“Hurry up, baby, we’re running late, and I’ll have to argue with people, and you know how that goes.” We’re an hour early, but my wife is always late, so I have a system now.
Kaya walks into the kitchen with our toddler, Hunter—don’t ask me about how we ended up naming him that. I’m sore on the subject. She’s wearing a jeans miniskirt, flip-flops, and a crop top, showing her baby bump. I snatch her by the waist and kiss the daylights out of her, then squeeze her ass and whisper, “Gonna join the Mile High Club with me today?”
“What’s a Mile High Club?” Hunter asks.
My wife quirks an eyebrow and grabs her purse off the counter, and I have the endless pleasure of watching her ass move as she walks away.
Hunter slips his small hand into mine and tugs. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, son. I’m talking shit. You ready?”
“You can’t say shit.” He laughs as we head out the door, and the Florida sun hits me in the eyes. While scanning the perimeter of the secluded beachfront rental property, I let go of my son’s hand so he can join his mother as she and Viktor try to figure out how to load our twelve suitcases into the trunk. I don’t know what my wife’s deal is with loading her own suitcases, but I folded on that argument a while back.
Marriage taught me to compromise. It also taught me that vacations make marriages happier, and on vacations, we tend to make babies, so we go away often. This vacation lasted over three months, hence twelve suitcases.
We’d have stayed a week or two, but the South Africans haven’t played their hand yet. Before giving the order, then receiving news of Kaya’s brother’s death, I took my family to Florida and we lay low, mainly because the hitman didn’t just pop him, he butchered him, and I didn’t want to be in Chicago for the mess.
I still don’t know who executed my order, only that someone did and made it look like an outside job. Whoever it was gutted the man and hung him by the intestines from the ceiling fan, something I haven’t heard of being done since the Dark Ages of Mafia enterprises.
Ludi’s jobs are clean, so it wasn’t him.
A mercenary might’ve done it, but the less I know, the better.
Since my wife didn’t take her brother’s death too hard, I couldn’t be bothered either.
I get in the back of the car, buckle my son into his car seat, and Viktor pulls out, making our way to the airport. In the quiet car, a ping sounds. My wife’s got a text. Instead of grabbing her phone, she bites a fingernail and looks away and out the window as we cruise down the street.
Ivana had make contact again.
She’d disappeared almost immediately after we got married, but I know my wife and her keep in touch, and I know this because they don’t know I know about their setup and how they arranged our marriage, then made it look like it was Kaya’s brother’s idea. I don’t dwell on the past.
It worked out in my favor, and Kaya likes privacy in her friendship with Ivana. My wife doesn’t have the luxury of many friends, and it would feel somehow wrong for me to let on that I know they keep in touch.
My phone rings, and it’s Nikola, so I pick up. “Hello.”
“Congratulations. Are you on your way back?”
“Yes.” I grin from ear to ear but don’t comment on what he’s congratulating me for.
“How was the house? Would you recommend it?”
“Definitely. Nice for a family.”
“Good to know. Wanna buy it?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“I bought it today.”
I roll my eyes. “Congratulations, asshole.”
“Try to make it to my son’s party. My wife asked five times if you’ll be coming.”
“We’ll make it.” I hang up and look at Kaya, who’s turned toward our son, already napping in the car seat between us.
“It seems I inherited my brother’s business,” she says. A breeze from the open window blows her curls over her eyes.
“Congratulations,” I say.
