Page 5 of The Agreement

Roman dragged the back of his hand over his upper lip. How did his father figure it out? He suddenly noticed the way he was furiously tapping the floor with his feet; his fingers had been drumming a constant beat to the leather-wrapped armrest. Cocaine tingled with an electric pulse through his veins. He could feel it at the back of his head—a throbbing burst of heat. That, and an inexplicable urge to grab someone and thrash them against the floor of the vehicle until they couldn’t breathe, and he finally could.

He didn’t reply to his father, but apparently, he didn’t have to.

“Don’t look so surprised, son, you left the baggie sitting on top of the damn trash can. In the kitchen.”

Right.

Fuck.

Sometimes, he didn’t think shit through. At the same time, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

Demyan continued despite Roman’s silence in the row behind him, saying, “Your mother would have seen it if I didn’t find it first.”

Shame.

“She would have survived the horror.”

His twisted smirk only earned a shake of Demyan’s head, and nothing more. Cellophane. That’s what he was to his papa. Transparent to a fault.

Roman often wondered how Demyan did it—how he unravelled his son with barely any effort at all no matter how tightly he wore this suit of chaos.

Even as a child, Roman was aware of the significance of his position; the unique relationship he shared with his father that few could understand. They couldn’t be only father and son when they were also a pakhan and a vor. He didn’t know if it was equally strange for Demyan to not only train and punish his son, but to also have to love him because he was his own blood.

But it had certainly shaped the way Roman perceived the world around him, and the relationships he chose to have inside of it.

Demyan clicked his tongue, his gaze darting back to the windows like he was over the moment of unsurprising disappointment, and already moving on. “You’re losing your touch, Roman. The least you can do for your mother’s sake is clean up the evidence.”

“Maybe you don’t know her as well as you think you do. She sees everything, she knows everything,” Roman replied.

His father breathed in deeply and nodded. “Trust me, son, I know that very well.” Then, Demyan grinned indulgently—like a vision of his wife had filled his brain, and he was blown away somewhere else. It didn’t last long before the sharp, unapproving stare flicked back his way. “Back to you, though.”

Roman’s jaw clenched. His father tended to stay out of his habits, so why was he mentioning it now? Besides, it wasn’t like the drug-use was an actual problem for him. Certainly not something he couldn’t keep under control. Sometimes, he would end up going weeks without touching it. Then, something would pull him in again—usually boredom.

Shocker.

The Prince of Brighton Beach had very little else to do when he wasn’t boosting cars. How many secret raves could he go to? He started when he was barely sixteen. It had been over eleven years by now that he was living this life he made, stacking his own money. His nickname—dubbed by the reporters who had the balls to put his name to paper—of Little Odessa’s Devil hadn’t come out of nowhere.

He had never needed his father or the bratva to pay for his indulgences, he made his name in the streets before they could do it for him, so what gave Demyan the authority to call him out on anything?

Most importantly, and the one fact his father should have cared most about—Roman never got in the kind of shit he couldn’t get out of. It was the only rule he made an attempt to follow. He had all the cops he needed under his belt. Nobody was going to point a finger at his dad; their corrupt control of New York had spanned decades.

The Avdonins hadn’t been built overnight.

So, what was the fucking problem?

“You’re stewing in your own rage, Roman,” Demyan murmured, his tone softening just enough to remind him that more often than not, this man was his father before anything else. “There has to be a reason why. Is there something you want to tell me?”

There he went.

Again.

Reading his mind like an open book.

“We usually keep out of each other’s shit, don’t we?” Roman asked, determined to keep his tone calm even though the cocaine made that really hard.

“I need you fully present today, son.”

“What do you think I’m doing here, then?”