolai and they shake, two men confirming a deal that predates everyone else at the table.
Then he turns to me. He takes my hand. His grip is firm and warm and brief.
"Mr. Holland. I hope the rest of your pregnancy is uneventful. If my family can do anything further, you have only to ask."
"Thank you,” I say again.
He leaves. His men follow. Luca stands up, one hand still on his jaw, and walks after his father without looking at anyone. The restaurant door closes behind them.
The three of us sit at the table. Nikolai finally takes a seat. The spilled wine is soaking into the cloth and a waiter is hovering uncertainly by the kitchen door.
"That went well," Viktor says from across the room.
Dom picks up the fallen wine glass. He sets it upright. He looks at me.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Your hand isn't."
He looks at his knuckles. They're swelling. He flexes them again and winces and the wince is so human, so completely unlike the man who has spent the last three months being ice and iron, that something loosens in my chest.
"You should put ice on that," I say.
"Probably."
He flags the waiter. The waiter approaches with the expression of someone who has witnessed something he will be telling his grandchildren about.
"Could we get some ice?" Dom says. "And the menu. We haven't ordered."
The waiter nods and retreats. Nikolai picks up the wine list and opens it as if the last ten minutes didn't happen. Viktor returns to his position at the bar.
Under the table, Dom's uninjured hand finds my knee. His palm is warm through the fabric of my pants. He doesn't squeeze. He just rests it there.
The baby kicks. Hard enough that I feel it in my ribs.
"It’s awake," I say.
Dom's hand moves from my knee to the bump. His fingers spread. The kick comes again, right under his palm, and he grins.
"We should order," Nikolai says. He hasn't looked up from the wine list. "The veal here is outstanding."