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It's another hallway. This one not lit nearly as brightly as the one I'm standing in. I catch movement on my phone screen and slide sideways so I'm leaning on the wall when the bratva soldier I saw earlier comes out of the doorway.
He jerks to a halt when he sees me. "What are you doing here?" he demands in heavily accented English.
"Checking my messages while waiting for my wife to finish in the bathroom. What's it to you?"
"Leave."
My eyes never leaving the man stupid enough to think he can order me around, I tuck my phone into my back pocket. "I'll leave when she comes out."
"Get lost." His voice is louder, like he thinks I didn't hear him the first time.
"Fuck off."
"Hurry up, Boris." The man who said they were going to get leverage on the broker tonight is standing at the other end of the hallway.
He looks at me, but what should be a cursory glance takes everything in. I know because I'm doing the same thing. Boris is only a couple of inches shorter than my six and a half feet. He's twice as broad though and should be a lumbering ox of a man.
But he holds himself with a readiness that I recognize. He won't go down easily. His compatriot is coming closer, the movement overtly casual but he's a predator.
Like recognizes like.
These bratva soldiers have an edge the Golubevs I've been hunting since my teens don't.
I flick my wrist with a minute movement and my stiletto slides into my palm.
"I told this asshole to get lost, but he says he's waiting for his woman to come out of the toilets."
Boris's friend narrows his eyes at me while I pretend not to understand what they are saying.
Lucia steps out of the bathroom as the bratva soldier comes abreast of the door.
She gasps and stops short. "Oh."
"Hey, sweetheart." I move quickly to get between Lucia and the dangerous man standing too damn close.
Her smile belies the worry I can see in her eyes. "Ready to get that beer?"
No fool, she can sense the tension in the hallway, but she's acting like she doesn't.
"Are you the asshole that told Wanda Sue you would not drink the beer she opened?" This man's accent is even thicker than his pal's.
"What's it to you? She your girlfriend, or something?" More likely his interest is in the bar's nightly take.
This place is either paying protection to the Russians or owned by them. They're too at home here for it not to be under their control one way or the other.
"You order beer. She serve you beer. You pay."
"Fine." If Lucia wasn't standing two inches behind me, I would argue. "Let's go, sweetheart." Shifting sideways, so both men stay in my line of sight, I take Lucia by the arm.
She's stiff and glares at the Russian man. My feisty Italian lover does not like my easy capitulation. As a club owner who makes sure her staff offers stellar customer service, she takes it personally when others do not.
Anger is coming off her in palpable waves. If I don't get her out of here, she's going to start something I'll have to finish.
Not that I mind killing these two, but Lucia doesn't need to see me do it. She doesn't know I'm Greek mafia yet and she willneversee Dímios in action.
My phone vibrates with a text, but I ignore it. The situation is too volatile to let my focus splinter even a single shard.
The two Russians follow us until we're out of the hallway and then they veer toward two more bratva standing near the tables they'd been sitting at before. They talk together in tones too low for me to catch.
