“So what’s her plan?” he asked, looking at his watch. His 60 minutes had turned into 45.
“I told you, she didn’t say. All we know is that she took a train to Chicago, headed to Yakov’s old place.”
“Hopefully not to fuck him again,” Anatoly said, knowing that would piss Renee off. Serves her right though for helping Lilly behind his back.
Renee’s mouth popped open. “Don’t be like that.” Turning to walk away, she felt him.
“Where are you going?” Anatoly grabbed her arm.
“To pack your bags,” she said, looking at his hand on her.
Anatoly pulled her back toward him roughly. “Lilly is not the only one who has to sweeten the deal to get what she wants around here.”
A faux look of disbelief crossed her face. “Are you really bribing me? Your wife?”
“Do you want me to help her or not?” Anatoly asked, face serious. “She’s your girl, not mine. I don’t know her. I don’t care to know her. You black women are all trouble anyway.”
“Funny. It seems like your house is nearly full with black women.” She cracked a smile. “You would leave her there alone if I don’t have sex with you?” She stepped closer to him, feeling his body heat as she closed her proximity. “Are you that much of an ass?”
“I will fucking shoot her myself if you don’t have sex with me,” he said, his expression inscrutable.
“Can’t say that I’m surprised,” Renee quipped. “You are a monster.”
He picked her up off the floor and held her in his arms. “I’m going to teach you a lesson about what happens when you stick your nose into other people’s business.”
“Oh really,” she taunted in anticipation, as he laid her across the bed.
Provocatively, he pulled off his t-shirt to reveal tanned, lean muscle. She ran her hand over her name tattooed on his chest. “You know I’m hard to teach,” she said, as he crawled over her naked.
“Well, I’m just hard,” he whispered in a rasping voice, putting her hand on his steely manhood. “We’ll just have to see, if there is a common ground we can reach.”
Renee giggled when she felt him pull her pants down with one hand. “Ana!” she laughed
Chapter 17
Gabriel looked down at his Presidential Rolex one more time as he listened to Briggy curse him in French across the bedroom. Throwing his clothes in a duffle bag, one article at a time, she growled in her deepest voice.
Her long, manicured nail pointed directly at him. “And I know that you’ve been sleeping with someone else. The entire house knows it. You make a complete mockery of me!” she said, tears rolling down her face. She grabbed a pair of black Calvin Klein briefs and waved them in the air. “I can smell sex on you when you come home…your expensive whore and her expensive perfume!” In her rage, her blonde tendrils bounced wildly across her like Medusa’s locks of snakes, only her gaze had far more rage tonight then Gabriel could imagine any demi-goddess could have.
Briggy had never been this angry before. At least, not that he’d seen. Normally, she was a demure, quiet woman who voiced her objections reasonably. Normally.
However, they came into the room after the meeting in the kitchen, and he asked her why she felt the need to help Lilly. It was then that Briggy exploded. She turned deep red, burst into tears and started to scream at him.
Now, trying to calm her down was like trying to fit lighting into a bottle.
Gabriel didn’t want this for her. And in truth, he didn’t want this for himself. Still, he felt incredibly responsible for her. She didn’t have any family. She was thousands of miles away from her home country. And most importantly, she was a known Medlov consorter. Basically, she was a moving target, and it was his job to keep her safe, even if she was not the woman that he wanted anymore.
Walking over to the disheveled bed, he placed his large hands on her shoulders and stopped her mid-rage. “Briggy, baby, we have to stop this.” His voice was calming, soothing almost, despite this all being his fault.
“Don’t baby me,” she sobbed. “Why do you take so much pleasure in hurting me? What have I done, but love you, Gabriel?”
“You don’t love me,” he croaked. Damn, it felt good to say it for once. Anatoly was right and his words had lingered on his mind since their conversation, making life almost unbearable. He had to tell Briggy the truth. She deserved at least that from him.
