Page 98 of Single Mom's Daddies
The music’s too loud.The bar’s too small. And Mikhail won’t stop running his fucking mouth.
I stand outside the back door of the pub, tucked just out of sight under the cover of a broken awning. The building smells like beer rot and fryer grease. There’s a grimy yellow haze to the windows, but I can still see him. Leaned over the bar. Laughing.
His voice carries.
“…told the guy, ‘You want protection? Get yourself a Svet. Buy one and the whole east side stops looking at you like prey.’”
The guy he’s talking to laughs like he thinks it’s a joke. And Mikhail doesn’t even realize he’s bragging about laundering money. Cousin Yuri vouched for him. Said he was loyal. Quiet. From Brooklyn. Knew the business. And now here he is, tossing around the family’s most valuable operation over cheap whiskey sours and fucking chicken tenders.
I see red. I walk around the side of the building without thinking.
My pulse is pounding, tight and erratic, as I push through the pub’s back entrance. The kitchen’s half-dead at this hour—one guy cleaning the fryer, another sweeping—and neither of them even glance up at me.
I step out into the bar proper, and Mikhail doesn’t see me at first.
He’s mid-sentence. “…you know how it works. Buy a canvas, get peace of mind. It’s all unofficial, but everyone knows?—”
I grab him by the back of the neck and slam his face down into the bar. The glass in front of him shatters on impact.
The whole room freezes.
He scrambles, bleeding, choking, trying to turn. His eyes go wide when he sees me. “Vic—wait?—”
I don’t wait.
I drag him out back by the collar, one-handed, not caring who sees. He stumbles over his own feet, blood smearing across the pavement as I shove him into the alley.
He tries to turn again. “What’d I do?”
I hit him. Hard.
He goes down on the second punch. Not unconscious, but he’s dazed, arms limp beside him, legs twitching like a puppet whose strings are being cut.
“Loose lips,” I say through gritted teeth, “sink motherfucking ships.”
“Please—”
I crouch beside him. “You broadcasted the one goddamn thing we keep sacred. You think anyone in that bar gives a shit what happens to you?”
He tries to sit up. I kick him flat.
“I should kill you myself.”
He sobs something. I don’t hear it.
I wave my guys over—two of them waiting by the street. They’ve been watching it go down. They know the score. “Take him to Brooklyn. His old employer’s still looking for him. Let them handle it.”
They hesitate for a flash. Then nod.
As they drag him away, I light a cigarette with shaking fingers. I’m not a smoker, but times like these, they take the edge off. I just signed that man’s death warrant. And I can’t make myself care. But God help me, I still feel sick.
The drive back to the compound is too short.
I want the miles to stretch. I want time to bleed out the tension in my spine. But the headlights cut through the dark faster than I can calm down, and the closer I get, the tighter my chest coils.
Brooklyn will eat Mikhail alive. Maybe literally. His old crew won’t give him the quick kind of death. They’ll make it last. I’ve heard his old boss keeps pigs upstate.
I could’ve made it fast, clean, quiet—but I didn’t want that. Not after what he risked. I grip the wheel until my knuckles go white. Loose lips. Weak minds. Sloppy mouths. You can’t fix that.
