Chapter 17
“ S o. Is big married man now. Probably thinks he is superior,” Yuri declared, glowering at Dexter over the conference room table. They were supposed to be having their weekly status meeting, but apparently they had to get this out of the way first.
When Dexter first started with the Popovs, he tried to appease them. Of course marriage hasn’t changed me. Of course I don’t feel superior to you. He quickly realized it didn’t matter. They could both advocate hard for his marriage and resent it at the same time. It was in their nature to always find the angst and contention in everything.
“If you say so,” he said mildly.
Diffused and appeased by his blandness, they sat back, still staring at him. “What is marriage like, really? Is epic love?” Maxim asked.
“You know it’s not,” Dexter said. “We married for the sake of the party. We’ve been over this.”
“Seemed like real love to us,” Ivan pointed out.
Anything but a screaming, yowling catfight would seem like true love to them, Dexter reasoned. “Lainey’s nice,” he said.
“Maybe too nice,” Andrei said.
Dexter’s head snapped up. “What? She is not too nice. She’s perfectly nice.”
Apparently he’d fallen into some kind of trap because now all the brothers were grinning at him. “Oh, is nice, is she? Spoken like a man in love.”
Dexter sighed. He was going to have to break out the big guns. He opened his briefcase and set out the chocolate sculpture Lainey had made for him. The brothers stared at him, confused.
“What is for?” Yuri asked, his Cro-Magnon brow lowered like the first person to encounter live fire.
“Lainey made it.”
“Why?” Ivan asked.
“For a wedding present.”
“Is giant chocolate. I am not seeing the point. Why must Americans make things so large? Chocolates should be small and shiny, like truffles,” Maxim declared.
“It’s us,” Dexter said, pushing it closer.
“Lainey made sculpture of us?” Andrei asked.
“Not us, us . The people who are married to each other.” He fought a shudder at hearing himself say it out loud. Married. Him. To a stranger. Yikes.
“Ah,” Ivan said. Dexter fought another cringe as one of his meaty paws picked it up to make an inspection. “Is good. Look, she got Dexter’s expression correct.” He turned the sculpture toward his brothers who all guffawed in a unified chorus.
“Is clever girl, Lainey,” Yuri said, darting Dexter a raised eyebrow.
“What?” Dexter said, pressing his thumb between his eyes.
“Is convenient, no? Girl in food business marries man in restaurant supply business,” Yuri said. The other brothers lost their smiles and regarded Dexter in suspicion.
“Are you honestly proposing that Lainey set this up in order to tap into my vast family discount, one which I have never once used in all the years I’ve worked here?” Dexter said.
“Think about it,” Andrei urged, tapping his temple.
“How far back did her diabolical plan start? Did she target the apartment next to mine, knowing I had access to Belgian chocolate? Did she show up at the bar coincidentally when I needed an out with The Bristol?”
The brothers nodded. “You cannot trust American women. They are too nice. You should find good Russian girl who will rip out still beating heart to your face,” Ivan said. “No surprises.”
“I’m not finding anyone,” Dexter said. “I have Lainey. I mean, I don’t have Lainey, but I’m married to Lainey. For the foreseeable future and in the most technical sense.” He tugged his collar. Was it hot or was he having a heart attack from the mass amount of stress he’d been stockpiling?
“Oooh,” Maxim said, rubbing his hands eagerly together. “Is good to see Dexter squirm, yes?”
“Can we get back to work?” Dexter said.
They did so, because the brothers liked to work, but a short while later they were interrupted again, this time by a bike courier who delivered a package. Dexter usually hated interruptions, but in this case he was thankful. Anything to change the subject away from Lainey. It wasn’t Lainey specifically he didn’t want to dwell on, merely any further association between her and The Russians. He wanted to keep the two worlds separate, as much and as long as possible.
He signed for the package and squinted, straining to read the illegible print.
“What is?” Ivan asked.
“I have no idea,” Dexter said. He opened the package, which contained a smaller package wrapped in plastic. He took that out, opened it, and had immediate regrets when the most putrid smell he’d ever encountered filtered out and filled the room.
Fighting his gag reflex, he instinctively slapped his hand over his nose.
“Is borscht?” Maxim asked, standing to get a better look.
“No, is rotten fish,” Ivan exclaimed.
Dexter dropped his hand, using both to re-wrap the fish. Too late, though. The smell was everywhere. Before this moment he would have said he had a cast iron stomach, but this was testing his limits. Never had he smelled something so terrible.
“Who would have done this?” Andrei wondered, but his other brothers filled in the blank, shooting to their feet in outrage.
