I shrugged. “Sure.” With the way I’d been going without sleep, I needed a tart drink to wake me up.
“Viktor is dead?” Ivan repeated, this time in a calmer but no less impatient voice. Sometimes to get the behavior I needed from people, ignoring them until they figured out what would get a response from me was the key. I learned this from one of the Spetsnaz soldiers who trained military dogs during my time in Russia.
“He’s dead. His arrogance cost him.”
“And what did Peter say?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t talked to him.”
“He’s not taking my calls.”
Good man, Peter. He was weighing his options and wanted to preserve our relationship as allies. He didn’t want to alienate our fragile association by giving my father the respect of a pakhan. He was warier now pending my marriage to Lucy.
“It’s a delicate matter for sure,” Irina said. As usual, my mother smoothed things out between my father and me. She usually sensed when one of us was baiting the other. My phone buzzed with a text from Sato.
Sato
Lucy has informed Moretti and De Lucci about the intent to marry. They’re demanding a meeting.
My mouth curved. I texted back.
Me
You can tell them if it’s to null the contract, then it’s a no. They can tell it to my face when I make the request for Lucy’s hand in marriage.
Bubbles and then…
Listen, you POS, you will meet us now or you won’t be able to find my sister anywhere on this planet.
De Lucci? Huh, kindly put Sato back on the line. If you don’t, then poor Sato will be missing a finger for even handing you his phone.
And…
There was nothing for a few seconds. It could have been a whole minute. Now I wondered if I had made the right move by showing them the violence I was capable of. But was that even in doubt? I was bratva. However, I wouldn’t chop off Sato’s finger. His dexterity was an asset to my organization, but he should never have handed his phone over, no matter how surrounded he was by the Italian mafia.
Something bounced off my head.
I looked up to see my sister eyeing me with impatience before my gaze fell on the half-eaten scone that landed on the slate stone tiles.
“Why show up here if you’re going to play on your phone?” she signed.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have something important to announce.” I looked pointedly at the scone. “And you’re wasting food.”
She gestured that it was hard as a rock and then waved around her. “The birds will eat it.”
“That can’t be healthy for them.”
She rolled her eyes and snatched a piece of bacon from the plate. If I had any emotion remotely related to affection, I wouldsay I was fond of Aralina. She was the only person in the family who got away with sassing me. Any interaction with her partly assuaged the guilt that I wasn’t around when the house fire stole her voice. She’d been only twelve. The doctor initially chalked it up to the smoke inhalation and raw vocal cords, but after weeks went by, we all became concerned. Ivan and Irina tried to send her to specialists, but it only stressed her out and made her more withdrawn. She started coming out of her shell when she started college.
Ivan waited patiently for my exchange with my sister to end before asking, “Is there something else besides Viktor’s death you want to tell me?”
He didn’t know I knew about his secret meetings with Davenport, but I didn’t feel like opening that can of worms right now. Anya would eventually get me what I needed: buried inside those Davenport files was ammunition I needed to keep my father in line.
I sipped coffee. “Have you seen the news in theManhattan Tattler?”
“I don’t check that trash,” Ivan said. “I don’t know why you’re messing around with De Lucci’s sister. Besides, I’m not sure I want anything to do with that family after De Lucci rejected your sister.”
Aralina rolled her eyes again and signed furiously at Ivan. “I don’t like flashy men. I’m glad he found someone else.”
