“Yes!” he sobbed. “Once. Just once.”
“Where?”
He gave me a restaurant in the Galleria area. They met in a private room. He said she wore dark glasses, a wig, and gloves like she was in some ridiculous movie. She was a Black woman who could’ve been any age from her thirties to her fifties. This was not the time for that damn “Black don’t crack” shit. His description told us nothing… and something all at once.
“Did she give a name?”
He swallowed. “No. I swear, Mr. Sidorov.”
I wasn’t sure what to think; it could be a dozen directions still. But we had enough to move. I bent down until Viktor had to meet my eyes again.
“If any part of what you told us is a lie, I’ma come back and take this place apart around you. Then I’ma find whatever family you got and make them watch me work.”
He nodded hard as hell, tears and blood everywhere. This nigga was pitiful.
I straightened and finally looked at Maxim. “Alive. Against my better judgment,” I said grudgingly.
Maxim’s eyes narrowed. “Targen?—”
I meant to walk away. I really did.
Then I saw that little streak of blood near Theory’s hairline again.
The rage came back so fast I didn’t even think. I turned, grabbed the knife, and planted it in Viktor’s eye. He didn’t have time to react—not voluntarily. The sound that came out of him sounded like something dying slowly.
Maxim shook his head. I shrugged.
“You didn’t say how long ‘alive’ had to last. If you’ll excuse me, unlike you sad bastards, I got a wife to slide up on.”
And then I walked out.
Once we’d madeit home, my fingers flew across the keyboard on my thankfully recovered phone. I texted my sister and cousins, telling them to halt the plane and car rides back home, because a bitch was in crisis. After what I'd been through, I felt like I deserved a medal and a stiff drink. The medal part probably wasn’t coming. The drink part definitely was.
We ended up at a bar a little distance from the compound, a cute little place that somehow managed to look upscale despite all the Texas memorabilia. I noticed lots of dark wood and sparkling glass. Old school R & B played low throughout the room. The patrons looked expensive, too, like they were really good at hiding the fact that they needed somewhere to sit down and process their shit.
I wasn't trying to hide the fact that I did. Desperately.
My cousins' husbands had taken a table close enough to the bar to hover over their wives and far enough away to act like they weren’t. My daddy had finally gone on back to the hotel with my grandparents and mama after I swore I was fine. I made him promise to charge the extended stay to Targen. Prime, Ajani, and Real sat with Juvie and Mikhail and looked like a whole committee of niggas who would ruin somebody’s life if anything even looked like it was going left. I had told the younger Mr. Sidorov to stay away, to give me time and space to think. He wanted to disagree, but he had some cleanup to do—or whatever terrifying thing a Bratva prince had to do after the kind of roadside carnage I’d just witnessed. I tried not to think too hard about that. Instead, I focused on the women around me.
My sister Epiphany sat on my left, pretty and observant, looking like she had already known what was going on in my life and was just waiting on me to catch up. Ev was beside her, gorgeous and perfectly put together as always. Her sister Emory sat next to her, all elegance and bossiness, with one leg crossed over the other and a drink in her hand like she was about to preside over a hearing. Akeira looked calm, but I knew shorty was always ready to go. And Hyacinth… Lord. Hy sat there with one elbow on the bar, expertly glossed lips wrapped around her straw, waiting for somebody to say something ridiculous so she could start some mess. If it were up to her, this wouldn’t stay serious for long.
I downed a second shot of tequila and waved for another. “And that, ladies, is how I married a beautiful, lying-ass Russian gangster and almost died before the honeymoon,” I said dramatically.
Hyacinth blinked. “See, now why you say it like that? You making it sound bad.”
I stared at her. “Hyacinth.”
“What?” she asked, looking innocent as hell. “The man is fine and clearly obsessed with you. And you didn’t die, so... we gotta look at the silver linings.”
Ev let out a little laugh and shook her head. “Hy.”
“I’m being serious,” she said.
I kissed my teeth. She shrugged.
“Well. Half-serious,” she corrected.
“And that's good for you, cousin,” Ev said, high-fiving her.
