23. Emzee
EMZEECHAPTER 23
F ord and I stayed up all night, holding each other and talking about the future.
Making plans. Admitting our hopes and fears.
That night turned into the rest of the weekend, which we spent ordering takeout, having sex, and trying to plan our next steps—and ultimately, what we were going to do about the Bratva and his parents and the money.
Everything was fucked, on the one hand, but at least we were together now.
We were a unit. A family.
We’d figure something out.
I was woken up just after five a.m. on Monday by my phone ringing.
Ford groaned beside me in bed, and I fumbled for my cell on the nightstand.
“Hello?” I murmured groggily.
I was greeted by not one, but two familiar voices.
My brothers. On a three-way call.
“Hey, Em,” Luka said.
“Did we wake you?” Stefan asked.
My heart immediately started pounding.
I quickly got up and snuck out of the bedroom, not wanting to wake Ford, and settled on the couch in the living room.
“It’s almost five in the morning,” I pointed out.
“Of course, you woke me.”
“Sorry,” Stefan said, but he didn’t sound very sorry at all.
“It’s urgent,” Luka added.
Something bad must have happened.
It was the only reason they’d be calling at this hour.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, panic and morning sickness churning in my gut.
“Don’t try to sugarcoat it. Just tell me.”
Munchkin came out of the bedroom, padding across the living room before hopping up on the couch next to me.
Thank God for my dog.
He always knew when I needed extra support.
“I had a…visitor tonight,” Stefan said carefully.
“From Russia.”
My heart started pounding even harder.
“Oh no. What happened?”
“Don’t worry, he’s gone now,” Luka said.
“Stefan had some words with him.”
I pulled Munchkin into my lap, hugging him to my chest. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah,” Stefan said.
“This is a hard line for me, and those fuckers have crossed it. Nobody messes with my family.”
“Not that,” I said.
“I mean yes that, but…I have something else to tell you.”
Quickly, I caught him up on what had happened to me at the bar, and how I’d sworn Luka to secrecy.
It only served to piss off Stefan even more.
“I shouldn’t have kept it from you,” I told him.
“I fucked up. I hadn’t even considered that the Bratva might send someone to put the heat on you, too.”
“That asshole came to my house,” Stefan said, his voice edged with fury.
I could hear the anger in his voice.
My oldest brother was violently protective of Tori, and now that they had the baby, I would have been shocked if anyone from the Bratva made it back from a visit without some painful souvenirs of Stefan’s displeasure.
“God, if anything had happened to you guys, I could never forgive myself. I’m so sorry,” I said.
I felt awful.
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault we’re in this mess. It’s fucking dad’s fault,” Stefan growled.
“Bottom line is, protecting this family comes first, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they leave us all alone. For good. I couldn’t live with myself if Tori or the baby became targets.”
“Or Brooklyn and Little Kibbles,” Luka added.
“ Little Kibbles?” I asked.
“Did you guys get another dog?”
“That’s just what we call the baby to the dog,” Luka said.
“We’ve been telling him he’s going to have a new brother or sister soon.”
It was just ridiculous enough to make all of us chuckle a little.
But I also realized that now was the time to tell my brothers about the secret I had been keeping from them.
Because so much had changed, and with the Russians breathing down our necks, Stefan and Luka needed to know exactly what all of us were protecting.
I took a deep breath.
I had so hoped that this moment would be completely different.
That it would be like the happy moments my sisters-in-law had gotten, all champagne and excitement.
But there wasn’t time for that now.
“Or…my pregnancy,” I said.
“I can’t let anything happen to my little dude either.”
There was a long silence.
“Emzee, are you saying…” Stefan began.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m pregnant.”
There was another silence.
“That’s…great,” Luka said hesitantly.
“Holy shit, sis.”
“Congratulations,” Stefan added.
Their response was about as sober as I had expected.
After all, we were essentially in a fight for our livelihoods and possibly our lives, and I had just announced something that could very much be seen as another liability.
Even though I knew my brothers wouldn’t think of the baby that way, I knew that they knew the Bratva would.
And that was scary.
Luka echoed, “Yeah, congrats. I hope this is happy news?”
“It is,” I assured him.
“Ford and I are…talking. Just swear to me you won’t tell your wives. I want to surprise them later. At least I can have that as an exciting reveal.”
