Page 58 of The Agreement

He turned away from her only long enough to close the bedroom door, and lock it. Katee was already shrinking back, away, curling herself into a ball. That wouldn’t stop him from doing what he was going to do.

It never did.

TWELVE

Roman had been made to wait an entire hour before he finally got to meet with the boss. Tribute meant a lot of things to different men in their life, but the money was the one thing that never changed. He sensed everybody around him waited on tenterhooks, careful with their every word or request because no one wanted to piss off the pakhan today. It seemed like Maxim was in the kind of mood where he could randomly lose his shit over nothing.

When Roman was finally shown into Maxim’s den, he walked into a cloud of smoke the second his feet passed the office’s threshold. Thick and gray, created by the cigar that Maxim was smoking where he sat behind his desk, the smoke stuck in the back of Roman’s lungs when he sucked in a breath.

Only one other man remained in the room with the boss—Leonid. Dima’s father, he knew, and one of Maxim’s spies. The closest hand to the boss who made sure every brigadier in the bratva was toeing the line.

Whatever line that was.

Roman rarely cared to learn them.

Dropping the two duffle bags on the floor, Roman said nothing while Maxim and Leonid glanced at it, and then toward him again.

“What are your thoughts on your job so far?” Maxim asked, that cigar bouncing from the corner of his mouth with every word.

Leonid stood up and walked over to grab the bags without being ordered to do so. Roman remained still in place, unmoving. He knew how this worked. It was not his first tribute day—the ritual had been with him while he grew up, reminding him monthly of where he would eventually be expected to be in one way or another.

The only difference?

His father didn’t expect the money delivered in cash anymore.

All it would take for the money to disappear was Maxim’s ashtray catching fire. The whole place would burn down, and take the cash with it. Roman never really understood the value of having cold, hard cash by the millions just lying around. It was harder to hide—harder to keep.

Then again, nobody asked his opinion.

“Well?” Maxim demanded.

“I did the job, as best it could be done, under the circumstances and given the resources I have. Currently. Having said that—I’m just getting started.”

“So, you’re saying you’ll have more for me next month?”

Roman only shrugged in response. Let the man make of that whatever he wanted. He wasn’t the type to make promises he couldn’t keep, but he also knew what was expected of him at the end of the day. More was always better. To an extreme. Greed knew no bounds.

Especially in their world.

Maxim would never stop wanting more and more ... and more. Frankly, Roman had to respect it. As much as he could manage, anyhow.

Beside him, but closer to the boss’s desk, Leonid sat at a table with an electronic counting machine. Sliding wads of cash into the machine, the man never looked away from the dancing money while a loud whirring sound resounded through the room with each one. The slow smile and subtle nod told him Leonid was happy with the results he was seeing. He even grunted his approval toward Maxim, a signal for the boss to turn back on Roman.

“And what about your cut—have you paid yourself?” Maxim asked.

“Last night. The money came through to one of my offshore accounts. Not that I expected anything different.”

“And the ... cars?”

Did he care, or was the man just curious? What did it matter how Roman was paid, or the details of the overall job as long as Maxim was paid?

Roman indulged the question because he didn’t have much of a choice. “They’re already on a boat, all taken apart in a thousand different pieces, but there. That’s my part of the deal, they’ll deal with the rest.”

Maxim nodded, impressed.

Silence reigned in the den as Leonid continued his business at the table. Maxim seemed fine to let that be the case while he worked on the cigar still filling the room with smoke. He toyed with the glass of vodka on ice at the edge of his desk, sipping on the drink, and watching his spy pile up stack after stack of dirty money.

Roman counted the minutes.