Page 64 of Past Due

Chapter Sixteen

Besian rubbed his temple and wondered how much longer he should let Luka and Darko argue. Zec had smartly excused himself before the negotiations started, and Besian envied him. Listening to the two younger men battle their inflated egos was infuriating. Finally, having heard all he could handle, he said, “Enough!”

Both men shut their mouths and glared at him. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated. Years of dealing with Nikolai had given him a tough skin, and even though Darko was a bit of a wild card, he had nothing on the Russian mob boss.

“Look, we all want the same thing,” Besian stated the obvious. “We want the wallets back. We want the crypto off of them. Our side didn’t steal them. Darko, you say that your side didn’t steal them. So—if that’s true—and I have no reason to believe it’s not—that means we are on the same side. Yes?”

Darko nodded. “Yes.”

“Then let’s table the issue of who’s fault this is and move forward with figuring who stole from us and how we get it back.” Besian imagined this is what preschool teachers felt like, trying to push students to make the correct choices while making them believe it was their idea from the beginning.

“Fine, but you had better call off your dogs,” Darko warned, stabbing a thick, scarred finger at Luka. “If I get one more picture of my sister—"

“Wait,” Luka interjected and sat forward. “In an envelope? With a flash drive?”

Darko narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”

Luka stood up and crossed his office to his desk. He opened the drawer and retrieved the envelope. He tossed it at Darko who caught and opened it. “We got the same thing.”

Dark looked at the photos inside. His square jaw tensed. “This is similar to what we got about Stefana.”

“Then who the fuck is sending them?” Luka asked what they were all thinking.

“Who exactly did you steal from with this scam?” Besian suspected the answer was in that pool of people.

Luka shrugged. “We flooded the wallets into the areas we control. Dozens of countries.”

“Do we have a way to identify which wallets had the most crypto on them?”

Luka glanced at Darko who nodded. “My tech crew can, yes, but we’ll be limited by blockchain and how anonymous each person chose to be. Some people leave more breadcrumbs than others, you know?”

“We start there. We have no other choice,” Besian said, already feeling his heartburn return. At this rate, he was going to need a prescription for the highest dose of antacid available. “We should put money on the street. Try to get some leads,” he explained. “We aren’t the only ones looking for these stolen wallets.”

“I still think it was an inside job,” Luka insisted. “There were only a handful of us who knew where we had stashed the legit cold wallets. You,” he motioned toward Darko, “Dusan, me, a couple of guards.”

“I’ve handled my guards,” Darko interjected with a dead-eyed stare that told Besian exactly what the man meant by handled. “You can handle yours.”

“I will.”

Besian couldn’t help but wonder if his nephew had the stomach for the type of questioning that might be necessary. He suspected Luka was finally getting the real education required to be a boss. Inheriting the position wasn’t enough. He needed to get his hands dirty to truly understand what it meant to be in charge.

With their bad blood resolved and a temporary truce arranged, the men moved into a more comfortable room to enjoy some drinks. Luka and Dusan gravitated toward each other, and he chose a chair by the window. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out, not at all surprised to see it was a message from Marley.

He swiped the screen and felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. She and Rina were cheek to cheek in a selfie. Marley’s eyes were bright, and the gold jewelry glinted against her skin in the most enticing way. She was always beautiful to him, even with her messy morning hair and the creases of the sheets imprinted on her face.

But, seeing her like this, glammed up and sexy? It took every ounce of willpower not to chase her across the city, drag her into a dark hallway and ravish her against a wall.

“I never would have guessed redheads were your type,” Darko said, his Albanian impeccable. The much larger, heavier man dropped down onto the chair closest to him and set his rocks glass down with a heavy thwack. He didn’t bother to use a coaster, and Besian could practically hear Drita scolding them about the water rings. “But I can see why you picked this one.”

Besian narrowed his eyes. “How’s that?”

Darko flashed his phone’s screen. Marley and a stunning blonde who could not possibly be related to Darko and Dusan, two of the biggest, ugliest men he had ever seen, were pressed together and smiling in a selfie. “Looks like your girl and my sister are friends now.”

“Marley has a good heart.” Besian sipped his drink. “She’s never met a stranger.”

“That’s dangerous,” Darko remarked. “Some strangers should stay that way.”

“You try telling her that,” Besian muttered.

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