Page 8 of Love's Unexpected Surprise

I've been working for Dimitri most of my life. He found me when I was nothing but a starving kid in St. Petersburg desperately trying to scavenge food scraps for me and Marcus. He took advantage of that desperation and molded me into the man I am now. While I am paid well and my job comes with certain amenities, it's dangerous.

I've never had anything to be protective over until now. If I ever want a future with Amelia, I can't continue this way. Am I supposed to come home covered in blood and hide it from her? What am I supposed to say when I come home? She asks me how my day was.

I'll need a way out of this before I can even entertain the idea of going on another date with her. But right now, while she's still here with me and doesn't know who I really am, I want to savor the idea of a future with us.

We pull into the Uptown Diner, where Leonidas is the owner and manager, and Amelia hops out of the car before I have a chance to open the door for her. She looks at me with an eyebrow raised as if she had decided it was a competition on her own. I laugh and grab her hand as we walk inside together.

We take a seat in a booth, and I immediately scan the room for any sign of Leonidas. There are plenty of familiar faces—people who I know work for Leonidas and Dimitri and people I run into from time to time. While the Russian mob owns this diner, it still gets plenty of patrons who don't know a damn thing about what really goes on here.

“What do you recommend here?” Amelia asks me after a server comes to the table and hands us menus.

Truthfully, I've never actually eaten here. Normally, I walk in and head right back to Leonidas's office and get the envelope Dimitri leaves behind. “The French toast is incredible,” I lie, assuming Leonidas knows how to handle something as simple as French toast. “I have to run to the restroom. When the server returns, would you mind ordering that for me?”

Amelia nods and smiles at me while she studies the menu, none the wiser to the real reason I'm leaving. I take advantage of her distraction and head toward the back office. I open the door to his office without knocking, and he looks up, his small wire-framed glasses tilted on his nose, almost looking like they’re miniature in contrast to the rest of his burly body.

“Long time no see,” Leonidas says ironically, rifling through some papers on his desk to hand me an envelope. There are usually a few weeks between our visits, so this is unusual.

“I don't understand why he's not using another asset for this instead of me.” I open the envelope and pull out a piece of paper folded neatly inside. Boris Von Erich, the brother of my last hit. Dimitri wants him killed tonight when he returns home from a trip to Amsterdam.

I sigh and nod my head at Leonidas before making my way back out to Amelia. I stuff the envelope in the waistband of my pants so she doesn't see it before sitting down at the booth with her. The menus are gone, so I assume she's ordered.

“I got the French toast too,” Amelia says, folding her arms in front of her with a warm smile on her face. The stress of reading what I just did on the envelope vanishes when I see her, and I smile back. “Okay, I think it's your turn to tell me a little bit about yourself.”

I pause, thinking about what I should say to her. My eyes instinctually scan the room, looking for any signs of danger around me. I want to be attentive in the conversation, but it's a force of habit that keeps me withdrawn slightly.

“I guess there's not really much to tell. I work in finance and live in Greenwood Village just outside of town,” I lie, shrugging. “I'm honestly a pretty boring guy.”

“Oh, I don't believe that for a second,” Amelia says, reaching a hand across the table to grab mine. “What do you do for fun?”

I think of the answer for a second, contemplating giving some of the standard boring options. Before I can say anything, my eyes catch on a familiar face sitting at the counter. Oliver Friedman, a complete rat who has been known to work with detectives in the area. He used to handle small jobs for Dimitri before we realized he was selling information.

I wanted to kill him, dump him in some river, and let him sink to the bottom for the rest of eternity. Dimitri thought that would look a little too suspicious, so we let him live. He's just blacklisted from ever doing business with anyone like us ever again. That's certainly had a negative impact on his quality of life, considering he has no source of income now.

My stomach turns when I see him walking toward Amelia and me. What the hell could this rat possibly want?

Amelia notices me staring at him, and she looks over her shoulder. “Friend of yours?”

“It is,” I lie once again. I stand and meet Oliver halfway before he can spoil my morning with Amelia.

“Alexei, it's been a long time,” Oliver says, clapping a hand on my shoulder like we're old friends and he hasn't betrayed me and everyone I know countless times. “I've been meaning to give you a call. How's our buddy Dimitri doing?”

I glare at him, glad that Amelia can't see the angry look on my face. “Why don't you and I have this conversation somewhere else?” I can't risk Amelia overhearing a word of it. Oliver looks over my shoulder at her, and a smirk grows on his lips.

“Afraid someone might not approve?”

I grab him by the arm and practically drag him outside before he can say anything else. What I have with Amelia is too good for some fuckup like him to ruin. I take him to the alley between the diner and some tax accounting business and shove him against the brick wall.

“What the hell are you doing?” I shout at him, clenching my fists tight while I try to calm myself down. As much as I want to beat him to a pulp, I can't go back into the diner with skin broken on my fists and blood staining my clothes.

“I just wanted to talk,” Oliver shouts back at me, standing with his spine straight even though he's nothing more than a scrawny twig I could snap in half in an instant. “I need you to tell Dimitri to give me some work.”

“And why the hell would I do that? Last time you did a job for him, you double-crossed us and everyone you work with,” I say, shaking my head and laughing incredulously.

“Because I just saw you walking with that pretty little thing, and you and I both know a lot of dangerous people.” Oliver smiles at me, showing off his yellowing teeth. My stomach turns, and my vision clouds with anger.

Is he seriously threatening Amelia right now? He's blackmailing me to get him back in Dimitri's good graces.

This man is more of an idiot than I ever thought possible.

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