AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Aleksandr shrugs. “He probably just came home early.”
I decide it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know his exact whereabouts all the time; I just want to, which in and of itself is troubling. So I try instead to push him out of my head altogether. “You wanna watch a movie with me?”
“As long as it’s got lots of blood and gore.”
I cringe. “Ew. No blood. No gore. Something with banter and meet-cutes and slow-motion dancing in a field of daisies, preferably.”
“You’re a mean negotiator, Wren,” Aleks grumbles, but he sinks back into his seat and gestures toward the TV. “Go on. Roll the footage. Torture me.”
Soon enough, Notting Hill plays across the screen. Julia Roberts asks Hugh Grant if she can stay for a while, and he tells her, “You can stay forever.”
I don’t know whether to shudder or to smile. Reality feels a bit too much like a movie these days. Mine has blood and gore aplenty.
Will it have a happy ending, too?
10
DMITRI
“I’ve got news and it’s not good.”
Gnashing my teeth together, I make room for Aleksandr at the dining room table, shoving my files away with an irritated grunt. That’s the thing about running legitimate businesses: they don’t give a fuck that your world is going up in flames in the shadows.
Aleks sits down adjacent to me and deposits his phone on the table. “I have a recording that I think you should listen to.”
Judging by the look on his face, “not good” might’ve been an understatement. “Who is it?” I venture cautiously.
“A couple of Italian mudaks walked into the club I was at last night. You were curious about Vittorio’s payback plan? Well, I think I’ve uncovered it: death by reputation.”
The teeth-gnashing intensifies. “How fucking predictable.”
Aleksandr’s nostrils flare in silent warning. “As far as plans go, it’s a good one, brother. He’s trying to undermine you. He’s trying to—” He breaks off and opens his phone. “You know what? Just listen to this shit.”
He presses play and the recording starts. Clinking glasses, cross-talk, the shuffling of feet and clothes and chairs dragged across floors.
“‘… heard the Italian princess is dead’?” The first voice is nasally with a grating edge that makes me think of someone thin and spindly.
“You heard right. Got her head blown off at her own damn wedding.” The second talker is deeper and dumber than his friend.
Then a third voice chimes in, my least favorite yet. “Nah, I heard she was poisoned. Dropped to the floor during her vows with blood pouring out of every hole in her body.”
“Does it matter how she died? The point is, she’s dead as a damn rat, man. Vittorio Zanetti’s daughter is dead and her Russian fuck of an almost-husband couldn’t save her.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to.”
“There’s that,” concedes the nasally bastard.
“There’s nothing but the facts! He failed to save her. The Irish pulled the wool over his eyes. It’s not the first time they’ve done it, either. You’ve heard about his first wife, right? Some white trash fuckin’ nobody? She was killed, too. Cathal O’Gadhra gave the order himself.”
“Well, Cathal died for it.”
“Maybe, but not before he struck the winning blow. Apparently, all you have to do to incapacitate the Russian king is kill one of his queens.”
Laughter ripples through the throng of men and my stomach twists with fury. There must be at least six of them, sitting around and swapping rumors like a bunch of old fishwives.
“Cian O’Gadhra is a dead man walking.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure.”
