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“Come into my office, Aleks,” I say in a cheesy Wall Street guru voice. “Take a seat.”
“Why do I feel like you have an ulterior motive?” he asks cautiously.
I give him a wide, innocent smile. “I was just gonna have some powdered doughnuts and tea. I thought you might like some?”
“How can I say no to that?” he concedes with a sigh.
I show him to a seat in the dual armchairs and wait until he has a mouth full of powdered doughnut before I spring my question on him. “So… what’s going on?”
“Dang it,” he grumbles, sending a spray of sugar everywhere. “I knew there was a catch.”
“There’s something going on, Aleks, and I want to know what it is.”
He swallows hard. The gulp is painfully audible in the quiet room. “Nothing’s going on.”
Narrowing my eyes at him, I grab the edge of the doughnut tray and drag it out of his reach. “Do you think I’m a dummy?”
He sighs with a long, mournful glance at the now-distant doughnuts. “Listen, Wren, you should probably talk to Dmitri about?—”
“He doesn’t want me to worry.”
“And you think I do?”
“You’re a reasonable man.”
“That implies my brother is not.”
“Correct. He isn’t. And, as it turns out, neither am I.” I grab the nearby trash can and hold it at the edge of the coffee table with the doughnut tray tipped up just enough that the first few crumbs start to tumble down. “You want another doughnut or no?”
“Wait!” He hisses. “You play a dirty game, Turner.”
“Please?”
“Oh, fuck it, you’re a grown woman.” He grimaces and falls back in his chair as I set the doughnut tray back levelly on the table. “Things with the Irish and the Italians are escalating. They hit a couple of our businesses. A safehouse, too.”
“Just… all of a sudden?”
Aleks hesitates. “Uh. Well…” He looks pained, like he wishes he’d never agreed to this conversation in the first place.
“Well, what?” I demand. “Just tell me, Aleks. I can take it, I swear.”
He growls frustratedly. “Ugh, alright, alright, you little terrorist. Technically, Dmitri is the one who kicked off the latest round of this whole retaliation back-and-forth.”
“What did he do?”
“He blew up a bar that belonged to the Irish. A pretty lucrative one at that. They were… less than pleased.”
I blink in surprise. I’m no criminal mastermind, but with what I understand about this whole situation, it doesn’t make a lick of sense for him to lash out so pettily. “Why on earth would he do that?”
“Why else, Wren? For you, of course. He needed to respond to your abduction. He could only really do that after you were safely back with him. But he did it to send a message: anyone fucks with you again and there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Except that they’re retaliating now, too!” I exclaim. “And they’ve got a lot more men than you guys do, right?” I slump back in my seat, mirroring Aleks’s posture. “I can’t believe he started a war over me. I’m not—That’s not…”
“He didn’t start the war; he’s finishing the war that Cian started.” He rises to his feet and snatches up another doughnut. “Don’t look so long in the face. This is life in the Bratva. And you’re very much a part of it now. I’m gonna go deal with another situation. You just sit tight and focus on the new job, okay? Let us do ours.”
He’s almost out of the door when I lunge close and grab his wrist. “Dmitri isn’t out there alone, is he?” I ask. “I mean, like, he’s got backup right?”
Aleks chuckles. “It’s sweet that you’re worried. But I wouldn’t waste time fretting over him. It’s like that old saying: if you see Dmitri in a fight with a bear… go help the bear.”