“Of course,” Luka said.
“Sure,” Stefan agreed.
“As long as you promise not to tell them what’s going on with the mob. I managed to make up some excuse when Tori asked why some Russian guy showed up at our door, but I don’t want to risk her knowing more than she should.”
“Same,” Luka said.
“Brooklyn does not need this kind of stress so late in her pregnancy.”
It seemed to confirm that we were all on the same page as far as what we told the wives, which was nothing.
“I understand,” I said, choosing not to mention that I’d already told Ford everything.
“So what are we going to do?”
“I have an idea,” Stefan said.
“But I’m not sure either of you are going to like it.”
“If it gets the fucking Russians off our back, I’ll like it a lot,” Luka said with passion.
“Same,” I said.
Stefan let out a long breath.
“Okay,” he said. “Our obligation to the Bratva is reliant on them believing our business is still ripe for their use.”
Already I could tell where he was going with this, and even though it made me a little sick, I also knew that it was probably going to be our best option.
Especially since I no longer had the leverage I’d been counting on to get the Malones to pay off our debts.
Once they found out that Ford and I weren’t getting divorced, and that I was having his baby, the whole deal I’d tried to arrange would be off.
This would be our only option.
We were going to have to take it.
Stefan continued, “If we can sell the business and give them the proceeds, it ought to clear us. They can find themselves another patsy. Because they won’t keep coming to us if they know the well is dry. If there’s no money or business in it for them, we aren’t useful anymore.”
There was a long silence as Luka and I absorbed what Stefan was saying.
“Okay. So we sell Danica Rose,” Luka finally said.
“I can’t see another way out of this.”
“Yeah. Agree,” I said, pulling Munchkin closer.
“But it still fucking sucks.”
Stefan sighed heavily.
“I know, but it’s our chance to truly start over. Fuck, I might even recommend those assholes at Elite Image just for the pleasure of turning them in later.”
Luka chuckled at that a little.
“But if we’re really going to do this, we all have to agree that a sale is the only way forward. Even though it means no more family business,” Stefan went on, and I could hear the disappointment and resignation in his voice.
As the oldest brother, I was sure he felt like he’d somehow failed Luka and me by not being able to come up with some magical solution.
I felt the disappointment, too.
Our father had built KZ Modeling, but after it had crumbled in the wake of the trafficking trial, my brothers and I had banded together and rebuilt the business from the ground up as Danica Rose Management, rebranding the agency and naming it after our late mother.
It was the first big thing we’d ever really done as a family, and there was something utterly heartbreaking about knowing that our only option for a normal life, a safe life, was to give up something we’d all worked so hard to make happen.
“No more family business,” I echoed in agreement.
“No more unlimited income,” Luka said, but there was a dry humor to his words.
At that moment, I realized what else I would have to give up.
“No more non-profit,” I murmured.
The charity couldn’t survive on donations alone.
Danica Rose had been subsidizing the non-profit’s cost of operations since day one.
“I’m sorry, Emzee,” Stefan said.
“I know how much See Yourself means to you.”
“You’ve done amazing work,” Luka added.
“Helped so many people.”
My eyes stung with tears.
It was hard enough knowing I would have to give up my charity, take away life-changing resources from women who needed them, women who my father had hurt…
but there was also something very poignant about my brothers acknowledging my efforts, and understanding how hard it would be for me to give it all up.
Letting go of See Yourself might end up being the worst decision I would ever have to make, but putting my family first was the one thing that my siblings and I all agreed on.
The sacrifice we were making—putting our family before legacy, before money, before fame or reputation or business—was proof that we were a different kind of family than the one our father had tried to build.
We were a different kind of Zoric than he had been.
We always would be.
That knowledge made the sacrifice more bearable.
“Are we agreed?” Stefan asked.
The sun was just starting to come up outside my apartment window, rays of golden yellow and pale orange breaking through the clouds and making a dark silhouette of the Williamsburg Bridge.
In so many ways, this was the start of a new chapter.
Everything in my life had changed in the past few days.
And it was going to keep on changing.
But for now, I knew the decision I had to make.
“Draw up the legal docs,” I told my brothers.
“And then courier them out to me so I can sign.”