Prologue #2
A year ago, the sight of both of my brothers in a conference room, side by side, ready for business, would have been a real shocker.
Stefan had always been devoted to the company, sometimes to his own detriment, but Luka?
Luka wouldn’t have been caught dead doing anything resembling work when he could have been out banging models and getting drunk.
It was amazing how much they both had changed.
Now, Stefan wasn’t living at the office, working around my father as he tried to find a way to save the women who were being trafficked through our company.
My oldest brother was still busy as all get out, but he was devoted to Tori and I knew he was over the moon about the newest little addition that would be joining the family soon.
And Luka, well. He had finally stopped looking for himself at the bottom of a liquor bottle. He’d become a completely different person since marrying Brooklyn. Thank God for that.
There were times I felt a slight twinge of jealousy, knowing they got to go home at the end of the day to a partner who loved them, while all I was going home to was Munchkin.
I loved my rescued French bulldog—seriously adored him—but it wasn’t quite the same.
Studying Stefan and Luka more closely, I realized that something else was off. Usually Tori and Brooklyn were present for these family meetings. Not today, apparently.
Stefan adjusted his tie, took a sip of coffee, and then cleared his throat.
“We have a problem,” he said. “A very big one.”
Even though I’d been expecting it, my heart still sank.
“Of course we do. What is it this time?” Luka asked, running a hand over his face. He suddenly looked as nerve-racked as I felt. We’d been through so much over the past year, and every time things started getting better, we were hit with some heinous new catastrophe.
“This…is much worse than anything we’ve dealt with before,” Stefan said. “I don’t even know how to say it.”
“If you could figure it out soon, it’d be much appreciated,” I said dryly. “I have a nail appointment at noon.”
Luka shot me an eye roll, which I knew I deserved, but you couldn’t blame me for trying to insert a little levity after hearing something so heavy and ominous.
“This is the thing. Despite dismantling KZM’s operations here in the US, the trafficking organization Dad was a part of is still active internationally,” Stefan said. “It’s thriving.”
“Okay…” Luka said. “And this affects us how?”
Stefan’s lips thinned into a hard line, and all of a sudden I thought I knew what was coming next. Dread curled low in my belly, and I pushed my pastry away, suddenly nauseated.
“The organization is not pleased that they’ve now lost one of their biggest outposts,” Stefan went on. “I’ve been contacted by the Bratva.”
Luka let out a long breath, and my jaw fell open. Even I knew who the Bratva were.
“The Russian mob?” I blurted. “Fuck. We’re dead.”
Stefan nodded. “We’ve cost them money with Danica Rose going legitimate, and they have now determined a dollar amount equivalent to what we owe them. Our debt, as they put it.”
“This is bullshit!” Luka exploded. “We don’t owe them a goddamn thing. We’re not like KZ. We don’t have to roll around in the muck with them anymore.”
“Unfortunately, that is not how they see it,” Stefan said.
He took out a piece of paper and wrote something on it.
“This is what they believe is owed to them,” he said before passing it to Luka.
“Jesus Christ.” Luka looked like he was going to be sick. “This can’t be real.”
He passed it to me and my eyes bugged out at the number.
It was impossible.
We’d worked so hard, as a family, to get this business into the clear, to drag it free from my father’s corrupt hands, and now this?
“We don’t have this kind of money,” I said. “And even if we did…we can’t just hand it over to them.”
“There must be something we can do,” Luka said.
Stefan took the piece of paper from me and tore it into pieces.
“This information does not leave the room we’re in,” he said. “There’s a reason that Tori and Brooklyn aren’t here. They don’t need to know anything about this. Got it?”
Luka and I nodded, even though I was barely paying attention. All I could think about was the money. That the Russian mob wanted. From us. The Bratva—the Brotherhood—was nothing to be fucked with. I knew the cruelty, the violence, the inhumanity they were capable of.
And I knew they wouldn’t hesitate to act if someone got in their way. Danica Rose Management was, apparently, in their way.
This was bad. Very, very bad.
Stefan said, “Look. I know this is…”
“Fucked,” I finished for him. “Totally, completely, irrevocably fucked.”
“Accurate. But the point is, we’ll figure it out,” he said, his expression softening a little.
I hated that so much of this fell on his shoulders. It didn’t seem fair.
With that sense of dread and uncertainty hovering around us, we all left the conference room. My brothers went back to their executive suites. I went for a long walk.
Outside in the fresh Chicago air, all I wanted to do was call my best friend, my oldest friend.
All I wanted was to talk to Ford, to tell him what was going on.
He was more than just my friend…he was my hero.
In all the years I’d known him, he’d always been the one other person (besides my brothers) that I could depend on.
He’d always been there for me, and would go out of his way to come to the rescue and fix whatever problem I had. I trusted him completely.
But I couldn’t trust him with this.
Not just because Stefan had made us promise to keep it secret. But because I knew that this was one thing that Ford couldn’t fix. Maybe nobody could.