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“Then I’ll talk to him.”
Sergey arches a brow. “Youwilltalkto him?”
“You asked me not to insult you, so I’ll ask that you don’t insult me,” I say. “I’m no fool. I’ve been the go-between for you and Kreshnik since before I could shave. I know how to handle the motherfucker.”
He stares at me for a long moment and then waves a hand in the air, ending the meeting with one flick of his wrist. The room clears out, but I don’t move. I know he has more to say to me. I can see it in the set of his jaw.
When the room is empty, he leans back in his chair and smirks. “So…who is the girl?”
I frown. “I thought we were here to talk about the Xhuvani clan.”
“The man you killed was a nobody, and now, he is a dead nobody. It’s done. I want to talk about why you’ve brought a woman like that into your house.”
“Benjamin needs that. A maternal influence.”
His brow lifts. I know he doesn’t buy a word I’m saying. That’s fine—he doesn’t have to. I don’t need his approval.
“Piper won’t be an issue,” I assure him. “You won’t even know she’s here.”
“I’m not worried about whetherI’llsee her. I’m worried about whetheryouwill,” he corrects. “No one would blame you for losing focus. She’s a beautiful girl.”
I tense at his casual appreciation of Piper. “She’s here for Benjamin’s sake. Nothing else.”
“Ah, Benjamin,” Sergey muses. “Another distraction in and of himself.”
“Is raising another heir to your empire a distraction, do you think? I could leave everything to Rodion in my will, if you’d prefer.”
Sergey almost chokes on a laugh. “He’ll be happy to know you think he’ll outlive you.”
“Do you think he will?”
He shakes his head, still chuckling. “You know Rodion as well as I do.” He drums his fingers on the table. “I also know you better than you’d like to think. I can see the way you look at that girl, Timofey.”
I feel the cage going up around my chest. The cage I’ve worn since I was a kid. The cage that keeps everyone at arm’s length, protecting the soft parts of myself I can’t seem to completely get rid of.
“It has nothing to do with her. This is about the boy.”
“You say that,” he agrees sadly. “You might even believe it. But I’ve been where you are now. I met a girl decades ago, and I fell for her. Whatever I told myself when it all started went out the window fast. In the beginning, she was just for fun; right up to the end, I swore she would be the one to help me build my empire.”
I keep my face carefully composed. This is a bullshit story, I’m sure; Sergey is full of them. Made-up fables to prove some esoteric point I couldn’t care less about. I’m impatient to skip to the ending. “And then what?”
“She played me for the fool I was,” he concludes. “She didn’t care about me; she wanted my money. When I was away from her, securing our future, she was fucking my brother.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
He meets my gaze. “I don’t. Not anymore.”
I don’t need to ask him what that means. Sergey might be annoyed that I killed an Albanian, but his hands are far from clean.
Where does he think I learned it from?
“Piper isn’t the same as…whoever that woman was.”
“History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes,” he says. “I’ve only known her a few minutes, but Piper is beautiful and alert. She’s going to give you a run for your money, Timo. You may not be my biological son, but you’re mine all the same. A woman with that much fire and life? You’re going to fall. She’ll draw you in and you’ll lose sight of everything else. Even Benjamin.”
“You don’t need to worry about me,” I say. “She’s only here because she is useful. As soon as she isn’t, she’s gone.”
It’s the same for me, too, right, Dad?
