Page 220 of Vicious Saint
“Maybe so…” I retort, keeping my eyes trained on her angry scowl. “But that also includes a best friend using her own discomfort as an excuse to break her heart.”
“W-T-F are you up to motherfucker?” I narrow my eyes on the laptop screen, watching Nikolai Ivanov outside his restaurant shaking hands with Whelan Kane.
There are very few reasons The Russians would cozy up with the Irish, and my guess is it has something to do with Ivanov’s nasty grudge for the recently deceased head of the Salvinis’. Who decided the best way to go out with a bang would be killing his only son.
Then leave it to his younger brother to answer for his crimes.
There’re crazy people…then there’s Luca Salvini.
A guy even his own brother knew wasn’t stable enough to sit at the head of the table. But I guess politics dictate the mafia too.
The two of them disappear behind the entrance door, signaling the end of my virtual stake out through one of the security cameras I hacked into.
So, I hack into another one.
My tendencies to go rogue were never Victor Lavell friendly, but it’s his fault for leaving kid Saint bored and to his own devices every time he dragged him to headquarters.
I snooped. Researched. Even practiced my charm on some of his employees to teach me the ropes. Until the ropes became my playing grounds—and computers my second to football.
With a blunt wedged between my teeth, I type away at the keyboard, breaking through every firewall and back door until I’ve got a clear view of Nikolai and Whelan taking up the section tied off by at least six loads of Russian and Irish muscle.
I may be good at many things, but lip reading isn’t one of them, so my recon has to get drawn at body language.
And judging by the tense expression on these two motherfuckers, they’re either holding back hatred or a painful ass shit.
I survey every face in the closed off area—from the bodyguards to the boss’ advisors all the way to the staff—burning their images in my mind to stow away just in case.
A minute or so passes before Nikolai caves with a whistle at the bartender, who gets to work on fixing them drinks.
I watch her every move carefully, hoping, even praying for the first time in my life that she drops a bit of arsenic in the fancy gold glasses. Save me the trouble of doing something stupid like murdering them myself.
I’m leaning back in my desk chair as Nikolai whispers something into Whalen’s ear right before a waitress’s perky little ass blocks my view of the exchange.
“C’mon sweetheart, two steps to the fucking right,” I say after inhaling a deep pull. “I’ve got blunts to be smoked and killers to stalk.”
The universe must pity me after my chat with Bex, because instead of two steps the waitress takes ten…all the way back to a corner.
“That’s a good girl…” I blow out a cloud of smoke through a cough, then reach for the small key in my sweatpants pocket and twist open the top drawer of my desk.
The second it’s open I’m met with the stack of Ivanov folders I stole from my father’s office drawer last night—holding every picture, file, even medical history of the family. I pick them up in a single swoop, then go through them one by one.
Nikolai.
His wife Katya.
Dead son Dimitri.
His daughter Valeriya who lives in Russia.
The raging cunt Alexis from last year.
I study every detail about the fuckers.
My blunt is two tokes shy of a roach by the time I reach photos taken of their cars, so I put it in the ashtray left behind by Hendrix.
A long list of Mercedes.
A Rolls Royce.
