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Returning to business, Tatum asked me, “How are you thinking of getting Simu to attack you?”
“I’ll set up a meeting with him. Only the two of us in an isolated location. Taunt him about having won her back. He’ll go rabid because he’s a brute with half a brain. We fight and I kill him,” I responded easily.
“That’s problematic. There’s a risk he could kill you. Of course, you can handle yourself, but the man’s a menace. This isn’t the time to get cocky and underestimate him,” Alex counseled.
“I think you underestimate me,” I said, with a curl of my lip.
Did he think I’d let Simu walk out alive? Never going to happen.
“I want Nicu present, but at a distance,” Alex concluded. “He’s got the best sniping skills so, worst-case scenario, he’ll be there to shoot him down.”
I sent Nicu a scowl. “I don’t need help.”
“Too bad, you’re getting it anyway.”
“Fucking fine, then,” I grumbled.
“I will contact Nelu to set up a meeting to hash out our differences so that the marriage goes forward. I will argue that Simu is too biased to be involved in the negotiations, and that you and he need to meet on neutral ground to squash this feud, once and for all. Whether he tells Simu or not, it will work to our advantage. If he doesn’t say anything, you’ll have the element of surprise. If Nelu does, Simu will be seething over the burn of losing her. By the time you two meet, he’ll be easy to provoke.”
Nicu turned to me and asked with mild curiosity, “How are you going to handle her? When she finds out that we’ve negotiated the marriage to go forward, she’ll be furious with you. She won’t come willingly to the marriage bed.”
A stab of guilt sliced through me. I hated lying to my brothers, but I had no other choice. She would be coming willingly or not at all. Unable to say the truth, I mislead him by saying, “She wants me to prove myself, so I’m going to give her the one thing she covets.”
“What could that be? So help me God, don’t answer with ‘me,’” he said.
“Of course not. I know what makes her tick. What will make her feel seen,” I answered enigmatically.
My little brother had no patience and no finesse, and he hated surprises. Not telling him served my daily goal of pissing him off. Nicu waved his hand in a gesture of tell me more.
“You’ll just have to wait and see,” I goaded him as I waggled my eyebrows at him.
“Fuck you,” he rumbled out.
“Enough,” cut in Alex as he grabbed his cell off the coffee table. “Let me call Nelu and set it up.”
* * *
I walkedunder the scaffolding of a deserted warehouse in Rockaway Beach until I found the paint-chipped, rusted double doors. Rattling the doorknob, I yanked hard on one of the doors. It scraped over the sidewalk as I shoved it open enough for me to slip through.
“Christ,” I breathed out, shielding my eyes from the shafts of light streaming in through the broken windows, glinting off the corroded steel beams of the roof. The scent of decay and dust hung in the air. Between rows of concrete columns, the cement floor was littered with debris from teenage parties: dozens of bottles, an old, urine-stained mattress with the stuffing coming out, and an abandoned shopping cart, of all things. Near a stack of empty metal barrels, I kicked at a lone cleaver with a jagged edge. I could only imagine what role that makeshift weapon had played in someone’s life…or death.
I waited, scanning the building across the street, making out the small bump on the roof that was Nicu’s prone form. He was well camouflaged. The only reason I spotted him was because I knew to look for him. The August heat in the stuffy warehouse was sweltering. I cursed Simu. Of course, the fucker would make me wait.
The familiar scraping of the front entrance alerted me to his presence. He stepped into the warehouse and stilled when he saw me. Eyeing him critically, I noted his height and the breadth of his shoulders. With brown hair and blue eyes, he wasn’t ugly, although his face was a little too narrow and his nose a little too long. Unlike the Lupu men, he wore a pair of loose jeans and a black short-sleeve shirt, unbuttoned down the front to show off the gold chain with a cross swinging from his thick neck.
“Your brother managed to bribe Nelu into giving up his daughter once again. The man has no morals. You already rejected her twice. And the second time…” He shook his head. “So public. So humiliating. If you cared for the girl at all, you’d leave her alone.”
I snorted. “Leave her alone for you? I think not,” I replied dryly. “That’s the beauty of being a Lupu. We have infinite resources, connections, and wealth. We always get what we want. Whereas you’re a two-bit player hanging onto the coattails of a family that’s going down the drain.”
“Cat will hate you for forcing a marriage on her,” he threatened.
I made a scoffing sound. “Don’t worry about me, worry about yourself. I do whatever the fuck I want to do, in spite of my brother and my clan. You’re the one who isn’t man enough to keep her,” I jeered.
“Typical arrogance from a Lupu, thinking you’re entitled to anything you want regardless of who you destroy along the way,” he spat out.
I pulled back. “What the hell are you talking about? Unlike you, we didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in our mouths. We fought for every bit of power we have, unlike you, you Cantacuzino,” I derided. “You’re the one who came from an aristocratic family. The famous Byzantine family, with the Cantacuzino Palace on Victoriei Avenue in Bucharest. Yet, didn’t your last prince abandon the homeland during the Second World War and take off for Sweden? Hmm, wasn’t that a convenient escape, right before the pro-Soviet government was installed.”
He shot me an eviscerating glare. “Oh, my side of the family was not so lucky. We stayed and suffered through decades of misery, like everyone else. It didn’t help that your father partnered with mine only to cut him off at the knees. As revenge, my father attacked yours on the road back from your grandmother’s village and was slaughtered in a nearby birch forest. His body left to rot like a mongrel dog instead of the sef of a prestigious family with a legacy that goes back a thousand years. And me, his son? Without protection, I resorted to common thievery in the streets with the riffraff, until Nelu saved me.”
