I pin a glare on him. “I hope you’re enjoying my icy-cold, refreshing beverages.”
He grins unrepentantly and raises his bottle in my direction. “As it happens, I am.”
“Let’s get down to business,” Priest says, changing the subject, slipping back into don mode. “What do you have for me on Dmitri Sidorov?”
I’ve put a lot of work into tracing his moves from the wedding through to this morning. I’ve pulled security cameras and scraped together as good a picture as I’m going to get.
“There’s a ten-minute period of time at the reception where Dmitri is unaccounted for,” I report. “There weren’t cameras onthe bathrooms, but that was plenty of time for him to slip into one, give the orders for what went down at the deal, and then rejoin the party.”
“And Cantarelli’s phone records?” Saint prods, leaning forward in his seat.
“They’re clean. I don’t think they were wiped, which means he was using a burner. His wife might know more about that if we can get her to talk to us again.”
“She’ll talk,” Lucky says. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“How do you know?” I ask him.
He just smirks. “I have my ways.”
Saint polishes off the rest of my bottle of San Pellegrino. “You’re going to fuck Cantarelli’s widow when he’s barely cold?”
Lucky shrugs. “Not what I said, but my charm is pretty fucking legendary, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she threw herself at me. Everyone knows those two were on the outs.”
“Get your fucking feet off my desk,fratello,” I snap at him, annoyed at his good mood and complete lack of responsibilities.
He moves them slowly, making a show of it, like he’s got all day. I resist the urge to kick his ass because that’s not going to get us any closer to accomplishing what needs to be done at this meeting.
He stretches his arms overhead, still comfortable in my chair. “Happy now?”
“I’d be happier if I knew for certain that the Bratva was behind the deal. What’s your contact with the cartel saying?”
Lucky sits up straight. “They’re pissed, but they’re not willing to break ties with us over it. They know it wasn’t us. Our men were taken out too.”
“Do they have any intel?”
“Not that they’ve shared with me.”
“Damn. It was worth a shot.”
“Does Ekaterina know anything?” Priest asks.
I shake my head. “She’s not in the loop on anything her brother does, from what I can tell. I did a thorough search of her old phone before I gave her the new one.”
I’d been half expecting to find her phone filled with messages from that fucking dancer, Jacob, or other men. But I hadn’t found anything other than idle chitchat about work or making arrangements for practice and meeting up for dinner or yoga. And there was definitely nothing from her brothers that was the least bit incriminating. She seemed genuinely lost about what happened the night before, and I don’t think she’s putting on an act.
“She could be a part of this,” Saint points out, almost mimicking some of the same concerns that have been rolling around in my brain.
It stands to reason. If Sidorov planned to attack us, why would he marry his sister off to me? To throw suspicion off him until he achieves whatever his aim is? To plant someone in our ranks and gain our trust?
“It’s possible,” I acknowledge. “But I don’t think Katya would do Sidorov’s dirty work for him.”
Priest turns toward me, stopping his pacing. “Katya, is it?”
“She did do the dirty work of marrying you,” Saint points out.
And again, he’s not wrong.
“She was backed into a corner the same way I was,” I counter, defending her for reasons I’m not going to consider at the moment. “Neither of us had a choice. It was either go through with it, or start a war between the Bratva and us.”
