Page 95 of Bound to a Monster

“The thing is your father was a piece of shit. No disrespect, but fuck him. Now you come up here to my turf and you think you can repair the damage that’s already been done? I put time, effort, and money into preparing my fleet for your organization’s business, and so far I’ve got nothing to show for it. I’m about to cut my goddamn losses.”

“There’s no need for that,” I tell him.

But Olivier’s not listening. “This is the problem with you selfish fucking American assholes. You think the world revolves around you. But this is Montreal, not Philadelphia. This ismycity. Your bosses don’t mean a duck’s barbed dick here.”

I struggle to maintain my composure. “I understand my father wasn’t the easiest negotiating partner.”

“He was a straight-up cocksucker,” Olivier declares.

I hold up a hand. “That’s enough.”

“You said it yourself,friend. You called him a cunt, and you were right.”

“Very right,” Simon echoes. I’m tempted to break his fucking jaw, the useless asshole.

“That’s because he’s my father and I get to speak about him that way. I understand the kind of man Oleg could be sometimes. But he’s still my family, and you should be more respectful.”

Olivier’s jaw twitches. “Sounds like a bunch of demands I don’t really give a shit about.”

This is spiraling. Or maybe this relationship was always broken and I didn’t realize it until now. The damage my father did might be impossible to repair, and I’m not even sure I want to if that means taking more abuse from this worthless, truck-driving Canadian asshole. There are other crooked transportation options in this goddamn country. I should break his neck and move on.

“Everything okay over here?” Carmie asks suddenly. She’s standing at the end of the table like a waitress and hands over a fresh drink.

Olivier throws back the dregs of his second and accepts the latest offering. “All good, mon chéri, merci beaucoup.”

Carmie glances at me, her smile getting bigger and faker. “How about you, Lev? Doing good?”

I plaster on my best smirk. “Fantastic.”

“Since we’re all getting along so well, why don’t we meet up again tomorrow night? Simon, I don’t think a house visit is goingto happen since we’re not in town for long, but maybe you boys can take us somewhere else that’s local?”

Carmie beams at them and I swear, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was just a pretty, naïve girl inserting herself into a bad situation.

But she knows me by now, and she must be able to tell I’m struggling over here. This is her way of giving me an out and an opportunity to regroup.

“I don’t know,” Olivier says, frowning at his partner. “Maybe we could go to the Bald Pelt?”

Simon seems unhappy about that. “You spend too much time there already.”

“We’ll show them a good local spot.” Olivier’s sneer is ruthless. “How’s that sound, Carmie? You in for the Bald Pelt?”

She does not seem in for it at all, but she makes herself nod and politely accept, and I’m left to hammer out the details with our two French-Canadian friends before she drags me back out into the Montreal evening.

“I’m going to kill them,” I tell her as we walk back toward the hotel.

“Go easy.”

“And I’d kill Oleg again if he were still alive. He’s been trying to strong-arm them for weeks. He was the goddamn problem.”

“Now that he’s gone, we can fix it, right?”

“Olivier and his ass-kissing second-in-command both seem like they’re not all that interested anymore. They were insulting me to my fucking face.”

Carmie puts a hand on my arm. “This is why we’re here,” she says softly.

I know she’s right. Fixing this deal with Olivier and Simon is why we came up to Montreal. It’s the only way we can make Valentin lift his silence order and accept me as the head of the Federov branch. If we can’t make this happen, we’ll have wasted our time and I don’t know how we’ll ever manage to fix this shitty situation.

But God, I hate those sneering pricks.

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