Nikolai 2 (Her Russian Protector #6) (19 page)

"Technically—"

"Don't give me that technically bullshit. You rat on every single Russian on your books. You make damn sure I know who is up and who is down. You didn’t think I needed to know that Vivian had bets with you?"

"I assumed you had your wife under control. How was I supposed to know she had a secret life she was keeping from you?"

Nikolai's eyes narrowed. "I'm feeling generous today so I'll forget you said that."

Besian shrugged. "Don’t get pissed at me because your wife is keeping secrets."

Irritated with the situation, Nikolai marshaled his control and didn't punch him in the face for the insinuation that Vivian was a liar. If he blew up on Besian, the man would make sure everyone in Houston's underworld knew that he couldn't even keep order under his own roof. One rumor like that and it could all come crashing down around his ears.

"Hey, come on." Besian tapped his shoulder and grinned in that mischievous way of his. "I'm just fucking with you, Nikolai. Boss to boss," he added. "No one knows about the small bets she's placed but you, me and
daltë
." He held up three fingers and used the Albanian word for chisel. "She's never lost money and never owed anything. If she had ever gotten herself into trouble, I would have told you. It was all harmless fun."

Glancing away from Besian, he nodded. "Yeah. All right."

Besian changed the subject. "Listen, when you get back from London, we need to talk business." Nikolai nodded, and Besian clapped him on the back. "Go easy on the old man. He's not well."

Wondering what Besian meant by that, he entered the building and headed for the cramped, perpetually hot office where Mr. Lu liked to conduct private meetings. The door was open but he knocked on the frame before entering. Stepping into the office, he instantly understood what Besian had meant. The old man looked pale and tired.

Nikolai hesitated in the doorway. "Lu, I can come back tomorrow."

Mr. Lu gestured for him to shut the door. "I won't be any better tomorrow. It's that poison the doctors at MD Anderson are pumping into my veins."

MD Anderson? The cancer center. "You're sick."

The old man nodded. "They found it a few weeks ago. I started chemo last week. I'm feeling it this week."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Mr. Lu waved his hand. "Shit happens. I've had a good run. Sixty-eight years? I survived
Vi
ệ
t Nam C
ộ
ng-s
ả
n.
I can beat this."

"Absolutely," Nikolai agreed and took the seat in front of the desk. He unbuttoned his suit jacket. "Look, Lu, we have a problem."

"Bobby." The old man leaned back in his worn leather chair and sighed. "He's always been a greedy little shit. He's too smart for his own good. It's always about the fast money." He tossed his pen onto his desk. "Kids these days! None of them want to work. Build slow and steady. That's the real way to make money."

"No arguments there."

"What has Bobby done?"

"He's tied up with a federal judge's daughter. The judge is my neighbor, and he's asked me to get her free."

"I told him to cut that girl loose."

"Well he didn't. That girl or Bobby or maybe both of them poisoned the judge's dog yesterday. With cocaine," Nikolai added gravely. "I can't have that in my backyard, Lu. If you won't deal with it, I will."

"Cocaine? You're sure?" Mr. Lu seemed surprised. "He moves counterfeits."

"He's been seen taking meetings with cartel players."

"The Houston crew? Julio? Lalo?"

Nikolai shook his head. "Hector Salas."

Lu cursed in Vietnamese. Reluctantly, he admitted, "I didn't know."

"I didn't think so. You're not stupid enough to try to go around Julio." Nikolai picked at the fabric of his trousers. "I don't have to tell you how this will play out when Julio figures out that the reason he's losing market share is because your nephew is trying to cut out the middleman to get his hands on product."

Mr. Lu turned even paler. "I'll take care of it."

"Soon."

"Before Sunday," he promised.

"If it's not done before I leave for London…" Nikolai didn't have to finish the rest of his warning.

"It will be done."

"Good." Nikolai stood up and headed for the door. He paused before leaving. "Good luck, Lu."

Back outside, Nikolai grimaced at the suffocating heat that slapped him in the face. The humidity was off the charts, and the three-digit temperature made the heat nearly unbearable. He couldn't wait to get out of Texas for a week. The prospect of visiting London and getting that close to his old life in Moscow hadn't thrilled him. He could think of a dozen reasons why getting within thumping distance of Maksim was a bad idea, but he had set them aside and focused on supporting Vivian's career. She had earned this chance. She deserved it.

As Arty navigated the rush hour traffic, Nikolai allowed his thoughts to wander. He didn't want to dwell on the fact that he had fought with Vivian two days in a row. He really didn't want to think about other arguments that had cropped up between them. Rolling through his mental calendar, he tried to narrow down the start of the problems.

Worry speared his heart when he arrived at the date. All the friction had started after they had discovered they were pregnant. What had Vivian said last night? That they weren't ready to be parents…

Was this normal? Did other couples argue more when there was a new baby in the picture? It seemed likely. He had rushed Vivian into marrying him and had gotten her pregnant only three months later. Was it too fast? Was it too much too soon?

He thought about Dimitri and Benny. The pair had been friends for five years before one night together had changed their relationship forever. They had gone from dating to pregnant to married to parents within nine very quick months. They had weathered an assault and an arson plus the usual problems that cropped up when running two small businesses. They seemed even stronger together.

But Dimitri was always talking about Benny as his partner. The couple discussed everything and made decisions together about each other's businesses. He couldn't do that with Vivian. They weren't ever going to be equal partners. There were always going to be imbalances.

