by Stacy Gail
“I wasn’t.” Grinning, Knives reached for the tea and poured it into glasses already filled with ice. “I think I had it better than you while growing up. In Papa’s mind, high-society girls did delicate things like music, or art, or ballet. Boys did fencing and played rugby or field hockey.”
“I think Papa often mistook our lives for the lives of the old-world czars. Which is ironic, considering he grew up in a one-bedroom flat in the middle of downtown Donetsk.” I bit into the crepe and closed my eyes as the richness of the hollandaise sauce mingled with the bright spring-fresh flavor of the asparagus. “Wow. This is so much better than peanut butter and jelly. Gotta say, I’m glad I came.”
“If I asked Bertie to make this every day, would you consider moving back home?”
The question caught me by such surprise that I paused in spearing a bite of salad. “Back home? As in...to live?”
“Uh, yeah. Thought that’d be kind of obvious when I said moving back home.”
“Why?”
“The times we’re living in now...” He grimaced as he also attacked his salad. “I know Papa never liked to talk business during meals, and I don’t either. But some things can’t be avoided. Like the Scorpeones, for instance.”
Just the name of that dreadful family was enough to make the delicious food turn to ash in my mouth. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but I’ve got to know. What are they up to now?”
“When are they not up to something? And you know as well as I do that it’s their MO to target the weakest link in the Vitaliev operation. That explains why you’ve been harassed by them. I don’t want to leave the door open so that they can get another crack at you. Your moving back home, where I can control the situation, would take a huge load off my mind.”
The weakest link.
I sighed. Obviously that was me, but there was something wrong with his assessment. “I get that the raid on Chicago’s Future was Scorpeone-driven, since that cop, Schott, is in their pocket. But I’ve been thinking about that card game, and... it doesn’t fit.”
“What do you mean?”
“How exactly did the Scorpeone family try to get me with that raid on the card game?”
“They were no doubt trying to harass you, discredit you. Ruin you, if they could.”
“Yeah, but it was their game that got busted. I was just attending it. Why would they bust up their own game and bring that gravy train to a halt just so I could get caught up in a police dragnet? That makes no sense to me, no matter how I look at it.”
“Makes perfect sense to me,” came the shrugging reply. “They’d do anything to get a Vitaliev.”
“Even to the extent of calling the cops on their own game?”
“That’s what happened, Dash.”
“No. I don’t buy it.” I shook my head and shoveled in the last of the crepe. “The Scorpeone organization was decimated by Papa. Because of that, they no longer have any real power or credibility. They’ve got nothing but nickel-and-dime crap now, so what’s the point of harassing us?”
“They’re obviously trying to rebuild.”
“If that’s the truth, then all the more reason to keep their noses clean and out of our way. To call the cops on their own operation while they’re trying to rebuild...that’s like shooting yourself in the foot while running a marathon. They could never be taken seriously if they ran their operation that stupidly. No one would want to do business with them.”
“Look, you need to stay on-point here,” he said, his handsome face turning almost ugly with a scowl. “What matters is that they got that close to you, and you didn’t even see it. You need to be more careful.”
“No one got close to me. No one threatened me. Whenever I attended a card game I had Konstantin by my side, and he was allowed to have whatever weapons he wanted, along with all the other bodyguards in attendance. I was safe.”
“You’re Dasha Vitaliev. You’re never going to be safe. Ever.”
“Because of what Papa did throughout his life? Or because of what you’re doing now?”
Watching my brother’s face ice over was a sight to see. “You have no idea what I’m doing now.”
“You’re right, I don’t. And I don’t want to,” I added, and there was no way to stop myself from venting what had been eating at my soul since our father died. “What I want is to build a life out of the shadow of the Vitaliev name and all the blood and violence that goes with it. But I can’t even do that without the likes of snooty Tiffany Stoddard-Fanning bearing witnessing to a mortifying police raid and no doubt uninviting me to every charity event in the city, including her own. I’m trying to create a life that redeems the Vitaliev name, but with you following in Papa’s footsteps I feel like I’m never going to get out of that shadow.”
