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ChapterEighteen
Fuck, it was hard leaving her.
The warmth of her supple body, unconsciously leaning back into me when I fastened the cuff around her delicate neck. The little hiccup in her breathing when I laved her throat, and the tiny gasp when I nipped her earlobe. Everything about her screamed at me to take, take, take. Yesterday should’ve been an all-nighter, what with the first shipment of Nelu’s product coming in, but I couldn’t stay away.
Nina in my bed had to be the most enticing fucking temptation I’d ever had to deal with. Spending the evening with her, fucking her tight clutch, then forcing myself out of the warmth of our bed to drive over to the port in Newark and make sure everything was running smoothly was sheer fucking agony.
Leaving Tatum to keep watch, I’d returned to Nina for a few hours. And now I had to leave her once again, after seeing the Lupu wolf dangling from the cuff at her neck. Fuck, but the image of my family crest swinging from her throat was almost too much. It reared up my most possessive traits. I wanted to watch in the mirror as I mounted her from behind and gave her a hard fuck with my hand wrapped around her throat, the wolf banging against her from the power of my thrusts.
Instead, I forced myself out the door and made my way to our warehouse underneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, near Calvary Cemetery.
I saw the sadness coat her eyes when she looked at the cuff. The disappointment. I’d given many presents to many women over the years, but unlike any of the others, Nina knew about our tat and what it meant. She knew too much about our ways in general, so there was no hiding from her.
Still, I had hoped to make a point with the jade piece carved into the symbol of our clan. Although we had yet to acknowledge what we were to each other, there was more between us than three little words like “I love you.” It was deeper than that. Our souls spoke to each other. Not only did I want to cuff her with the Lupu, I wanted my tat inked above her heart. I wanted her draped in clothing with the Lupu emblem repeatedly stamped on it, like Coach or Gucci. I wanted to see her fitted in the Lupu from head to toe.
My mouth twisted in a smirk as I reached the parking lot underneath my building and strode to my Porsche. She was going to have a little surprise when she tried to take the cuff off. It wasn’t coming off without my help. I hadn’t missed the way she’d assumed I wouldn’t show up at her family’s birthday party. She wasn’t wrong, which had pissed me off even more. There was no doubt I wanted to claim her publicly, which was why she would be unable to take it off. She’d have no choice but to wear it to her parents’ home. It’d be interesting to see how she handled it. Would she attempt to hide my mark or give in to me and flaunt it?
“Mee sua.”
The foreign sounds fell from my lips as I slipped into the driver’s seat. Another thing I loved about Nina was that she was a first-generation American, like me. We both straddled the demands of more than one set of cultural expectations, but our lives were also richer for it. Suddenly, I wanted very much to be there and slurp on her mother’s noodles. I wanted to know every little thing about Nina. In my hubris, I’d thought I knew most everything there was to know, what with her being present on the sidelines of my life for so long. Those two little words made me realize that there was so much I didn’t know, and that—that was unacceptable.
Driving out of the underground parking lot onto 59th Street, I headed east toward the Queensboro Bridge to get to the warehouse. The first shipment had gone off without any glitches, establishing the partnership with Nelu. After siphoning off half the product straight out of Afghanistan to my suppliers in Europe, I tried a new route to move the rest of the load through North Africa, from where it was shipped to Jersey. Considering everything went as planned, I was satisfied.
The only thorn in my side was Luca, who was still holding out on me with respect to Nelu’s daughter. Nelu had upheld his part of the contract, so time was running out. I felt like a convicted man being led up to the electric chair. Fucking hell, that brother of mine better come through. His behavior was frustrating on a good day, but now my life depended on him, and the sense of powerlessness was grating.
I checked the crates stocked with burlap sacks filled to the brim with the small sticks of the grayish-green ephedra shrub. I had plans to set up meth labs in Romania and Moldova to turn it into crystal meth and then distribute it to the Russian Federation and Western Europe. But first, I wanted to have some brought to me. We’d cook it up here so I could better understand the product.
I supervised distribution to the RVs and vans used as cook labs that traveled around rural Jersey and Pennsylvania to avoid detection and capture by the DEA.
Done with my responsibilities at the warehouse, I drove to the Dacia Café to finish paperwork and wait for Nina. Nicu stopped by for a game of chess. I had a little table set up with an antique chess set that had been in the family since the 1800s. We usually played at least once a week, leaving the pieces in place if we had to pause and take care of business. When he was younger, Nicu had once tried to trick me by switching up the pieces. It was the first time I’d laid my hands on him. Not only was it a dishonorable act, but it was an act of betrayal specifically directed toward me, the sef. I remembered his young tearstained face, staring up at me with dismay and regret, but I couldn’t show pity. I had to take Tata’s place.
Many people envied my position. Coveted it. But they rarely delved into the difficult aspects, which included disciplining my siblings or pressuring them to make decisions for the good of the family.
In the waning light of the setting sun coming through the windows, we launched into a new game. Nicu glanced up from the chessboard and grumbled, “Do I really have to finish college?”
“Did you really ask me that? Organic chemistry with a minor in chemical engineering will come in handy for the business, you’ll see. You’re lucky I’m leaving it at an M.A. after you’re done with college and not pushing you to go for your PhD. This concession is for you. I’ll have to forgo my dream of calling someone in this family ‘doctor’ before I die.”
“You’re not going to die anytime soon,” Nicu quipped, standing to click on a floor lamp I had placed nearby. The artificial light flooded the room, glinting off the ivory pieces of the chessboard.
“I will die one day. It’s the natural course of life that I should die before you, but hopefully, I’ll manage to live a little bit longer. At least until you graduate with a masters in hand.”
“You don’t have one,” Nicu accused.
“Only because when Tata died, I couldn’t head the family, keep the businesses afloat, and keep our enemies at bay while completing a degree. We’re not like made men who drop out of high school and can barely write their own names. Why do you think we play chess?” I gestured to the half-emptied chessboard. “And not bocce like the old Italian men?” Not bothering to wait for an answer, I continued, “Because living by your wits and savagery isn’t going to cut it in this day and age. What sets us apart is our strategy and sophistication. It’s what will always set us apart. We have the high skill sets of the Russians with the undying familial loyalty of the Latins. We represent the best of both worlds, forged into something quintessentially unique. And what is that, Nicu?”
“Blood,” he rasped out.
“Exactly. We make the blood oaths of the good fellas and the Red Mafia look like paper cuts. We live and die by blood. It’s the Dracula in all of us that the Romanians tapped into in the fifteenth century. Dracul the Impaler was the cruelest ruler because he took whatever punishments his enemies dealt him and returned them tenfold. He understood the power of blood, the symbolic energy of shedding blood for acts of disloyalty and disrespect.”
Waving a knight he was about to move, Nicu expelled a heavy breath and interrupted, “Come on, Alex, enough with your twisted history lesson. I get it, I get it. I’ll finish my degree.”
I cracked a smile and chuckled lightly as I moved my rook and swiped his knight off the board. “Bedtime stories is all they are.”
“What about Luca? Are you any closer to convincing him to take the daughter for his wife?”
I stood up and stalked to the credenza that held bottles of liquor and poured myself a glass of bourbon. Lifting the bottle, I silently asked Nicu if he’d like one, but he shook his head. Returning to the oxblood leather seat, I swirled the liquor a few times before bringing it to my lips. The taste of vanilla and caramel, mixed with charred oak, flooded my tongue.
“That stubborn bastard. He’s a pain in my ass, but at least he’s useful in other ways. The one thing Tasa had to offer this family is now in the gutter, and she might get herself killed for it.”