“How can you say that?” Her blue eyes were blood shot. Caught off guard, her face twisted into a mix of confusion and pain. For a minute, she stopped breathing all together.
“I can say it because I don’t love you, Briggy. I don’t. I want to. I do,” he said touching his chest. “It kills me that I can’t. I’m…I’m fucking ashamed of it. You are a good woman. You deserve better, but I just…I don’t love you.”
Her eyes widened. “Then why did you ever take me?”
Gabriel mossy green eyes were wide with adrenaline. “I had my own selfish reasons, none of which are good enough to defend what I’ve done to you.”
“Done to me?” she repeated. “Done to me? Êtes-vous sérieux? You have ruined me! You and your miserable cousin have ruined my life!” Her tears multiplied. “You have used me; you have disregarded me…”
“Briggy stop,” Gabriel begged, guilt-ridden.
“And you think it’s okay, because I’m not them. I’m not Royal, and I’m not Renee. I’m just your live-in girlfriend. Some additional amenity to your lavish lifestyle…in house pussy! Dmitry warned me. He begged me not to consort with you boys, but I didn’t listen. Je pensais que tu m'aimais.”
Wiping more tears, she looked at the diamond bracelet on her wrist and pulled it off. Throwing the bracelet at him, she cursed again. “You give me all of this…all of these things that I could never afford on my own, just to make me realize what would happen if you left me. Then you treat me like shit to show me how much you don’t want me. You’re as psychotic as your fucking father. Maybe worse!”
Gabriel tried, though it was difficult, to ignore her harsh comments of him.
“I give you these things because I want to.” He bent and picked up the $100,000 bracelet and set it carefully on the bed.
In his voice, she could hear that she had hit a nerve and in her despair, it seemed to ease her hysteria to hurt him.
“You give them to me because Dmitry and Anatoly give them to their wives,” Briggy hissed.
“I appreciate your candor but…”
“Don’t do that!” Briggy pushed him as hard as she could, but he did not even flinch. At nearly seven feet tall and 290 pounds of pure muscle, it really was as if she was pushing against a brick wall. “You always say something smug when you want to berate me!”
“I’m not…”
“Why did you not come home again last night?” she asked, getting down to the root of the problem.
Gabriel looked away. Did she really want him to say why?
“Look at me, you fucking bastard!” She hit him again, this time with a closed fist.
Gabriel sighed and stepped back. Wiping his nose, he picked up the poorly packed bag. “I don’t have time for this. When I get back, then we can talk.”
“I don’t want to talk anymore,” she screamed. “I’m tired of talking to you! All you do is lie anyway! You’re a liar; you always have been. You lied to get into this family. You lie to stay connected to it. You’re the only one who doesn’t belong and that makes you feel emasculated, so the only way to prove yourself worthy as a man is to use your dick. Well, that’s not good enough, Gabriel Medlov. You’re still a boy despite your best efforts. You’re a boy dealing with grown men who see right through you. I see right through you, and I’m sick of it! You disgust me!!”
Gabriel couldn’t take her words anymore. They were like nails digging down a chalk board. Feeling his anger boil to the very top, he drop the bag and turned to her.
“Well, what do you want to do then? Huh? You want to go?” he asked, screaming. “
Go then, Briggy! It might be best for both of us. Just fucking go! I’ll put you up somewhere. I’ll pay for everything no different from what I’m fucking doing right now! So you can have the life you’ve always coveted.”
“I do not covet,” she snapped.
“You do not fool me. You don’t think I know? I know you still think about fucking him, but it makes you feel better to have me around so that you can say that you have at least one Medlov, just not the one you want, because he would never marry you. You’re just as weak as I am. But at least I have a birth right to be here and I’m not just holding on using my miserable fucking cunt! Just pack your things, find a map, pick a place and get out of my fucking life before you drive me insane!”
His words cut her deep. She had to look down just to make sure that she was not bleeding. “Yes,” she croaked. “Yes, I want to fucking leave. I want to take me and my baby as far away from you as possible, because you are not worth it.”