“I won’t apologize for how I live my life, Dasha. Papa didn’t. You know he didn’t.”
“I only know that Papa’s hope of becoming the Ukrainian equivalent of the Kennedys is never going to happen, because you have no interest in legitimizing the organization he left for you to run.”
“Legitimacy is impotency. Only strength—brutal, absolute strength—is the way to stay safe.”
I shook my head sadly. “You didn’t learn that from Papa.”
“No, I learned that from being fifteen and weak. Being the biggest bully means that no one even thinks about fucking you in the ass. I do the fucking now.”
I winced. “Nizhy—”
“Don’t you fucking call me that, bitch!” The roar echoed around the room, startling me enough to shove back from the table. Fast-moving footsteps sounded in the entrance hall beyond, rushing toward the sound of their boss’s upset. Upset was a damn fine description of my state as well, and I surged in alarm to my feet just as Grigor Dmitriyev and two goons with their guns drawn surged into the room. “Sit the fuck down, cunt!”
Oh...no.
No, he didn’t.
I tried to be a nice person. A good person. And I loved being good and nice. I hoped that whatever energy I sent out into the universe would be a positive thing, and that it would, in some minute way, make our world a better place. But there was one thing I could never deny, no matter how hard I worked on it.
The volatile Vitaliev temper.
“The answer, dear brother, is...no.”
I watched his dark eyes bug out. A vein pulsed in his forehead. No doubt I looked exactly the same. “What did you just say to me?”
“No to sitting the fuck down.” With my initial alarm eaten up by outrage, I picked up a foot, planted it on the edge of the chair seat and kicked it as far away as possible to illustrate just how determined I was to not sit back down. I was so angry that I forgot there was a wall almost directly behind me, which the chair hit with a house-shaking crash. “No to moving back in. And just to make sure I’m covering all the bases, no to any more lunch invitations. Your hospitality sucks.”
“Dasha, wait.”
“Fuck you.” I heard my brother get to his feet as well—sadly, without the dramatic chair-kicking flair that I’d displayed—but I didn’t see him. I’d already turned toward the door, mainly to stop myself from flipping the damn table into the glass walls of the solarium. Grigor had already stepped discreetly out of the room when he saw what was going down, but the two goons still had their guns drawn like identical idiots, and one was partially blocking the exit. I kept my roll going, aiming for the narrow gap, and when he had the audacity to make a grab for me, I actually growled. But before he could reach for me—or I could do my fucking best to knock him on his ass—my brother caught me from behind.
“Get out,” Knives rapped out to his men, who still—still!—had their guns out. My father wouldn’t have tolerated that obvious lack of training or self-control. Clearly my brother had much lower standards.
“Dash, listen to me. You hit a nerve, all right? You hit a nerve.” Once we were alone, my brother spoke in his usual, unbearably calm voice—the same voice he’d used when he’d told me that our father
was dying and I needed to come home, I realized with an odd little jolt that made my stomach turn. His hands were curled around my upper arms in a loose hold, but instinct told me that hold would become unbreakable if I so much as twitched. “I don’t allow that name to be spoken anymore. I didn’t expect to hear it, so it caught me off-guard. I yelled. I shouldn’t have. You kicked a chair through a wall. You shouldn’t have. But we’re Vitalievs, so shit happens.”
“Let. Go. Now.” And there it was, the most glaring difference between Knives and me. He could put a cork in whatever chaos was brewing inside and get his smooth ways back like nothing ever happened. Could I do that? Of course not. I exploded and stayed that way, and I didn’t even know where to look for a cork.
For half a second his fingers tightened hard enough to make me wince before he let me go. “We’re not done talking.”
“Yeah, we are. Bye Knives, or Nozhi, or whatever the fuck you’re calling yourself these days. Do me a favor and lose my number.”
“You spent the weekend with Polo, and from all accounts the two of you acted like you’re fuck-buddies.”
