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Even if she wanted nothing else to do with me, she was raising my son. That meant I had to do right by both of them. And besides, perhaps time had mellowed her opinion. Perhaps she wouldn’t run this time. Perhaps there was a chance now of turning our dalliance and mutual obligations to Michael into more than that.
As I flicked through the printouts, I smiled a little. It had only been one night together, and it had ended badly with her slipping out like that, but I hadn’t forgotten her. Of the many women who had shared a bed with me, she was the one who stuck in my mind.
It was her beauty, her fire. It was the way she had weaponized a cup of coffee to help me ensure her safety in the presence of the kind of weak man that preys on vulnerable women. It was even the way she had chosen to quietly leave the next morning, instead of freaking out or worse, calling the police on me. Something about all of this, about the way we spent our short amount of time together, had ensured that for some reason, I’d never quite forgotten her.
She had courage, intelligence, and a sense of discretion. Those soft blue eyes, the cloud of red hair, those amazing curves…they were just what had grabbed my attention first. The hint of who she was as a person was what had kept it.
I’d wanted to know her after our brief spell together. Even that night, I recalled thinking I’d wanted to see her again. And now that we’d crossed passed once more, that desire was reignited to a fire.
Within a day or two, tops, I expected a phone call from her about my uncle’s estate sale. And I would start things by being all business, talking about that instead of anything personal. But eventually, it would come time to talk about Michael, and everything else.
I wanted this woman. She was beautiful, capable, and the mother of my child. After just one night, she’d already given me something I’d never really been sure I would have—a family to call my own. A son. This hit something deep inside me, and I couldn’t even name what it was. It just felt…deep. Right.
My boy. My woman.
Olivia was already mine, she just didn’t know it yet.
***
As it turned out, it was less than eighteen hours before she called me. I had the auction house number in my phone, and when the caller ID lit up my screen, I couldn’t help but smile.
I picked up at once. “This is Viktor.”
“Hi, Viktor,” she said after a few seconds of hesitation, and the soft cadence of her voice, feminine and maybe a little breathy from nerves, had my cock twinge slightly at the memory of that voice calling my name in the throes of passion. How I longed to hear that again. “I heard you have an estate sale that you want me to handle.”
“Yes, my uncle’s,” I replied, keeping my tone crisp and formal despite my thoughts. “He has a very large book collection, many first editions, and you’re the only one I know in the business, so I thought I would call you.” Not that I wouldn’t have been eager to call her just because of the shade of Michael’s eyes and my lovely memories of her. But I had left my message on the pretext of business, and with her flighty departure last time I’d seen her, I didn’t want to risk scaring her off yet. Not until I could at least see her in person, and it wouldn’t be so easy as a click of a button to evade me.
“Well, I’m flattered that you remembered me,” she started, and stopped when I chuckled.
“You’re rather difficult to forget, Olivia.”
She swallowed audibly. “So…so are you.”
For a moment I thought she was working up the nerve to apologize for ditching me, but then she quickly went on. “I’ll need a look at the collection to give you an estimate, and then we’ll have to plan how you want to handle the sales. I have plenty of book collectors and sellers I can invite, but not until I see what we’re dealing with.”
“Fair enough. I am free every day this coming week, except for tomorrow. When would be good for you to come to my hunting lodge? Everything he had is stored there.”
She hesitated again. I could practically feel her weighing the risks. But after a few more seconds, she simply said, “Sure. Wednesday. Text me the address. Is two o’clock good for you?”
The little spurt of excitement I felt surprised me. I barely knew her, after all, even if the boy was mine. But what I felt went beyond that. I fought to keep my voice businesslike. “That will work fine. Thank you.”
I hung up and was barely finished with texting her the address when someone knocked hard on my office door. I frowned, instinctively reaching for the .45 pistol in my desk drawer. I kept my hand on it as I spoke up. “Come in.”
Boris threw open the door and rushed in, sweating and out of breath. He looked worried. “Sorry to interrupt, but we have a situation,” he said in Russian.
My frown deepened slightly but I removed my hand from the gun. Whenever Boris was upset enough, he lost his English and used our mother tongue. “What is it?”
He struggled to catch his breath, and after a few moments, switched back to English. “Petrovich is in the hospital. He’s alive and conscious, but he says it was the Puerto Ricans.”
“What?” Ivan Petrovich was myDerzhatel Obshchakawho handled all of our financial affairs. I had just talked to him earlier about my uncle’s auction, and how much of the money should be folded back into Bratva coffers. I was ready to put all of it in—it had been willed to me, but I had enough money of my own. Greed was a weakness, and we needed cashflow now that we were dealing with unexpected competition. But all of that felt irrelevant right now, I wanted vengeance for my friend. “Give me the details. When did this happen, and who did it?”
“We don’t know for sure, but there’s only one Pueblo in Boston. That means El Luchador must have called the shots.” He huffed a last time and then started breathing more normally. “He was shot at while he was driving, he hit a guardrail and the car flipped trapping him. The shot didn’t kill him, but he’s got a broken leg and a concussion, and the car’s totaled. It was one of our motor pool.”
My eyes narrowed. “That sounds like a direct challenge.” And if I didn’t answer it with at least equal violence, I would definitely look soft. And Petrovich would never have any faith in me again.
“Yes, it does.” He swallowed. “That whack on the head has made his memory of the men fuzzy, but he has a dashcam and a rearview cam. We’re hoping we can get images off them to determine who did this. But it’s a good bet that El Luchador and his Pueblo are involved.”
I shook my head, pushing myself slowly up from my seat. I really did not like having to resort to violence. It was a drain on ammunition, supplies, money when I had to fix any men injured, and a fucking waste of lives when they died. “He never agreed to the proposed meeting, did he?”
