Page 5 of Vengeance

Eileen says nothing, but if I know her as well as I think I’ve learned, she’s going to make her own contingency plans for me. If she were anyone else, I’d be suspicious. But Viper trusts her more than anyone else. Maybe more than me sometimes. So I don’t bother to ask what she’s planning. Whatever it is will, at the very least, serve Viper’s interests and, generally, his interests help mine. So I guess I’ll trust Eileen too.

3

Dele

“D

ele,” Eileen says as we ride to the neutral hotel venue that we’re meeting the Russians at.

It’s a luxury dinner spot attached to a luxury hotel. Neither the Italians nor the Russians own it, have any investments in it, have ties with the owners or any of the investors, and the business has no ties to anyone else. A good old, honest, American, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps establishment. Well, as good and honest as an American corporation can be. Because corporations and their managers are just the criminals who are legal.

“What?” I ask.

Eileen looks me over and then begins to adjust the layers of my carefully constructed dress. Maybe to better disguise and hide my six and a half month pregnant belly.

“About the Russians,” she says, “I know you’re used to giving orders and being the boss because you’ve proven yourself by your own merits but the Russians don’t care about that.”

I frown. Eileen is trying to tell me something other than what she’s telling me.

“What…”

Eileen continues, “Adrian has given you a lot of freedom for a woman. A lot more freedom than most women in any mafia or criminal organization have. More than even Isabella Uccello. Not that your proximity to her has helped that. The Russians aren’t going to appreciate you handling them like they would another man. What you call standing up for yourself and your empire, they’ll take to mean that you’re too emotional. God forbid they figure out you’re pregnant. They might just throw you out the room.”

“So what are you saying I should do?”

Eileen doesn’t answer until she’s satisfied with my dress. Then she says, “There’s no good answer. When you’re a woman in this business, there never is.”

If Eileen had anything else to say or if I had anything else to ask, it’s forgotten as we pull up to the hotel and restaurant.

The door opens and Eileen steps out with me.

Next to me, Jeune, the missing French mafia prince who defected after I rescued his lover, Marcus, from his lover and said lover fall into step next to me. In light of the war and my pregnancy, I had them called back from where they were stationed with Wyan, my old mentor, to watch over the child army we covertly stole from Pray a year ago.

Bella has men she implicitly trusts. and I trust Bella with my life. She’s like the sister I always wanted, but could never get in my relationship with my actual sister. So I trust anyone she trusts implicitly. But it’s never been more important for me to have the people I handpicked and who I can trust around me. It shows the reach of my power is more than just the power Bella and the name of her family have given me. It shows that I can build something and maintain it with my bare hands. And in front of the Russians, that’s important. I need them to know who they’re dealing with.

“Careful, Miss Bianchi,” Jeune says.

He hooks his arm in mine to help steady me since my equilibrium has gotten worse and worse the more my pregnancy progresses. But I’ll take being unsteady on my feet over any other complication.

I walk into the restaurant with my entourage in tow. No one stops us. The Russians and I equally split the cost to rent it for the evening to talk. I’d offered to pay for it myself and so did the Russians do the same on their end. We both declined the offer. For either side to cover the cost would have effectively made this place non-neutral.

While Jeune continues to help steady me when we get to the table, Marcus takes out both my seat and Eileen’s to help us sit before they both take seats on either side of us. It’s a strange position for two people who are supposedly only bodyguards to take, but it’s also a strategic decision.

No one knows that the French mafia prince is missing except the French themselves. It’s something they’re keeping hushed since for people to know they don’t have an heir would already weaken their precarious position. As far as anyone is concerned, the French heir is overseas in France for his studies. But tonight, as far as the Russians are concerned, we have the French on our side. Inconsequential of players in all this as they are.

“Right on time,” says theirpakhan,Isaak Vorobev.

He’s an old man, but not quite ready for retirement yet.

I nod to him, and then nod to the much younger man to the right of him. His youngest and favored son and the heir to the main Russian Bratva family, Vaughn Vorobev. It’s the strangest thing of all about them right now.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the bratva, it’s that they’re very traditional and conservative in their values. For Isaak to skip over Alik, his oldest and married son, something drastic must have happened. But like the French aren’t broadcasting that their heir is missing and like I’m not broadcasting my pregnancy, Isaak isn’t broadcasting the reason. Again, it’s not something that matters right now. The Russians are allowed to have their secrets just like all the other mafia families do.

What does matter is that Vaughn’s word weighs heavily in Isaak’s ear. If I can convince his son, his father will follow.

But the business is later. First, dinner, made by the restaurant’s premier two-star Michelin chef, carefully watched and observed by a trusted guard from both our sides to make sure nothing untoward was happening.

We go over the obligatory pleasantries. Family (both of us carefully probing for information that we might not have already knowns), our open business ventures (many of which are fronts to launder and clean the dirty money from our illegal gains), and some of the other non-secret interests.

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