Page 17 of The Viper's Wife

In my peripherals, Giovanni stares daggers at me like he’s trying to telepathically strangle me into compliance.

He doesn’t need to bother. Yes, Omari favors his left leg while he walks and looks so priggish and uptight that he almost certainly would hate any insults to his mother’s honor, but I’m reckless, not suicidal, and picking a fight in enemy territory falls firmly into that second category.

And as the elevator doors open, I realize just how deep into enemy territory we are.

The room is built like a giant aircraft hangar lined with cement, evidently decorated by a man with as much money as vices, and packed to the gills with Russians.

Long, glittering track lights snake across the ceiling, glaring down on a massive cage in the center of the room. Inside, two men stalk each other with fists raised. A thrill passes through me. One of the sorry bastards is bleeding from the temple, his right eye nearly swollen shut, but he’s the one pressing his opponent into the corner.

Omari leads us toward the cage.

Around us, men gamble and shout in groups while naked women grind on stripper poles nearby. The deep, slushing sounds of the Russian language spoken en masse laps over us like ocean waves breaking on the shoreline.

Several men glance at us with affected indifference before turning back to their cards. The women stare openly at Giovanni and me. I ignore them. The rules are the same, no matter what language they speak. A tumble in the sheets will cost nothing, but you’ll pay for it in other ways—compromising photos, a whispered secret.

No thanks. My mouth can be put to much better use.

Valeria wasn’t interested in schemes or secrets. She didn’t even want to know my name.

When I’d come to that restaurant to meet her and her family, I’d expected to see some flicker of recognition or interest. Her dad would’ve died painfully and deservedly under Salvatore’s order, but I had stepped in and saved him.

So he’d lost a few spare parts? She couldn’t hold that against me when he was still alive. A little gratitude was in order, or at least some poorly-directed resentment for me to poke at.

She gave me nothing. Her pretty face was a blank slate, even when I held it up to my inspection—a complete one-eighty from the woman who’d been so responsive to my touch and flirted so easily a few nights before.

I can’t stop prodding at my memories of her like a loose tooth. Whenever I expect her to go left, she goes right, and it’s fucking with my usual gift for reading people. Unpredictable can be fun—she was certainly fun in bed—but it can also be dangerous, and I need to figure out which kind she is before we share a living space.

Omari takes us to a group of tattooed Russians in black clothes bent over a table lined with cards and cash. Womenin skin-tight dresses, dangling drinks in hand, lounge along the sofas.

They all look up as we approach, and I stare at the one man I recognize.

Yevgeniy Dashkov, the Chicago pakhan, nods to us over his glass, a giggling blonde on each chair arm. He’s a wiry man with a military cut that has grown more grey since I’d last seen him years ago. From what I remember, he had a fucked-up sense of humor and barely concealed his dislike for my father—though that could be said of most of Father’s allies.

“Nicolo, Giovanni!” he calls. The women at his sides tumble into each other with vapid giggling as he stands.

He comes around the table and embraces Giovanni first, clapping the much bigger man’s back with an open palm. Giovanni tolerates this with stoic politeness.

Yevgeniy approaches me next. He spits out a few curt words in Russian, and Omari drifts away from my side, clearly dismissed.

I let Yevgeniy grab my shoulders. “Little Nicolo, you are all grown up!” He reeks of alcohol. “You are spitting image of your father. You have same eyes.”

My irritation spikes. “So I’ve been told.”

“How do you like Chicago? I hear you have wife now.”

I think of Valeria looking up at me with interest as she shivered on the balcony, her skin glittering in kaleidoscope colors from the Christmas lights.

“Fiancée. I’m liking it just fine.”

Yevgeniy squeezes my shoulder tightly, grinning in a wolfish way, until I clap a hand on his shoulder and squeeze back to the point of pain.

He sweeps his arms wide to smoothly shake off my hand and show off his massive basement.

“Well, in case Italians don’t show you a proper bachelor party, think of this as your play area.” He snaps his fingers, and the women who were sitting with him come to my side. “Enough drinking, fucking, and fighting to satisfy any man.”

The blondes rub their giant breasts against each other and bat their eyelashes up at me. They also stink of alcohol.

I barely spare them a glance. “I’ll take the drinking.”