“Of course we know who.”
“Is Hungarians.”
“There’s no proof,” Dexter said, a task made more difficult because he was also holding his nose.
“Let me see box,” Yuri said, snatching it away. “A-ha. Is Hungarian handwriting. Would recognize anywhere.”
“How would you recognize Hungarian handwriting?” Dexter asked. “That’s completely illegible and smeared.”
“Because is cowardly and tainted with the blood of First World War,” Yuri said, shaking it over his head in outrage.
“It’s not Archduke Ferdinand’s fish,” Dexter said. He tried to keep his tone calm and even, but it was a losing battle. The Russians were gearing up for blood.
“We should send them dead cat,” Andrei said.
“You cannot kill a cat,” Dexter said, now shooting to his feet to match their indignation. Not that he could or even wanted to.
“Would not kill cat, obviously,” Andrei said, waving his hand in dismissal. “Would find one already dead on side of road.”
“No, send live cat with live rat and have it kill it on arrival,” Ivan suggested.
“How could you possibly keep the rat alive until the precise moment?” Dexter inserted.
“No, send Sonya in box,” Maxim said, warming to the subject. “Then Hungarians will be rats.”
“What about that guy from the old neighborhood with stumpy pinky finger?” Ivan suggested. “Didn’t rat chew that off? He might know way to train rat.”
“He went against the Albanians,” Yuri said, pressing his hand over his heart in a moment of silent respect.
Andrei snapped his fingers. “We could hire The Albanians.”
“No,” Dexter said, waving his hands like he was directing a plane on a freighter to try and get their attention. “We are not involving any more Eastern Europeans in our turf war. Yuri, Ivan, Maxim, Andrei, you are businessmen. In America. You are not thugs and lowlifes. You have a reputation here.”
“Yes, for getting even,” Yuri said, grinding his fist into his palm.
“No, for being professionals,” Dexter countered.
“People think we are hitmen?” Ivan chimed in, perking up.
“Not that kind of professional. Professional businessmen. Respectable. Remember? We do things on the up and up. This,” he pointed to the fish box, “is amateur hour. They’re doing it because they’re intimidated by your success. We take the high road, we rise above, we ignore them and don’t give them the time of day. Why? Because we can’t even see them from where we are. If other companies want to act like schoolboys, let them. The Popovs are men .”
The brothers glanced at each other uncertainly. “Maybe Sonya…” one of them began. Dexter cut him off so quickly he didn’t have time to see who it was.
“No. Absolutely no. We’re men. We handle this like men. We rise above and play it clean and straight.” For emphasis, he dusted his hands together. “Men. Yes?”
“Okay, men,” Yuri agreed. He gave his hands a few halfhearted passes against each other and the other brothers followed suit. Dexter didn’t have a lot of faith it would hold off the vengeance and bloodlust, but for now he’d take it.
D exter was exhausted by the time he let himself into Lainey’s that night. He didn’t question the fact that her side of the house was his first stop. Duty or something, he vaguely murmured to himself as he opened the door and took a breath, letting the weight of the day slip off him as he let it out.
As ever, her house smelled like chocolate, vanilla, and fruit but something more, something he couldn’t identify. Whatever it was, it filled him up with a peaceful sort of feeling he hadn’t felt since he was a kid, so he pushed that thought away, too.
“Lainey,” he called.
“Come in the kitchen,” she called.
He smiled at the anticipation in her tone. This was probably why people had dogs, so something would look forward to their arrival. It was nice, that. “Hey, what’s up?” He entered the kitchen and saw Lainey beaming at him, arms outstretched in a poor attempt to hide something behind her.
“Guess what I bought?”
His jaw dropped, momentarily speechless.
“You don’t know what it is,” she guessed.
He did know what it was, but he couldn’t believe she’d bought it. “Why?” he breathed.
“Why? It’s an enrober. This saves me so much time, you have no idea. I just quadrupled my productivity. Probably more, but I don’t know any math numbers bigger than quadruple.”
“I know what it is, I don’t know why you bought it,” he said.
“I told you.” She finally took in his gobsmacked expression. “What is the problem? Why do you care? You didn’t specify what to do with the money you gave me. This is what I wanted it for.” She pointed to the machine now taking up most of her kitchen counter.
“Oh, Lainey,” he said, walking forward to make a slow inspection. “Don’t you know who I work for?”
“The Russians,” she said uncertainly.
He faced her, reaching out to tug the hem of her shirt. “I work for the Popovs.”
She blinked, dazed. “The Popovs? As in Popov Restaurant Supply?”
