Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
Kolya
These once-a-week, two-hour custody visits sucked.
For the past six weeks, that was the only time I saw my son, and I even missed out on one because of bratva business.
Chloe was rarely present. Dora and a nanny, together with two De Lucci soldiers, supervised my interactions with Sebastian. It grated me from the get-go.
Pictures and videos on my phone had never been enough to tide me over until the next visit.
I had resorted to stalking mother and son to catch a glimpse of them.
Because it wasn’t simply about Sebastian.
It was the anticipation of seeing his mother, too.
Every time she was absent, the visit didn’t feel complete.
I had to fucking ask permission to take my son to the park.
But the last straw? It was when Theo King showed up, because apparently he didn’t trust me to take Sebastian outdoors despite the security entourage following us.
And my son, my son, whooped up in joy more than he ever did when he saw me.
He was looking at King as his father. Me?
I was reduced to a sometimes playmate and food source.
How often did King get to see my son and Chloe, anyway?
The doorbell to my condo rang.
I wasn’t expecting anyone. I wasted all afternoon extracting information from a traitorous associate, and I was still bristling with annoyance.
I had to show Kirill that the drama in my personal life had not damaged my skills after I killed the last person I interrogated without getting the information I needed out of him.
Ever since Chloe walked back into my life, I’d been erratic in performing the duties the bratva prized me for.
My last successful interrogation was Wilson's. Kirill ordered me to take a mood stabilizer so as not to slit a man’s throat prematurely before we got anything useful out of him.
My body count was piling up without corresponding job success, be it a simple interrogation or enforcement, and I was starting to question how good I was at my job.
I checked the camera.
There was only one reason Maksim would come here. Shit.
I opened the door a crack. “What happened?”
“Let me in, mudak,” he muttered.
I allowed him to enter, and he swept in on a wave of cologne and shower gel. His hair was still damp, his jaw freshly shaven. Looked like he planned to be elsewhere after stopping by.
“What’s going on?”
“Chloe has a date tonight.”
“What?” I wasn’t expecting the jump in my heart rate. “You mean there was someone you couldn’t buy off or convince to give up the idea?”
“Look, they were never easy in the first place. Margo chose those candidates carefully. The only reason I got through to them was because Lucy was feeding me dirt to use on them, and combined with our own financial incentive, the marriage covenant was less lucrative.”
Huh. I had a love-hate relationship with Kirill’s wife.
I didn’t recognize my friend when I came out of prison.
He seemed less inclined for destruction and was becoming more like Maksim.
A politician. I could also chalk it up to his position as pakhan, so in that regard Lucy was an asset to the bratva.
I just didn’t like that I hardly commiserated with him anymore when there was no one to kill.
But Lucy was a fixer, or had been a fixer.
Now she was functioning like Kirill’s adviser.
Who to do business with and who to break ties with.
“Then you should have come to me, and I could tell that fucker what a bad idea it was to consider an arranged marriage with Chloe.”
Maksim laughed scornfully. “It won’t work with this guy.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” I muttered. “I haven’t met a fucker I couldn’t intimidate yet.”
“You’ve heard of Daniel Wu?”
“Of course, Wheelers Corp.” The man was a workaholic and belonged to some secret organization with the De Luccis.
Father murdered by the Triad. He wasn’t an unsuitable match for Chloe, except I doubted any bratva intimidation would work.
I’d have to kill him outright. It might start a war with the De Luccis, but I’d let Kirill smooth that over.
“Over my dead body, Chloe is marrying him because that means she’ll be moving with my son to Hong Kong. ”
“It’s just a single date.” He eyed me from head to toe. “You wanna crash it?”
Maksim had taken a gleeful approach to dispatching Chloe’s marriage prospects. He met them in secret locations under Margo’s radar. Although I doubt she was totally unaware of it, since that woman seemed to know every dark, dirty secret of the people she did business with.
When blackmail or a bribe didn’t work, the next best thing was to offer free bratva services—mine—in case they needed a problem to go away. I didn’t contract out my services, but getting rid of Chloe’s marriage prospects, I’d do it for free.
I was doing it for Seva—I’d been calling my son Russian nicknames lately. I thought that would sway fate my way.
“Sure, give me ten minutes.”
It took more than ten because Maksim kept sending me back to the closet to change a shirt or a tie.
“Where the hell are we going, anyway? Where’s this fancy dinner Wu is taking her?”