I froze midstride, when I’d been determined to let nothing stop me from getting the hell out of there. I turned back slowly, with a fire burning inside that was so hot it was a miracle it didn’t shoot out of my eyes and fry him where he stood. “Are you monitoring me?”
“I’m trying to keep your ass safe.”
“Translation—you’re fucking monitoring me.”
“Yeah, I’m fucking monitoring you, because I can’t have a weak link out there while I’m trying to rebuild the Vitaliev business.”
“Then you should be happy I’m fuck-buddies with Polo, because everyone in your horrible business knows he’s the most dangerous man in all of Chicago.”
“I’m the most dangerous man in all of Chicago, especially if any Scorpeone steps over the line. And until Polo comes back to me and the organization, he’s a Scorpeone.”
My breath caught so jaggedly it hurt. “How dare you. Polo loathes his family even more than we do.”
“I’m well aware. But with Papa gone and no longer an influence on Polo, I’m not going to forget what his last name is until he remembers who he’s loyal to and comes back to me. You’d be smart to not forget it either.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Vitaliev temper was legendary, and not just because—historically speaking—people had a tendency to drop dead from it. Everyone on the planet got angry, of course; we weren’t special snowflakes in that regard. The reactions of normal people ran the gamut when they got angry. Some smoldered and got passive-aggressive. Others enjoyed throat-punching and wound up with a wild-eyed mugshot that got featured on the evening news.
The Vitalievs, though, took that explosiveness to the next level, and we did it by refusing to let things go. We could hold a grudge three days past forever without losing a single drop of fury.
Which explained why I couldn’t make myself talk to Konstantin as he drove me to Paradis Nouveau.
If my brother wanted me monitored, there was nothing I could do about that. The only thing I had in my control was me, and I wasn’t about to give Knives’s watchdog anything more to report on.
Even if that watchdog was also my dearest and closest friend.
That was the reason why I was so pissed off now. Konstantin and I had been best friends since we were kids, and we’d been through some seriously heavy shit together. So, realizing that he’d given personal, non-bodyguarding information to my brother stabbed me in the absolute center of my heart.
Don’t get me wrong; I fully understood that Knives paid Konstantin to protect me. But until now I’d never known that he also paid Kon to inform on me. Not that Polo and I getting together was a big secret. It wasn’t. In fact, I was both thrilled and proud that such an amazing man wanted to be with me. I’d just had my eyes opened as to what role Konstantin Medvedev actually played in my life, and what I saw wasn’t pretty.
I couldn’t find a way to forgive him for that.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
“So.” Konstantin’s voice was strained as he guided the Wraith into the turn bay for Paradis Nouveau. Other than telling him where I wanted to go, I’d ignored any attempts at conversation he’d made, partly as punishment, and partly because I wasn’t about to give him anything to report back to Knives, who was currently topping my shit-list. “Are you meeting Polo for another fun-filled night up in Heaven, or are you headed all the way to the penthouse for another kind of heaven?”
“After you drop me off at the elevators, you’re dismissed for the rest of the evening.” I tried to make my voice as cutting as possible. I doubted it bothered him as much as it bothered me. He was just there to collect a paycheck, after all. He wasn’t there to be my friend. “Polo will drive me home later.”
There was a beat of silence, with only the turn indicator ticking away to fill it. “You want to tell me what the hell’s going on?”
“I just did. Once you drop me off at the elevators, you’re dismissed for the—”
“Cut the bullshit, Dash.” Kon turned full in his seat to glare at me. But since my eyes could be about as lethal as they came, I was pretty sure I won the glare-off. “You’re pissed at me, and I don’t even know the fuck why. What did I do?”
“You’ve been a perfect bodyguard, Konstantin. A perfect employee for my brother.”
That made his eyes narrow. “Your brother? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means exactly what I said. Are you going to drive into the garage, or should I walk the rest of the way?”