He nodded.
Her mouth puckered in a silent O.
He eased closer and rested his forehead on hers, whispering, “I get a forty percent family discount.”
“No,” she gasped.
He nodded, using the motion to kiss the tip of her nose. “Can you take it back?”
“No returns,” she said.
“No returns? That stinks. Where’d you get it?”
“I don’t know, some new place running a bunch of deals. I think they’re Hungarian,” Lainey said, smiling when he barked a harsh laugh.
His hands rested on her hips. “If you need anything else, please tell me first.”
“You said you weren’t here to fix me,” she reminded him.
“You are, in the most technical and legal sense, my wife. You can use my discount.”
“Okay. Thank you.” She slid her arms around him, resting her head on his heart. “How was your day?”
“It was a day,” he said. “How about you? Anything more exciting than the enrober happen?”
“No.”
“Wanna go out? I’m starved,” he said.
“I made supper,” she said, easing away to make a renewed inspection of her new appliance.
“You what?” he said.
She twirled to face him. “Why shocked? I cooked.”
“Where is it?”
She pointed to the oven, the apparent source of the good smells.
“You cooked for me?”
“I cooked for us. Is that not okay? Did you have your heart set on going out?”
He shook his head. “No one cooks for me.”
“I cooked for you. I gave you pot roast,” she reminded him.
“You gave me leftovers. Don’t get me wrong, they were great. But you cooked for me. I think maybe this is my version of your hug love. Food, Lainey, food.” He tapped his fist over his heart.
“Okay,” she said, pressing her palm to his cheek. “Oh, hey, I have something else for you.”
“Lainey, no, you don’t have to get me anything,” he protested but inside he perked up. What would it be this time? A life-size chocolate pony? There was an inner child somewhere hoping that was the case.
“Don’t get too excited. It’s something I found.” She led the way to her closet in the entryway and stepped inside.
“If a talking lion greets us, we’re leaving,” Dexter said, smiling when she laughed.
The closet was deeper than it looked. She disappeared into its recesses, Dexter close behind, shifted aside some coats and pointed in triumph. “Ta-da.”
“It’s a door,” he blurted.
“Wow, you are smart,” she said. “I bet there’s one in your closet that connects.”
“I bet you’re right. How did I never notice that before?” he said.
“You weren’t looking. It’s hard to see things unless you’re searching,” she said.
“Wise wife,” he said, reaching out to touch a wisp of her hair. She responded by standing on her toes and kissing him, a kiss that almost knocked him off his toes. And then she let him go and took a step back with a little laugh.
“Sorry. That was probably a mixed signal. But we’re in a closet and I suddenly had this flashback to middle school where cute boy plus closet equaled kissing and…” she stopped talking, probably because he grabbed her and kissed her.
And despite the fact that he grabbed her, the kiss was soft and gentle, or at least it started out that way. Lainey made a little gasping sound that pushed him over the edge. He picked her up, mashing her into the clothes behind her as he deepened the kiss. She followed, plunging her fingers into his hair and grasping him with what seemed to them both like desperation.
It wasn’t the sort of kiss that could stay in the closet, but before Dexter could take a step outside, his phone rang and he froze.
“The Russians?” Lainey asked, lips moving whisper soft against his.
“The Russians couldn’t stop this. It’s my mom, and I have to take it.” Was he…was he panting? Mortifying.
She seemed not to notice as she slid out of his grasp and failed to right her toppled messy bun. “’Kay,” she replied, tucking her hands safely behind her back. So she wouldn’t reach for him again? He’d have to ponder that later.
“Hi,” he said, sliding his thumb across his phone as he brought it to his ear. Then he covered the mouthpiece and spoke to Lainey. “I’m going to go open it on my side.”
She nodded, smiling. “Don’t say hi to your mom for me,” she whispered and he stifled a snort laugh.
“Nothing, I was laughing at something else. How’s Dad?” He walked out of the closet. Lainey remained staring at her variety of winter coats. She shook her head, trying to snap out of her trance. What happened here? She’d kissed Dexter on a whim, for a spot of fun. The end result had been anything but fun; instead it had been rather earth shattering. What happened? Why did she respond to him that way? It was Dexter. She wasn’t attracted to him. Was she?
Maybe the closet is magic, her handy brain suggested.
Yes, that must be it. It was the closet, nothing more. By the time he reached his side and opened the door, she stood at the edge, safely out of reach. He smiled and waved, pointing to his door in triumph. She smiled, tossing him a little wave. He winked and she fled to the kitchen, putting distance between herself and the magic closet of inevitable doom.