No wonder she was so worried. I guess I knew how things worked for them, but I never gave a fuck because we weren’t part of that, we just did business with them. And by the time I officially met Petrov, Sr., his wife had passed. Having different women wasn’t a crime. If they were married and had an understanding, who was I to judge? I had no clue how he had been when his wife was alive. And I’d never seen Petrov, Jr. with a woman, but knew he had bunnies a few times when he visited us. He was much like me in that manner– private. Either way, none of that was any of our business.
“When was this?” I asked.
“About three, almost four weeks ago.”
That would make Petrov’s story for why he chose to move now and move fast with this arrangement plausible. “Something must have happened there. Was his son there?”
Keys clicked a few things and a new pic appeared. “Yep.”
There she was. They were in the frame together, but she was tense and that was the same forced smile she gave the day we met. Except with me at least, her body language hadn’t been so rigid. She carried herself well, but this picture didn’t show that. She was leaning away from him, her eyes not making contact with his, and her shoulders were an inch higher than normal.
Knowing it could have just been the frame they decided to use, I asked if there were others. A slew of photos from the event filled several of the screens. Each one was similar. All until she was leaving.
“Did you findanythingat all?” I asked.
“Rude,” he said. “I haven’t found anything implicating your wife. But those guys,” Keys said pointing at the screens, “definitely bad news. I don’t know how they were tied to Romero yet, but I’ll keep searching.”
Leaning back in the chair and staring up at the stills of my wife, I asked, “What do you think, Keys? Do you believe she’s clean?”
He was hands down the smartest person I knew. Even if he didn’t unravel it all, I trusted that he’d have found at least a morsel to go on if she was up to something.
“I think she’s just a normal mafia princess with a cool hobby, Prez. Plus, being in a family like that, kinda makes sense that she can defend herself.”
Ma was an excellent marksman and she’d whoop some ass if needed. She’d never trained to fight, but she’d been around enough bikers and bars in her life she could hold her own. She did practice shooting, though, and had her own guns. We tried to encourage Penny to do the same, but she wasn’t interested. It wasn’t safe to force someone to handle a gun if they didn’t want to. Instead, she just had a lot of protection details.
Even though I didn’t intend to put her in harm’s way, it did give me some comfort to know that Katarina could at least handle one man if needed. She had claws. Like a cat. But not a house cat, more like a wild panther.
Grabbing his shoulder, I said, “Thanks, brother. Keep searching on them and keep an eye on the old phone just in case. And print outs daily on the new one.” I stood up. “But don’t fucking read them if they’re between her and Klara.”
“Got it, Prez.”
Going to the door, I stopped. “You good, man?”
“Yeah, Prez. Having Coop help out some has been nice.”
My brows pinched. “Don’t let him see any of these,” I said, tapping the papers.
“None. I got you, Prez.”
Heading out of the computer lab, I hustled down the hall to my office and rushed inside. There was one large screenmounted on the wall that was split into six boxes. One was aimed to see the back of both my house and Ma’s from the trees, one at the street entrance to the clubhouse, one by the shed, one on the back door to the clubhouse, the front door, and inside the bar that gave a broad view.
We had cameras everywhere, but these were the ones I liked to keep an eye on regularly. Keys and Coop watched for anything out of the ordinary on all the cameras. We even had them throughout the woods on the land surrounding the clubhouse. Extra cameras had been added after Butch had fled because we knew he’d be a problem eventually.
Flipping through the pages, there was nothing of interest at first. There was a text that she met Leo Martinelli with a series of eye roll emojis and vomit emojis to Klara. A lot of work stuff, very short texts with Niko but more than Penny and I messaged, and a few to what appeared to be her driver. Around the time I found out about the arrangement, she shot off several short texts of desperation to Klara, one after another. Then they had a call.
A dirty biker. Motorcycle gang. She certainly had big thoughts about us. But she was also scared. She freaked out about moving to Georgia. She was sad to leave her mother’s restaurant.
I never realized it was her mom’s. I just assumed it was like our businesses. Ma ran Destiny’s Desires until recently but the club owned it. I’d have to check that out. But it didn’t matter what I found. She loved that place, it was her mom’s, and she had Klara there. Here was all new, far from everything familiar, and she knew none of us. Least of all me, and I was her husband.
Even though I was moderately annoyed at her initialreaction, that softened once I read texts from when we met. She told Klara I defended her honor to her father. I didn’t know if he was going to hit her. He raised his arm, he seemed mad, she’d slammed a glass down, it all pointed to him hitting her and we didn’t do that here. She also mentioned my looks and my chest puffed out.
I knew I was good looking. I took care of myself, I worked out, I had a whole style. But knowing she liked it felt good.
She also begged Klara to show up for the wedding shit and told her she had to be her maid of honor. A lot of talk about that, then the next bit wasn’t until yesterday morning. Then a lot through the day.
She detailed the wedding night and asked Klara a bunch of questions about why I wouldn’t have slept with her. Klara thought it was “toxically hot” that I cut my hand open so her father believed we’d had sex.
She spoke to her last night on her new phone, again questioning what was wrong with her. Why wouldn’t I touch her? Then Klara asked if I had a lover.A lover?This wasn’t a fucking French film.A lover?
