Chapter 18 Roman #2
She glances down at his forearms which are just as heavily tattooed as the rest of us, juxtaposed against the finely starched dress shirt he’s wearing and the thin, wire-rimmed glasses settled on his thin nose. I can’t imagine what she must be thinking.
“How long have you been handling the books?” she asks him.
“Since the last Pakhan,” he says casually. “Started as a debt of my father’s. I was tasked to be the one to settle it up. And since then, I’ve been on the Kostroma payroll, so to speak.”
“Okay,” she says, her voice shaking a little with nerves. “Um… I think I’m going to need some time to absorb this.”
“Ivan. Leave us alone for a few minutes, please.”
Ivan glances down at the ledger protectively, then nods and steps out of the room.
“Is it too much?” I ask her. She doesn’t respond. She just sits and stares at the ledger, her fingers tracing the pen marks. “It’s important to me that you be a part of my world. You need to understand how the machine runs to understand my role in it.”
She looks up at me with those eyes, icy blue and warm all at once. “I just need a moment to… to get my head around this, I guess. In a million years, I never thought I’d actually be on this side of things. I don’t know what to say, really.”
Uh-oh. Did I miscalculate? She looks away and takes a deep breath. “You are all right with doing this. You do understand that the money that I’ve made from this club has gone toward the Bratva. All this time. That’s what’s been happening.”
“I know,” she says softly. She tilts her head curiously. “This is important to you, that I’m completely aware of all of this?”
I smile in spite of the hammering in my chest. “Baby girl,” I say, and I see her eyes focus on me.
“You’re more than just my lover. It has to be that way if you’re going to be with me because…
well, I don’t really do anything halfway.
My intentions with you and this relationship are serious.
I want you at my side. Every step of the way. ”
Her eyes water and she looks away from me, back down to the ledger. For a second, I think I’ve fucked this up. I can almost hear her next words being that this is not what she wants. Then, to my surprise, she says, “Okay. I’m in.”
I take her arm and pull her to her feet, kissing her deeply. She wraps her arms around my neck. Her hands are in my hair. I have to break the kiss to quiet the monster in my slacks.
“Your lips are like wine,” I whisper as I lean my forehead against hers. “But I can’t afford to get drunk just yet.”
“Right,” she says with a smile. “We’ve got work to do.”
“That we do.” I call Ivan back into the room. It begins.
I sit back and have a drink while Ivan shows her the details of how the money flows from our business interests to our coffers. Every time I look over at them, I see Ember leaning into every word with rapt interest. It’s like she’s absorbing every word that he says.
Ivan, ever the worker bee. Always following my orders even when I can see he doesn’t approve. The rules of Bratva life that he was taught were under the strict policy of trust no one, especially your woman. They’re usually the first to dime you out.
To that end, he’s cold with her at first, talking to her about the numbers with a vague pointing of his fingers.
She doesn’t let him get away with it, though.
Every thing that he doesn’t fully explain, she asks for clarification.
Every moment of hesitation that he displays, she presses him on it.
She plays him with the ferocity of a true Bratva queen. It’s like she’s made for this.
She was right. It is strange how she got to this point. The daughter of a cop is now under my wing in the daytime and in my bed at night.
And I have so much more to show her.
Her thighs shake against the sides of my face as she comes. I’m holding her by the hips, my mouth sucking on her clit. “Oh, fuck!” she cries out, a fistful of my hair in her hands.
I finally release her and she goes limp on the bed. I sit up and admire her lithe figure under the moonlight from my bedroom window. Her skin glistens in the blue light, making her look almost surreal. Like a nymph who’s found her way into my sheets.
I run my hands over her thighs and she flinches. “Wait,” she says breathlessly. “Give, give me a second.”
We’ve been at it for a few hours now, and honestly, I could go for a few more. I can’t seem to get enough of her. I push her legs over to the side and give her a playful slap on her damp, sweat-covered ass. She squeaks and giggles, rolling over on her stomach.
“I should claim that ass tonight,” I say, squeezing her cheeks. “Give you a good tongue fucking in your asshole before I fuck you good and hard.”
“That would be an experience,” she says hesitantly. “I’ve never done anything back door related before.”
“Then we’ll have to change that—” My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I let out a loud, annoyed sigh. “Fuck.”
“Ignore it,” she says, turning over on her side.
“I can’t.” A call coming in at three in the morning is never a call that I can ignore. I get out of bed and retrieve my phone. “Yeah?”
“Got a call from our guy.” It’s Ares. “You alone?”
I glance back at Ember, then I tell Ares, “One second.” To Ember, I say, “I gotta take this, baby. Be right back.”
I get up and walk to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. “Go ahead.”
“Abate says it’s a go,” he says. “Tomorrow night at midnight. There’s just one thing.”
“I’m listening.”
“He wants to meet up at the club.”
I sigh. “Okay, we can do it at Steelo’s. They’ve got a big back room—”
“He wants to meet at the Kitten’s Paw,” he says. “He was pretty insistent about it, actually. Word’s gotten around town about it and he wants to check it out.”
Well. That’s definitely a development I never saw coming. I glance back at the closed door of my bathroom and think of Ember lying on the bed naked and vulnerable. She held me to one rule and one rule only. Keep my business out of the club.
“Can’t meet there,” I tell Ares.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t even bring it up if he would take another option. He won’t, though. He’s pretty insistent that it be the Kitten’s Paw or nowhere.”
“The Kitten’s Paw is off limits. We don’t do business in the new club.”
“I told him that. He says that if we don’t meet there, then the deal’s off.”
I’m pacing the floor, considering the options.
Joseph Abate came to us for assault rifles.
Said he needed it for a coming war with a rival.
Abate and I have always been friendly, just as he had been with my mentor before me.
It’s always been smooth sailing with Abate.
A sort of friendly razryadka, or détente, as they used to say when the Soviet Union was a thing.
We are “friendly enemies” of sorts. Nowhere near the land of allies, but always willing to trade resources when it became necessary.
It’s been a pretty easy relationship, all things considered.
Until now. I don’t know how Ember is going to feel about having a meeting like this at the club. She’s only just been plugged into all this. It might be a bridge too far to tell her about this.
“I don’t know what the big deal is,” Ares says. “There are a million strip clubs in this city. And at the end of the day, tits are tits.”
“Not when your place is at the top of the tits and ass food chain,” I say. “And I’m not interested in a dust up because we can’t agree on where to meet. Tell him he’s got it. Midnight tomorrow night.”
I hang up and stare at the closed door. She doesn’t have to know. At the end of the day, I call the shots at the club, not her. I’m the Pakhan. My word is law.
Funny how knowing that doesn’t make me feel less like shit about it.
I walk back into the bedroom. She’s standing by my dresser and wearing one of my dress shirts. She turns to me as she buttons it up, her cleavage still showing.
“I was thinking we could grab something to eat,” she says. “Maybe a little three in the morning snack?”
I walk up to her and wrap my arm around her waist, pulling her into a kiss. “You’re all the snack I need.”