Chapter Two
Dmitri Konstantinov
Blood slipped between my fingers as I dropped a card marked with a skull. It landed beside the bastard sprawled on the floor, a man who recently developed the unfortunate illusion that he possessed courage.
I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my hands as I stepped back.
This was a clean way to end the evening.
The man himself was not worth the effort, but the card had to stay.
Whoever hired him would find it soon enough and understand exactly what it meant.
When you send someone to watch me, you should at least be prepared to collect the body.
I took a cigar from my pocket, lit it, and enjoyed the first slow drag while scrolling through his phone.
The idiot had been following me for days, snapping pictures as if I were some kind of celebrity.
I had to give him credit, though. The man had an eye for photography.
Most of the shots were surprisingly good.
But I stopped at one photo that personally offended me. The angle betrayed him. My face looked wrong there. Flat and ordinary. I touched my jaw with my thumb, tracing the sharp line the camera somehow ruined. The man had a talent, just not enough taste. I deleted the photo and slid into his emails.
The emails were sloppy. A batch of nervous updates, half-written excuses, and messages sent by a man who clearly preferred a camera to a brain. Still, they gave me what I needed. One name appeared too often to be a coincidence, threaded through every report like a leash. Levi.
So the photographer had been sending my pictures to Levi. That alone made the evening worthwhile.
I slipped the phone into my pocket and looked around the room. The office was cramped, furnished with cheap furniture that wobbled if you leaned on it the wrong way. It did not match the confidence the man carried as he followed me around the city with a camera.
If someone were paying him to watch me, they were paying him poorly. Men don’t risk my attention for pocket change. And those who did rarely lived long enough.
I opened a few drawers, more out of habit than hope. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, drifting through the building and reminding me that my time here was limited.
I was not interested in everything he owned. I only wanted what led to Levi. Anything that explained why someone developed such enthusiasm for photographing me.
There was not much, only a few useless papers and a handful of receipts. Nothing was worth carrying except for two things. I took the laptop from the desk and slipped a thin file under my arm. The contents caught my attention.
That was enough. I left through the back exit of the old building and walked down the narrow alley toward my motorcycle.
Levi had taken an interest in me. Now it was only fair that I returned the favor.
I rode straight to my club. The best one in Miami, though modesty has never been one of my stronger qualities. People came there to drink, dance, and spend money they would regret in the morning. I provided the space for that. Naturally, they had to be grateful.
The music was already shaking the walls when I stepped inside. Lights flashed across the crowd, glasses clinked at the bar, and the air smelled like perfume, alcohol, and bad decisions.
My kind of place.
I walked past the busy floor and headed for my office. Once seated behind my desk, I opened the dead man’s laptop and powered it on. If I could find out where Levi was tonight, the evening would become even more productive. One dead spy and a new guest to interrogate. Efficient.
A knock interrupted my concentration. Akim stepped inside.
I had seen him earlier as I was entering the club.
He was busy behind the building with a man who probably made a very poor decision tonight.
Whatever the man did, Akim corrected it.
He was good at that and understood his work well.
That was why he remained my right-hand man.
“Boss, we have a problem,” Akim said, stepping near my table.
I didn’t look up from the laptop that needed a password to unlock. Akim was smart enough to handle whatever this was before it reached me.
“Someone stole your money.”
His words made me pause. I leaned back, letting the chair swallow me. So the man Akim was torturing outside was a thief. Either the guards and the employees were incompetent, or in on it.
“Boss?”
“Handle it,” I said. If I stepped in myself, the club would erupt into chaos before I could finish a single sentence.
He stepped closer. “Sir, I wanted to confirm with you first. So she is not your wife, by any chance?”
I raised an eyebrow without looking at him. “What nonsense is that?”
Akim pushed his phone onto the desk. “This is what the Torres guy said.”
