Page 11 of Vow to Me

“Are you worried about me sweetheart?” I ask, teasing him and he sends me a glare.

“I’ll be good, don’t worry. Thanks for your help,” I add before patting his back and strolling out the door.

Alec has no idea just how much I appreciate him; I’d have probably ended up in the ground years ago if it wasn’t for him. I'm not sure exactly what the fuck he really does on that computer of his, but there’s been countless times when he’s informed us of shit going down in our world, including a couple of hits that had been put out on me.

Luckily, he saw them in time, did his special kind of magic removing them from the site and gave me a heads up, letting me get to the fuckers who thought they could get rid of me first.

The driver opens my door and I get into the car while sending a text to the group chat that I have with my brothers and Dad. We have a hit to plan.

Chapter Nine

Luca

Walking into Di Nuovo, one of the restaurants owned by our family that we usually use to conduct business, I nod to the servers and make my way into the back room where I know Marco and my father are waiting for me.

I decided it’s probably in everyone’s best interests to leave Enzo out of the planning. That crazy little shit would probably go off on his own and blow the place up, himself along with it.

I step into the private room and see Dad and Marco sitting at the table each drinking a glass of whiskey. I don’t look much like our father, I got most of my mother’s genes, but Marco is an exact replica of him when he was his age. And to see them both sat next to each other, both taking a drink at the same time, wearing what could very well be identical suits is eerie, and rather fucking comical, if you ask me.

I take a seat opposite them, and we start getting into details on how many men we’ll need for our mission. Alec gave me a copy of blueprints for the home Novikov is holed up in. We decide it’s best to take four teams, three of the teams will enter from a different entrance and each take out as many of the men as possible while thefourth team guards the perimeter to make sure Novikov doesn’t try and escape.

Slimy bastard that he is, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he tries to run. Any man who decides to hide out somewhere while having men fight his battles for him is a fucking pussy.

“I had a meeting with Sergei Andrev yesterday,” Dad says after we finalize the details, I immediately tense. What the fuck was he doing meeting with Novikov's second in command? And why the fuck did I not know about it? He usually keeps me up to date on every-fucking-thing so for me to not know about it means it wasn’t planned.

“What do you mean you had a meeting with Andrev yesterday?” Marco balks at him with wide eyes, voicing my thoughts. We shoot each other awhat the fucklook before turning back to Dad and waiting for him to explain.

“Andrev is done being Novikov’s little bitch. Apparently, Novikov is wanting to get into trafficking, which you both know I do not fucking tolerate, apparently Andrev doesn’t either. He said something about his sister, I investigated it, and it turns out she was killed a few years ago when she was picked up by traffickers back in Moscow,” he says with a grimace. “The girl was only fifteen, picked up right off the street before being sold to some perverted fuck in Boston. She died a few days later,” he says, and I shake my head, what sort of fucking sick bastard buys a fifteen-year-old girl?

“Andrev has the backing of over half of their organization, they were just waiting for the right time to overthrow him. We made a deal, we take out Novikov and Andrev takes over, once he does,he cuts their alliance with the Colombians and we resume our old deal, and we get an extra five percent cut off the top of any business we do together.”

“Makes sense, it’s not like we can take out the Russians completely, we need to keep the balance between us, and this way it leaves the Colombians vulnerable with them no longer having the Russians on their side,” I add while they both nod, agreeing with me.

Me and Marco stay for a while longer, chatting about inconsequential nonsense, when he asks how Izzy reacted to the gift that I made for her.

“I’m not really sure, she just kind of stared at me like I’d lost my fucking head. I can’t figure her out, man. One minute she’s this perfectly manicured Mafia princess, the next she’s this scary as shit badass and I’m one wrong move from having my balls removed,” I say with a sigh.

“Just take things slow man and see what happens, she’s clearly been taking care of herself for a while, just try to get to know her. She’ll warm up to you eventually,” he says, while I wonder whether her warming up to me is a good thing or not.

After a while, we say our goodbyes. We’ve decided to carry out the hit on Novikov next week.

On my way out of the restaurant I stop and speak to Matteo, the manager and tell him I’ll need a table reserved for tonight, deciding to take Marcos's advice. I want to get to know Izzy more and I figure taking her out to dinner is probably a good way to start, I’mpretty sure this will be the first time I’ve ever took a woman out for a meal; I don’t fucking do dates.

Exiting the restaurant, I pull out my phone and send her a text.

Can I take you out for dinner tonight?

My Wife

Sure, what time?

I’ll pick you up at 8.

Chapter Ten

Izzy

After I left the mall, where I went to pick up some new hard drives, because I’m not saving shit to the cloud where anyone with two brain cells can access anything they like, I came back to the apartment to do some work.

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