“It’s the Quorum Club.” The billionaire’s club. Similar to a country club, but no golf courses. Just fine dining, top-shelf liquor, and private rooms.
“The point is, you need to look better than him.” Maksim threw a tie at me. “Damn, if you’re going to circulate in King’s social class, you’ll have to update your wardrobe.”
“Listen, I’m not a moron. I have clothes for every job, remember? Someone bulked up at Supermax.” The bratva tailor had to rush-order that three-piece suit I wore to arbitration, and my current jobs rarely required me to be seen in public.
Maksim rolled his eyes before he checked his watch again. “We’re running late. A limo is waiting for us downstairs.”
“A limo? Why do we need it if it’s not black tie?” I asked.
“We are not driving separately.”
“Send your driver home.”
“What are you worried about?” Maksim scoffed. “People might think we’re lovers?”
I barked a laugh. “If that’s the headline, we’ll never hear the end of it from Kirill. On the other hand, it’ll give Lucy a scandal to fix.”
“He doesn’t want you working closely with Lucy. It was her meddling that sent you to prison.”
I knew better than to hold a grudge since it wasn’t really Lucy’s fault, but I relished using the misguided opinion to annoy Kirill. He was insanely protective of his wife.
I bypassed the first floor and headed straight to the basement where I had parked my SUV. Maks sighed in aggravation and texted his driver.
“Why can’t we ride separately, anyway?” I asked him as I beeped the locks.
“I need to prep you on Daniel Wu.”
Good idea.
Once we were on the road, Maks started scrolling on his phone. “Their dinner reservation is at seven. And it’s for four people.”
“Four? Don’t tell me Theo is with them.”
“Surprisingly, no. Last intel I have on him, Theo went to visit Jeremiah at the psychiatric hospital.”
I glanced at Maks. “Are we still at risk if I whack him?”
“Please don’t rock that boat right now. I hear the Kings’ publicity department is ramping up the unveiling of Chloe King. She negotiated that Sebastian remained anonymous.”
“Hmm,” was all I said. I was pleased with it.
“As you know, when Jeremiah woke up from his medically induced coma, he was minimally conscious, but the last report I got…what is it, two months since you shot him? He’s reacting to stimuli. Tracking movements. Confused.”
“Shit, is he going to make a full recovery?”
“The doctors are guarded. The bullet entered the right frontal lobe…blah…blah…blah…but you missed the brain stem.”
A pity my aim was off. It wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t been distracted by Chloe.
Our SUV idled at a red light. Jeremiah King spiked my aggravation because I considered him a loose end. “I should have ended him that day.”
“I heard Theo is bracing for a personality change, so he’s got his hands full with that too.”
“What could be worse than his sociopathic behavior?” I scoffed. “Look, I’ll offer to finish his miserable existence for free.”
“Why don’t you concentrate on your problem with Chloe?”
“But Jeremiah is part of the problem, right?” The light turned green. Quorum Club was in a renovated four-story baroque-style building located just outside Manhattan. “I don’t want a serial killer around my son.”
“Have you talked about the situation with Chloe?”
A wry grin curved my mouth. “There’s barely enough time for meaningful conversation with a toddler around.” And she was rarely at my visits.
Maks fell quiet, and I cast him a fleeting glance. The streetlights flashed over him, and I noticed he’d looked out the window, fist pressed against his mouth, breathing labored. Wait. Was this…?
Fuck.
It had been six years since his three-year-old daughter had been killed in a car accident. Ophelia was driving. That was the breaking point of their marriage, but the fractures had started before that.
An uncomfortable pressure pierced my chest as Ophelia’s reasoning for wanting to divorce Maksim mirrored Chloe’s reasoning for why she didn’t want Sebastian growing up bratva.
But my blood flowed through his veins. Danger was intrinsic.
He had a couple more years before I taught him survival skills.
I cleared my throat. “So, who are Chloe and Daniel having dinner with?”
“Daniel’s sister, Ivy, and her husband, Nico De Lucci.”
“For fuck’s sake…what’s this? Like a done deal already?”
“Chloe stayed with the De Luccis for a while, so she must have met Ivy and Nico.”
“Hmm…”
“See, here’s the thing. Daniel Wu falls under the workaholic type. You rarely see him at events with women.”
“Maybe he prefers men?”
“Women are seen coming and going from his Hong Kong penthouse.” Maks scoffed. “Sometimes even his office late at night.”
“He uses them to blow off steam?”
“Yes. So he’s the perfect candidate for Chloe.”
“What?”