“Fuck.” He dropped back in his seat and slammed a fist into the steering wheel before hauling it into the underground garage with a teeth-jarring bump. “Women. See, this is why I fuck guys. Women like to play games and fuck with your mind and make you feel guilty about shit you haven’t even done, and they do it by not talking to you, when usually you can’t shut them the fuck up. Guys are so much simpler. They get pissed off, they yell, maybe throw a few punches, and it’s done. Over. But is it going to be that way with you? No. No, you’re going to make me grovel for forgiveness for whatever it is you think I’ve done, and it’s not fair because I haven’t fucking done anything worth groveling about.”
Of course he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d followed orders like a good soldier in Knives’s increasingly powerful Bratva.
It was my fault for forgetting that.
The screeching of tires when he came to a stop made me wince, but I kept my silence and reached for the handle. Konstantin was out and yanking my door open before I had the chance to open it myself. He all but lifted me out of the car’s backseat, his handsome face tight with a rage the Medvedev family was infamous for as he walked me to the security at the elevators. “Fine, you wanna play? Go ahead and play. But I’m not going to be a part of it, so maybe you should just ask for another bodyguard next time around.”
I nodded, though it killed my heart to do it. The thought had already occurred to me. “Yes. That might actually be for the best.”
“Jesus.” He sounded both impatient and shaken, and he ignored the two security men who approached us. “You’re serious. You’re really fucking serious. You want me replaced.”
“I...” My eyes prickled with heat, and I blinked furiously to make it go away while averting my head. “I’m just not sure where your loyalties lie.”
He sucked in sharp a breath, and it made me glance back at him to see he looked as shocked as if I’d slapped him in the face. “Who the actual fuck made you ever doubt me? Me, of all people? Wait,” he said before I could even draw breath to answer. “You mentioned your brother, and I know you had lunch with him. What did Knives do? What did that cocksucker do to make you doubt me?”
“Shut up, idiot, do you have a death wish? God.” Horrified, I cupped a hand over his mouth and searched the impassive faces of the two guards waiting for us to get our act together. Then I realized just how tell
ing my instinctive reaction was—one, I wasn’t nearly as ready to hit the eject button on Konstantin as I thought, and two, trying to put a muzzle on my friend told me that I believed my brother was a legitimate threat to anyone who dared to utter even a word against him.
For the first time, something raw and terribly unsettling moved through me, and it was there because of Nizhy.
No.
Not Nizhy.
Knives.
“Not here.” Hating myself because I doubted Konstantin, and hating myself again for feeling—even for a second—a flash something like terror when it came to my brother, I dropped my hand from Konstantin’s mouth. Then I turned to the security guards and tried to turn my expression into stone. “Please let Polo Scorpeone know that Dasha Vitaliev and Konstantin Medvedev are here to see him.”
Polo
By the time Dash finished outlining her blow-up with her brother, is was hard to say who was angrier—Dash, or Konstantin. Polo kept the hot coals of his own anger carefully banked. Now wasn’t the time to rip into how Knives had overstepped his bounds in a big fucking way.
Now was the time to clarify one particular point.
“You didn’t actually kick a chair through a wall, did you?”
Dasha gave him a complex look that was equal parts sheepish and proud. “I’m not that much of a savage. Before I got out of there, I did happen to note that the back of the chair merely made a dent in the drywall. It didn’t go all the way through.”
“Knives is my employer, but he doesn’t pay me to be his stalker-by-proxy,” Konstantin growled through the barrier of his teeth. He hadn’t unlocked his jaw for the last ten minutes, and at this point Polo wouldn’t have been surprised if they needed a crowbar to get the deed done. “He didn’t ask me about you and Polo, and I didn’t volunteer anything. You two getting together is hardly a secret, but the fact is I respect people’s personal relationships. If he wants to peek into the bedroom of his sister to see what’s going on, he’s going to have to hire a private eye for that, because that’s fucking creepy. I’m fine with doing a lot of shit, but I draw the fucking line at creepy.”