Page 102 of Single Mom's Daddies
“Shoved him. Hit him once. Let him run.”
Victor’s eyebrows lift. “You let him live?”
“We’re the good guys, remember?”
Roman gives me a dry look. “I didn’t say let him live.”
I throw myself into the chair across from him. “It doesn’t matter. There’s going to be more. We can’t scare our way out of this forever. Not with a scam like ours.”
Victor frowns. “You think Svet’s a scam?”
“Call it a scam, or a gig, or whatever.” I scrub a hand through my hair. “I think it’s clever. Effective. Profitable. But at the end of the day, it’s still laundering. It’s still organized crime. And if we get dragged back into the old ways, we’ll have to choose. Do wekeep pretending we’re art dealers? Or do we admit we’re still the fucking Bratva?”
Silence. It stretches.
Then Roman says, “We’re not going back.”
“You sure?” I ask. “Because the old me really wanted to fucking gut that piece of shit, and I’m inclined to agree with him.”
“We are the good guys. As much as it grates on our nerves, that’s who we must be. For our children. For Saffron. You made the right call, Nikolai.”
Victor doesn’t look convinced. He’s quiet now, staring into the fire like it holds an answer he’s not ready to say out loud.
And then there’s a knock. Mrs. Popovich’s aged voice through the wood. “There’s an agent here to see you.”
Victor hisses, “Fuck,” under his breath, and Roman might as well by the look on his face.
I open the door, and there stands Charles Ruger, next to our housekeeper who looks angry enough to poison him at the first opportunity. I plaster on a fake smile. “Ruger, came by to borrow some sugar?”
“I come bearing a warrant, gentlemen.”
Roman glances down the hall. “Aren’t you supposed to wait for entry until you receive permission from an owner of the property?”
Ruger blanches a little. “Mrs. Popovich was kind enough to invite me in. After I insisted.”
She grumbles, “He has a damn warrant. No sense in arguing.”
“Of course,” I tell her, still smiling. I ask Ruger, “Did you bring your friends to help execute your little warrant?”
“No, but I’m not a moron,” he says, just as friendly as can be. “They’re nearby in case you weren’t in such a good mood.”
Roman narrows his eyes. “The warrant is for what?”
“Tax records.”
A beat passes. Then Roman steps aside.
Ruger raises an eyebrow. “No resistance?”
“You came for numbers, not blood,” Roman says. “Don’t mistake our civility for hospitality.”
Ruger steps into the office like a man walking through a lion’s den. His gaze flicks from the marble floors to the chandelier, to the black-and-white family photo hanging on the wall. Our legacy frozen in a moment of phony peace.
“I’ll make it quick,” he says. “I always do.”
“What a pity for the women in your life,” Victor mutters.
Ruger holds out the folder. Roman takes it, flipping through the warrant with deliberate slowness before nodding once and handing it off to me.
