“It’s nice to see you again, Sergey,” Vasilije said, and my eyes widened at his friendly, familiar tone. He nodded toward my brother. “Konstantine.”
My father’s lips pulled back into a thin smile, but his eyes were dead. “You, too, Vasilije.” His gaze slid to me, but he asked it casually. “Who’s the girl?”
Vasilije grinned. “You don’t recognize her?”
23
I tensed and air stuck painfully in my lungs. How the hell had Vasilije figured it out? Had Aleksandar outed me? No, that didn’t make sense, unless he had a death wish.
Vasilije leaned back in his chair and slung an arm over my shoulders. It was possessive. “I picked this one up from a warehouse over on the south side a few days ago. Saved her from a life of fucking and sucking cock to line your pockets.”
Relief swept through me that he didn’t know the truth, but also fear at what he’d just said. Why not pull a pin on a grenade and throw it in the center of the table? The tension would be the same.
Goran’s face turned to stone, and he said something sharp in Serbian, where the only word I understood was Vasilije’s name. All he did was shrug in response. What the hell was Vasilije doing? He stared at my father with a sick smile smeared on his face.
“It’s a big loss for you. She’s good,” Vasilije said. “I had Oksana blow me on the ride over here.”
Every pair of eyes turned to me. Konstantine’s jaw fell open so hard, it was a miracle it didn’t hit the table, and that was the moment Vasilije finally believed he won the game at shaming me. My gaze dropped to the tablecloth.
It didn’t matter what my father thought. Whatever evil deed I did was nothing in comparison to him. But my brother . . .
He’d been the only man to stand up for me. If it wasn’t for Konstantine, I’d be dead. If I had killed Ilia without my brother’s story to back me up, my father would have murdered me. I knew it down to the marrow of my bones. He’d loved Ilia almost as much as he loved his own son, and certainly much more than me.
I stared at the tabletop, not wanting to see the hurt and concern in my half-brother’s pale eyes.
“Wonderful. We didn’t arrange this sit-down,” my father said, his tone indifferent, “so we could hear about your whore’s oral skills.”
I snapped my gaze to him and a humorless laugh almost bubbled out, but I caught it in time. I understood why he’d said it. He was playing his role as much as I was, but he was enjoying it. He liked getting to openly treat me the way he secretly wanted to. Like I was nothing.
Goran’s commanding voice drew everyone’s attention. “What do you want to discuss?”
“I’m going to give you a gift, my friend.”
I blinked at my father’s warm tone. Sergey Petrov calling Goran Markovic a friend meant the world was upside-down.
“A gift?” Goran asked it with polite surprise, but in his eyes, I saw his thoughts. He was wondering if the gift was the kind that came from the barrel of a gun, or even worse.
My father’s voice carried across the table. “And in return, you won’t touch another shipment of girls again. We’ll run our business, and you’re free to run yours with your own women.” His steel-colored eyes slanted to Vasilije. “Even though we’ve established how Russian women are better at fucking and sucking cock.”
So, it was negotiations for a truce, at least in one aspect of business. It was the biggest part of my family’s empire. Most of my father’s money was made off the backs of women he sold into sexual slavery. The whole process of recruiting women and getting them to America was risky, expensive, and time-consuming. He lost tens of thousands of dollars in investment every time the Serbians hit us, not to mention the lost income when my father had no product to sell.
He’d been ready to crush the Serbians, but war couldn’t be waged without casualties, and although we were larger, the Markovics had been in Chicago longer. They had powerful support, including the Italians, and winning the war against them wasn’t a sure thing.
My father would try diplomacy first.
Goran looked intrigued, yet suspicious. “That would have to be quite the gift, my friend.”
“You’re under FBI surveillance.”
Vasilije snorted. “Tell us something we don’t know.”
Sergey Petrov didn’t like being disrespected, and he glared at Vasilije as if he was a bloodstain on an expensive tie. “The blindfold club your uncle frequents just hired an undercover agent. The next time he goes inside, he’ll be arrested.”
Blindfold club? What the hell was that?
My father’s focus went back to Goran. “I believe you’re a smart man like I am, and you’ve done your best to protect both your family and what you’ve built. I respect that. I respect how your business survived when they took your son down. But you know as well as I do, no amount of maneuvering will save you once you’re in the hands of the FBI. They’ll come after every Markovic, and they will be ruthless.”