He grinned and returned it.
She laughed and ran away, and I didn’t think much of it until Mateo and Juana caught up with us in the bar, where Rubi burned through his disco playlist, dancing by himself to Womack & Womack. Probably not a scene Vik had pictured himself a part of, like ever, but here we were.
Mateo ducked behind the bar and grabbed the vodka from the back shelf. He thunked it down in front of Viktor, eyes flaring with something more than his usual brand of aggression as I glanced between them, wary as Viktor rotated on his stool. Locke, Nash, and Orla treated him like long-lost family, but that was at home—theirs while we had been holed up in that flat. Ours when they’d visited the house in the cliffs. We didn’t come to the compound much, so Mateo’s opinion on welcoming another Russian mobster into the fold hadn’t been on my radar.
“Did you know?”
Viktor unscrewed the vodka and swigged from the bottle like a boss before he answered Mateo’s growled question. “Know what?”
“Don’t fuck around. She’s my kid.”
“And you want to know if I knew that before anyone else in your life?”
Mateo’s silence confirmed that he did.
Viktor drank more vodka and set the bottle down. “All I knew about your daughter was that she was a prisoner. And that the flights her grandfather brought her on were to punish her mother who was left on the ground. The connection between the Esteban family and Rebel Kings wasn’t apparent until they escaped.”
Mateo drummed his fingers on the bar, his scarred face twisted in contemplation. “She said you were nice to her.”
“Why would I not be nice?” Viktor made eye contact with the toddler on Juana’s hip, a soft smile on his lush lips. “We are the same monster, Mateo. That does not mean it is all we are.”
Mateo accepted that and moodied his way out of the bar as grouchily as he’d arrived. Juana stayed. “Your brother was kind to me while he was my dad’s bodyguard. I’d never have known he was Russian, though.”
“My brother is kind. And your lover was our friend.”
Viktor dropped that fact like a casual hot potato, but Juana was a tough bird. I’d never seen this chick fazed. She gave Vik a warm smile, then turned to me and plunked the toddler on my lap before I could protest. “See? Told you Uncle Ranger was coming back.”
Uncle Ranger. Fuck’s sake. I held the squirming kid away from me, daring her to cry. She didn’t. Which meant I had to keep her while Vik laughed at me. Heaven and hell rolled into one until the little shit reached for him instead.
Viktor was cool with kids. Cooler than me, anyway. He took her and nodded to Juana as Liliana came to the bar door and called for her. “Take your time.”
Juana slipped away. Viktor eyed the kid. “She is like Polina, no?”
Like the niece he hadn’t seen in the flesh for months until yesterday because he’d refused to leave me. I hooked one of the baby’s dark curls around my little finger and tucked it behind her ear. “Tyrant in training? Probably.”
Viktor just smiled, and it was the best thing I’d ever seen.
The record fair dragged on. Banned from booze for at least another week, I endured it while Vik found himself the subject of Ivy’s attention. She spotted the bracelet on his wrist a mileoff and bombarded him with a thousand questions that Folk was too amused by to stop.
He joined me at the bar, pinching my water bottle. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“Why?”
“You hate people and you hate records.”
I shot a longing look at the beer Rubi was tipping down his throat on the dance floor, before giving Folk my full attention. “I don’t hate you.”
Folk studied me with the same sage bullshit he had when he’d come to the recovery flat the day after I’d fucked Vik on the couch and ripped me a new one for being reckless with my wellbeing. And I stared right back, years of friendship spooling between us, remembering, like I always did every moment I had alone with him, the long-ago conversation I’d had with Cam.
“The last few months have taken it out of him.”
Still wasn’t sure what Cam had meant by that, but with Folk, it was hard to tell. He seemed all right to me. So did Decoy. Leaving me to wonder if it was a me thing. If I wasn’t seeing something that everyone else could.
“How’s Viktor doing?”
I returned to earth to find Folk had swapped out for Embry. “Ask him yourself.”
Embry hopped onto the bar, as agile as Viktor. “If you tell me, I won’t have to.”