He tapped the screen, and a video started. The face of an old bastard from my casino flashed on the screen. An idiot who had run up a debt and promised fifty thousand a month to keep breathing. He was supposed to be paying me. Instead, he was trembling, blood streaking his lips.
“She … she came and said she was the boss’s wife. I didn’t know.” The man coughed. “She threatened to call the boss. Please … I didn’t know the boss didn’t have a wife or a son. Bu—” His voice cracked, betraying the little courage he had left.
“How does she look?” Akim asked, making him describe it.
“I … I don’t remember clearly, but she had short hair—”
Akim’s fist met his stomach, and the man flinched.
I leaned back, already confused. “What am I watching?” I asked.
Akim exhaled. “Mister Torres got tricked by a lady who showed up and claimed she’s your wife. She also said you have a son together. That’s what he’s trying to explain.”
I looked at Akim for a moment, letting the words settle. The idea pressed against my patience hard enough that a laugh almost slipped out.
“Mister Torres was drunk. It looks like it was easy for her to trick him—”
“Are you insane?” A chuckle escaped me, dry enough that Akim stepped back on instinct. “You want me to believe some desperate woman with short hair walked up to a grown-ass man and took my money?”
“Boss.”
“And you believed him.” I pushed the phone back toward him and turned to the laptop. “Do not insult me by bringing this nonsense back here. He is lying, so handle it how I would.”
Akim hesitated.
“Kill him and his brother,” I snapped. “Shut the restaurant down. We’ll turn the place into a club. I don’t entertain bullshit.”
Akim stepped forward again and slid the phone back onto the desk. “I hacked the CCTV from the meeting point. And it’s true, a woman approached him.”
God help me, my patience was running thin. But Akim didn’t bring half-baked problems to my table. If he said there was something, there was. I looked at the screen again.
The Torres guy leaned against a trash can, a cigarette between his fingers, smoke curling upward. The footage was grainy, but I could see a woman approaching from behind. She paused briefly, then closed the distance. They exchanged a few words, her hands moving as she spoke.
Torres stepped back, pointing a finger at her. She reached for something in her pocket. I thought it was a knife, but it was a phone. Whatever she said next made Torres straighten and bow.
He passed the briefcase to her without protest, and she took it. She tucked it tight under her arm, glanced both ways, and then bolted, disappearing from the frame.
The clip ended, and I stayed where I was, eyes fixed on the frozen footage. “What is this?” I asked.
Akim let out a breath that sounded close to laughter. “You have a wife and a son. That’s new.”
I lifted my head to him. “You find it funny.”
“A little,” he admitted. “Should I trace her?”
I leaned back in the chair. “If you ask another stupid question, I will kill you.”
Akim took his phone. “I’ll retrieve the briefcase and have men handle her, together with anyone connected to her.”
He started toward the door. I remained seated, letting everything sink in. Such a clever woman. Claiming to be my wife and having someone believe it meant she had a sharp mouth, a quick mind, and balls enough to pull it off. She is rare and dangerous.
“That’s boring,” I muttered, rubbing my jawline.
Akim paused at the doorway. “Sorry?”
“This is the first time someone has done that.”
“Yes.”
“Then we don’t rush it. She knew the place and the time. She was confident that the briefcase contained money. That means she didn’t improvise. Someone sent her, or she watched long enough to learn the pattern.”
Akim nodded. He already understood what that meant. Things like this didn’t happen by accident. Someone planned them very well.
She wasn’t working alone. Of that, I was certain. And that was where the fun started.
“Get me everything. Her name, where she lives, and who she talks to. Every damn detail,” I said. “I’ll handle her myself.” A slow smile pulled at my lips. After all, she’s my wife.
“On it.” He turned and left the office without another word.
Wife.
I had to admire the audacity. She didn’t just steal from me. She claimed me.
Eventually, I would bury her, her family, and anyone foolish enough to stand beside her. But first, I wanted to see the face of the woman who walked into my world and believed she could walk out again.