Page 30 of Inked in Devotion

I had to fucking ask permission to take my son to the park. But the last straw? It was when Theo King showed up, because apparently he didn’t trust me to take Sebastian outdoors despite the security entourage following us. And my son, my son, whooped up in joy more than he ever did when he saw me. He was looking at King as his father. Me? I was reduced to a sometimes playmate and food source. How often did King get to see my son and Chloe, anyway?

The doorbell to my condo rang.

I wasn’t expecting anyone. I wasted all afternoon extracting information from a traitorous associate, and I was still bristling with annoyance. I had to show Kirill that the drama in my personal life had not damaged my skills after I killed the last person I interrogated without getting the information I needed out of him.

Ever since Chloe walked back into my life, I’d been erratic in performing the duties the bratva prized me for. My last successful interrogation was Wilson's. Kirill ordered me to take a mood stabilizer so as not to slit a man’s throat prematurely before we got anything useful out of him. My body count was piling up without corresponding job success, be it a simple interrogation or enforcement, and I was starting to question how good I was at my job.

I checked the camera.

There was only one reason Maksim would come here. Shit.

I opened the door a crack. “What happened?”

“Let me in, mudak,” he muttered.

I allowed him to enter, and he swept in on a wave of cologne and shower gel. His hair was still damp, his jaw freshly shaven. Looked like he planned to be elsewhere after stopping by.

“What’s going on?”

“Chloe has a date tonight.”

“What?” I wasn’t expecting the jump in my heart rate. “You mean there was someone you couldn’t buy off or convince to give up the idea?”

“Look, they were never easy in the first place. Margo chose those candidates carefully. The only reason I got through to them was because Lucy was feeding me dirt to use on them, and combined with our own financial incentive, the marriage covenant was less lucrative.”

Huh. I had a love-hate relationship with Kirill’s wife. I didn’t recognize my friend when I came out of prison. He seemed less inclined for destruction and was becoming more like Maksim. A politician. I could also chalk it up to his position as pakhan, so in that regard Lucy was an asset to the bratva. I just didn’t like that I hardly commiserated with him anymore when there was no one to kill. But Lucy was a fixer, or had been a fixer. Now she was functioning like Kirill’s adviser. Who to do business with and who to break ties with.

“Then you should have come to me, and I could tell that fucker what a bad idea it was to consider an arranged marriage with Chloe.”

Maksim laughed scornfully. “It won’t work with this guy.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” I muttered. “I haven’t met a fucker I couldn’t intimidate yet.”

“You’ve heard of Daniel Wu?”

“Of course, Wheelers Corp.” The man was a workaholic and belonged to some secret organization with the De Luccis. Father murdered by the Triad. He wasn’t an unsuitable match for Chloe, except I doubted any bratva intimidation would work. I’d have to kill him outright. It might start a war with the De Luccis, but I’d let Kirill smooth that over. “Over my dead body, Chloe is marrying him because that means she’ll be moving with my son to Hong Kong.”

“It’s just a single date.” He eyed me from head to toe. “You wanna crash it?”

Maksim had taken a gleeful approach to dispatching Chloe’s marriage prospects. He met them in secret locations under Margo’s radar. Although I doubt she was totally unaware of it, since that woman seemed to know every dark, dirty secret of the people she did business with.

When blackmail or a bribe didn’t work, the next best thing was to offer free bratva services—mine—in case they needed a problem to go away. I didn’t contract out my services, but getting rid of Chloe’s marriage prospects, I’d do it for free.

I was doing it for Seva—I’d been calling my son Russian nicknames lately. I thought that would sway fate my way.

“Sure, give me ten minutes.”

It took more than ten because Maksim kept sending me back to the closet to change a shirt or a tie.

“Where the hell are we going, anyway? Where’s this fancy dinner Wu is taking her?”

“It’s the Quorum Club.” The billionaire’s club. Similar to a country club, but no golf courses. Just fine dining, top-shelf liquor, and private rooms.

“The point is, you need to look better than him.” Maksim threw a tie at me. “Damn, if you’re going to circulate in King’s social class, you’ll have to update your wardrobe.”

“Listen, I’m not a moron. I have clothes for every job, remember? Someone bulked up at Supermax.” The bratva tailor had to rush-order that three-piece suit I wore to arbitration, and my current jobs rarely required me to be seen in public.

Maksim rolled his eyes before he checked his watch again. “We’re running late. A limo is waiting for us downstairs.”