Page 3 of The Mafia King's Baby

The listing goes live instantly, filling me with both pride and panic. My spare bedroom—my haven project that kept me sane through the worst month of my life—is now available to strangers from around the world. There’s no going back now. I’m officially in the hospitality business, ready or not.

2

Yefrem

The burner phone buzzes against my thigh as I sit in the back corner of a twenty-four-hour diner in Reno, my third cup of coffee growing cold while I watch the parking lot through rain-streaked windows. The text is brief and coded, but the message is clear enough. Lang’s people have been asking questions in Sacramento, showing my photo to hotel clerks and rental car agents.

Time to move.

I leave a twenty on the table and walk to my rental car, a forgettable gray sedan that blends into traffic like water into water. It’s the kind of vehicle that surveillance teams overlook because it’s too ordinary to warrant attention. I’ve been driving cars like this for six years now, ever since my world shifted from legitimate business fronts to the shadow economy that keeps me alive.

Marcus Lang has been hunting me for eight months, and the bastard is getting closer. When I refused to cut him into mybusiness, he took it very personally. Lang isn’t just a federal agent doing his job. He’s a predator who’s decided I’m going to pay for not taking his deal, and he’s got the resources and corruption network to make that happen.

The rain pounds against my windshield as I drive north toward Lake Tahoe, following back roads that most people don’t know exist. I learned these routes during my early years in California, when establishing territory meant knowing every escape route and safe house within a hundred-mile radius. These are old ways that might save my life tonight.

My phone vibrates again. This time it’s Leonid, my most trusted lieutenant and the closest thing I have to family since my brother, Dmitri, was killed six years ago by a rival Italian group that paid dearly for it.

“Where are you?” His accent is thicker when he’s worried, Russian consonants creeping into his English like shadows at dusk.

“Moving north. Lang’s people hit Sacramento two hours ago.” I take a sharp turn onto Highway 89, relived the tires grip the wet asphalt. “I need somewhere clean for the night and off their radar.”

“I can arrange a safe house in?—”

“No.” I cut him off before he can suggest one of our usual locations. “Lang’s too close to our network. He’s got someone who knows our patterns feeding him information.” The betrayal still stings, even though I’ve suspected it for weeks. Someone in my organization has been selling intelligence to the FBI, and until I know who, I can’t trust any of our established safe houses.I’ve narrowed down the men I trust to less than a dozen now, and Leonid is at the top of that list.

“Then where?”

I pull into a gas station and park under the harsh fluorescent lights, checking my mirrors for vehicles that might have followed me from the diner. The lot is empty except for a trucker filling his tank, and a woman in scrubs who looks like she’s coming off a long shift at the hospital. Neither pays me any attention.

“I’ll figure out something. Stay off the radio frequencies tonight. If they’re monitoring our communications?—”

“Understood.” His voice carries the gravity of six years fighting beside me and of learning to trust each other’s instincts when everything else was uncertain. “Call when you’re secure.”

I end the call and consider my options. Hotels are out—too many cameras, too many records, and too easy for Lang to track through credit card transactions or facial recognition software. The safe houses Leonid mentioned are compromised by association, and staying with any of my known associates would put them at risk while solving nothing.

I need somewhere completely disconnected from my world, where Lang would never think to look because it has no connection to organized crime or the Russian community in California. Somewhere civilian and innocent and utterly forgettable.

That’s when I remember the app, QwikRent.

Leonid mentioned it a few months ago when he was researching ways to launder money through legitimate-looking transactions, giving me a short report on the viability of short-term rentals,private homes, and cash payments that look like vacation bookings. We never pursued it because our existing methods were working fine, but the research stuck in my memory.

I download the app and create a profile using one of my cleanest identities, Aleks Sokolov, traveling businessman, with a verified phone number that traces back to a legitimate telecommunications company I own through shell corporations. The background is solid enough to pass casual scrutiny.

The Lake Tahoe area shows dozens of available properties, from luxury lakefront cabins to modest guest rooms in residential neighborhoods. I scroll through them quickly, eliminating anything too expensive, too isolated, or too obviously catering to wealthy clientele. Lang knows my preferences, that I usually choose upscale accommodations when I have the option.

Tonight, I need to think like someone else entirely.

A listing catches my attention, posted just hours ago according to the timestamp. “Charming Guest Room: Your Home Away from Home.” The photos show a simple but clean room with green walls and white linens. Nothing fancy, and nothing that screams money or attracts attention. It’s the kind of place a traveling salesman might book, or a divorced father visiting his kids for the weekend.

Perfect.

The host’s profile is equally unremarkable. Celia Bourn, no reviews yet because the listing is brand new, but the verification badges are all green. Her photo shows a woman in her twenties with brown hair and a genuine smile, the kind of person who probably bakes cookies for her neighbors and volunteers at the local animal shelter.

She looks sweet. Cute, even, and there’s something about that smile that hints at a real personality, not just the façade most people put on.

I run a quick background check using resources that most people don’t have access to. Celia Marie Bourn, twenty-seven years old, recently laid off from a marketing position at Henderson & Associates.

No criminal record, no known associations with law enforcement or organized crime, and no red flags in her financial history beyond the normal struggles of someone who’s recently unemployed.

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