Like money
. Vivian's admission about asking for money added to his guilt. He should have seen that one coming. She had been standing on her own two feet for years. He had asked her to stop working at Samovar because it would have been unseemly for his wife to wait table. He was the one who had cut off her income, and he hadn't even considered that she might feel uncomfortable about having to rely on him for everything. In his mind, she was his wife so that meant everything that belonged to him belonged to her.
So why didn’t you tell her that?

"You okay, boss?" Arty glanced at him as they idled at a street light.

He ignored the question and asked one of his own. "Did you talk to Ilya or Boychenko?"

"Ilya says that there's been some tension."

"Tension?"

"That's all he said." He accelerated through the intersection. "Are we going to have trouble with Mr. Lu?"

"Lu has cancer."

"Shit. Is it bad?"

"He's nearly seventy years old. Everything is bad at that age."

"What happens if he dies? Who is the heir?"

Artyom hit the nail right on the head, as usual. "The son is straight as an arrow. He's in Austin, and I don't see him coming back to take over the business."

"What about the daughter? She's his right-hand girl, right? She's the one who runs the businesses."

"An? She's pretty straight. I don't think she's ever handled any of the smuggling or counterfeit work. I see her at Chamber of Commerce meetings and other business functions around the city."

"She's his daughter. She knows the score."

"The men in the family might not like answering to a woman."

"She doesn't need a dick to make them money."

Nikolai laughed at that astute observation. "True."

"It will get messy if they start fighting among themselves," Artyom warned. "I don't have enough soldiers to referee an internal disagreement among the Asians and keep the peace with the Albanians, the Hermanos and whatever the fuck is going on with the cartel. We need to bring in reinforcements."

Nikolai wiped a hand down his face. "Even if they're legal, we'll have immigration up our asses. Once ICE is done with us, Santos and his gang task force friends will start shaking us down. Besian and Nickel Jackson will start to complain that there are too many of us in the city. Lorenzo and the rest of the cartel will get nervous that we're planning something."

"Which we are," Artyom cut in. "We're planning to protect ourselves and our business interests."

"The others won't see it that way. They'll think we're building up our numbers to force new terms and take territory. This city is already a powder keg. I won't be the one who sets off the first spark."

"I don't think you have to worry about that, boss. There's a long line in front of you with lighters in hand."

Artyom had a good feel for the pulse on the streets so Nikolai took his warning to heart. He didn't want the added headache of dancing with ICE or fending off Vivian's cousin and his gang squad, but he refused to leave his men exposed. Like Artyom, he could feel something coming. There was a shift in the air, an electrified sensation that prickled the skin, and a foreboding darkness that settled in the back of his mind. His very bones ached with a pulsing hum of warning.

He had to be ready. He could not fail.

When they reached the jewelry store, he hopped out of the SUV and left Artyom sitting in a curb-side parking spot. He stepped into the shop and spotted Kostya at one of the counters. The cleaner swiftly pocketed a small box and turned toward the main entrance as if nothing had happened. Kostya's love life was none of his business so he pretended not to notice.

A flash of white-blonde hair caught his attention. Dressed in a very conservative dove gray skirt with pink blouse, Zoya emerged from a back room with three slim Prussian blue boxes embossed with the gold seal of the company in her hand. The only child of the store's owner, she had followed in her father's footsteps as a gemologist and jewelry designer. She had big dreams and the talent to make them happen. There was no doubt in Nikolai's mind that his investment in the company would continue to bear fruit for years to come.

"Mr. Kalasnikov, how are you today?" She retrieved a black velvet tray from behind the counter and placed the boxes on top of it.

"I'm fine. How are you, Zoya?" He made a point of replying to her in Russian

"Busy, busy, busy," she said with a little laugh. "It's wedding season so that door chime is ringing nonstop."

Her Russian was technically perfect, but she had that same habit of coloring the syllables with a hint of Texas twang. Vivian and Boychenko did the same thing. Would his Houston-born child do the same thing?

Opening the boxes, she revealed the beautifully feminine jewelry that she had designed for Vivian. The gold and diamonds of the necklace, bracelet and earrings glittered under the lighting and made the sunbursts look brilliantly bright. "I handled this one myself this morning."

"It's perfect." He fought the urge to stroke the polished gold and twinkling diamonds. "The insurance paperwork?"

"Right here." She lifted the jeweler's loupe from her neck and used the key dangling from the chain to unlock a drawer beneath the register. She retrieved an envelope and handed it to him. "It's all in order. If anything happens, you come back to see us, and we'll take care of everything." She placed the lid back on the box. "Would you like me to wrap this with ribbon?"

"Please," he said with a nod. While Zoya artfully decorated the boxes with gold ribbon, he skimmed the insurance paperwork.

Kostya had worked his way over to his side and waited for the transaction to be completed. He leaned against the counter and asked, "Did Sergei find the perfect diamond?"

Nikolai glanced up from the paperwork upon hearing the question. Earlier in the week, he had visited the store to make the final approval on the celebratory jewelry he had ordered for Vivian. He had run into Sergei on his visit and had learned his former prize fighter was going to propose to Bianca. He had his suspicions about why the two would rush into a marriage, but it wasn't any of his business. Unless he was specifically asked for his opinion, he was staying out of it.

"He did." Zoya smiled at them. "Abram set the stone this morning. It's gorgeous. I think he'll be very pleased, and Bianca will love it." She finished the tying the ribbons and carefully placed the boxes into a bag that matched the boxes and decorated it with a few sheets of gold tissue paper. "All done. Here you go."

"Thank you." He took the bag from her and retrieved his wallet. He plucked one of the credit cards free and handed it to her. After signing the receipt and pocketing his wallet, he wished her a good day and left the store with Kostya at his side.

"How was the meeting with Mr. Lu?" Kostya as soon as they were outside.