Gabriel’s mouth flew open. She had just kicked the air right out of his diaphragm. Eyes narrowed, he shook his head. “You know, you really have the worst fucking timing I’ve ever seen in my life. You couldn’t have just said that you were pregnant? You had to push me to say that shit to you so that you would feel better about leaving me?” His eyes gleamed with malice. “Well, good. Fucking great, Briggy. I hope that you got what you asked for.” Tears fell down his cheeks. “I hope that I lived up to my father’s standards for you. But at least when you’re gone, you don’t have to help carry around the shame that Anya could have very well been my sister if my father had gotten to Royal first, or that my cousin could have been fatherless for real if my father’s attempts on Dmitry’s life hadn’t panned out. You have no idea what type of man it takes to stay here and face these people every single day, because you’re too busy living the good life off my back.”
He turned and headed toward the door. “Like I said, we’ll talk when I return.”
“I’ll be gone when you get back,” she warned, voice trembling.
Gabriel looked down at the floor, then turned slowly to her. His tone was different now. It was stern and direct. “No, you won’t. You leave this house with my child, I’ll find you. I swear. And I won’t be forgiving about it. My mother did that to my father. You know that. And despite my shortcomings, you don’t get to do that to me.” He adjusted the bag on his large shoulder. “Now, we’ll talk about this like adults when I get back. Then you can do whatever you want to do.”
“I hate you!” she screamed. “I hate the day that I ever laid eyes on you!”
“Yeah, well get in line,” he said, walking out of the door, and slamming it behind him.
Chapter 18
As quiet as a shadow, Vasily stood over Dylan watching him sleep peacefully, curled up to the new teddy bear that he had just bought him and holding on to the pillow for dear life. There was something so beautiful and unexplainable about the boy. But more than that, there was something incredible about how the boy made him feel inside. He gave him hope – pure, simple hope.
Vasily had to wonder if his own father ever once felt the way that he was feeling now, did he ever stare in awe of him, pray over him, did he worry about him? His father never outwardly showed any love toward him – not from the time that he was a baby until the day that he died, but now that Vasily was on the other side of the spectrum, he had to wonder.
Regardless of the answer being yes or no, Vasily did. He worried. He prayed his sins would never be visited on his son and that all the days of his life he’d be healthy and happy.
Before Dylan, the only children he had ever cared for had been the Medlov children. Anya had been his pride and joy along with Maxim, Konstantin and Alexandria, but now he had his own child, and regardless of what the paternity test said, he’d always be just that.
In such a short period of time, they had become inseparable, but after tonight, Vasily was certain that one way or another, things would change.
Putting a note by the bed addressed to him, he bent over Dylan and kissed his forehead, then stealthily made his way out of the room.
Boris was waiting outside in the hallway for his boss. When Vasily emerged, he closed the door behind him and nodded. “Keep him safe while I’m gone.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Boris said, walking with Vasily.
“Where are we?” He checked his watch. They would be leaving the property in 10 minutes.
“Everything is ready to go. Chicago is waiting on you. Grigory and his team will be at the airport when you arrive. He’s got an address on Yakov.”
“That was quick,” Vasily said impressed.
“Da, it cost,” Boris explained.
“In this life, everything costs something,” Vasily said, hitting the stairs. “Is everyone else ready to go?”
“They are getting there,” Boris said hesitantly. “When I went to get Gabriel, he was screaming at his girlfriend. It didn’t sound good.”
Vasily always insisted on a full report, especially on Gabriel, He still didn’t fully trust the man. Considering Gabriel’s background with law enforcement, Vasily always felt as though the new addition to the Medlov family was not exactly on board with the core business of weapons, precious gems trafficking and their secondary but profitable businesses of extortion and contract killing.
