ANTON
It’s almost twelve midnight and that limp old fuck still isn’t here.
Lev and Yulian keep shooting me glances. I know what they’re thinking, because I’m thinking the same thing.
It’s gonna look bad if he doesn’t show.
As if there aren’t enough whispers going around already. A break in the alliance will cause problems before we’re ready to deal with them.
But I ignore my two right-hand men. I know my enemy perfectly well.
People sometimes thought Otets forced me to be at every meeting with him. Wrong—I wanted to be there. I understood that one day, knowing my enemy would save my Bratva.
And even at eighteen, I knew that Rodion Ivanov’s friendship only ran surface-deep.
I knew marrying the bastard’s daughter was a bad idea. But Otets was blinded by his desire to take the Ivanov Bratva under his wing. He thought it would all be so simple, so neat.
But nothing in this life is simple.
Nothing is neat.
Everything comes with a bloody, ragged edge.
“You’re distracted tonight, darling,” Jasmine says, shooting me a sexy smile. “Any particular reason?”
“Business as usual.”
“I would have believed you… if I hadn’t met the pretty blonde with the killer side-eye,” she says slyly.
“What blonde?” Jhené butts in immediately.
She hasn’t been very far from me tonight. Apparently, the girl has it in her head that she’s going to be the next Mrs. Stepanov.
Of course, Jasmine doesn’t deign to respond, so Jhené turns to me. She hooks her arm around mine possessively. “Which blonde is she talking about, Anton?”
Jasmine stares at the two of us with amusement. The older she gets, the more readily her claws come out. It’s how she compensates for the boredom in her personal life. Apparently, the third husband is turning out to be quite the disappointment. Easy on the eyes, but no one is home upstairs.
“You do seem to have a thing for blondes, don’t you, Anton?” Jasmine asks.
“Which blonde?” Jhené asks again, growing frustrated.
“I’d say you’re about to find out,” Jasmine says with a little chuckle.
I turn just in time to see Jessa blazing a trail right for me. Her eyes are fixed on me unabashedly for the first time all night. I can practically see the steam coming out of her ears.
She stops half a foot away from me, hands fisted and quivering like she’s barely resisting jabbing a furious finger into my chest. “We need to talk, asshole.”
Jhené looks between us for a moment, waiting for the punchline. When it doesn’t come, her expression turns snotty.
“Excuse you. I don’t think the waitstaff should be talking to—”
“Zip it, Barbie. I’m not talking to you,” Jessa interrupts. Then she whips her head back to me. “I’m talking to this particularasshole.”
I suppress my smile. “Come with me.”
I lead her through the crowd, most of whom make no attempt to hide the fact that they’re watching with morbid curiosity. Jhené wasn’t wrong—any member of the waitstaff would normally be dismissed without question for pulling a stunt like this.
But Jessa is special.