In the Medlov Crime Family’s entire existence, not one person had ever turned state’s evidence and lived to testify. However, Vasily felt as though, if anyone could pull it off, it would be Gabriel, all the more reason to keep a very close eye on him and all of his clandestine activities. While Gabriel normally prefaced his late night meetings as sexual romps with women associated with the family, Vasily often wondered if he used this as a cover to smuggle information about the family out of the house.
Now, with his son also very much a part of the Medlov family, Vasily felt it important to watch Gabriel even closer. After all, he did not have any children, a wife or family outside of the people in the house. Gabriel was a wild card, and it puzzled Vasily as to why Boss Dmitry did not see it.
However, he could always be wrong. After all, he was only human and an extremely untrusting human at that. For all he knew, Gabriel was just an asshole.
And because of that possibility, he never accused or led on that he was untrusting of the man.
When Vasily arrived downstairs, everyone was waiting in the foyer. It was odd, because normally, he was the first one to arrive. This was the first time in his career that he’d been the one to be waited on.
Gabriel was first to say something. “What took you so long? Everything okay?” he asked concerned.
Anatoly smirked. “Ignore him. He doesn’t have kids,” he said, as the butler opened the door for them.
Vasily was suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry, boss. I just wanted to…”
Anatoly cut him off. “You don’t owe me an explanation, brat. Let’s just go. I fucking hate Chicago. I just want to go do what we have to do and get back.”
“Why do you hate Chicago?” Gabriel asked, ignoring the very smug, considering the information that he’d just received, very untrue statement that Anatoly had just made about him not having children.
“I got into some shit there once. Hated it ever since,” Anatoly scoffed. “Vasily, you remember that shit? What was her name?”
“Helga,” Vasily answered absently.
“Murdering bitch,” Anatoly said, walking out of the door with his bodyguards leading the way. “It took five bullets to put her down.”
Gabriel’s eye rose. He was fascinated by how his cousin talked about murder and death like other people talked about shopping and movies. To Anatoly, life was just one big observation that he rarely got off the deck to participate in. Yet, unlike him, Anatoly seemed to breeze through life. He was born to the right father, picked the right woman, had a perfect daughter and a pretty cushiony job as the second in-charge of the largest Russian mob syndicate in the world.
Figures, Gabriel thought to him
self.
Chapter 19
With Maxim curled up in Dmitry’s massive arms after having a late evening bottle, he sat in his study alone watching the monitors while listening to the jazz station on his surround sound stereo system. He watched the Gabriel, Anatoly and Vasily converse in the foyer before leaving; checked the monitors to see if the guards were making their rounds and finally, checked the balances on his main bank accounts. Now, he was ready to begin his real work.
Somewhere between Gabriel fighting with Briggy; Renee and Anatoly making love, Dmitry found the number to their trusted doctor and called him for a late night visit. He would arrive in less than an hour to swab Dylan’s mouth and rush the samples back to the lab to get a definite answer on his paternity. Additionally, he also called their new attorney, Lawrence Massey, to come over to the house and begin to earn his $40,000 a month retainer.
Nothing was ever easy.
Dmitry knew that from years of experience. While the Boys were still trying to figure out how to brush their teeth, he was making hits on major crime bosses and going to war with whole countries. It was because of his experience, and the many brushes with death over the years, that while Anatoly and Gabriel didn’t seem concerned about going to Chicago, he knew there could always be danger lurking at every corner.
But there was something more.
Something didn’t add up to Dmitry.
Before Vasily had left, he had printed out the email that was sent to Lilly by her babysitter. Several hours ago, Leo had been in Jackson, Mississippi. There was no way that he was going to stay there, and unless he let on to knowing more than they thought, Leo had no idea that everyone was in Chicago.
What Leo did know was that Vasily obviously was not dead.
The Vory v Zakone while international in scope was a small community. Surely in 10 years, Vasily’s old boss had learned, especially while incarcerated, that his attempt to take his life had been thwarted and that he was now thriving with the biggest boss in the world. News like that and even rumors of the possibility would have traveled fast.
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