Page 7 of Vengeance

With my hand on my gun under the layers of my dress, I say, “Let me get you straight. I built my fucking business from the ground up right under Stephen Pray’s nose after he killed, bought off, or scared the shit out of anyone else who wanted to off him. And I run my business the way I fucking want to and the way it fucking needs to be run. So the last fucking thing I’m ever going to do is marry an entitled ass man, hand him the business I built, and sit to the side and watch him run what I’ve built into the ground.”

“Are you trying to insult me and my family to my face when asking for my help?” Isaak asks in an even tone.

“I’m not trying to insult you and your family. Ididinsult you and your family.”

Of course, that was after he insulted me. But he’s not going to believe or comprehend that.

Eileen lets out a barely audible sigh next to me, and I feel the tension in the room as everyone puts a hand on a gun, waiting to see who’s going to shoot first.

Isaak lets out a sharp cry, raising out his seat, and Eileen, Marcus, and Jeune all stand with their guns drawn, only faster than me right now because the extra weight of my pregnancy at the front of my body slows me down nowadays.

But just as soon as he’s let out the cry, he falls back down with a strangled gasp. And then another and another. His oldest son, Alik, is at his side first and then, after a moment of hesitation, Vaughn.

I stand to get a better look at what’s going on, but Marcus, Jeune, and Eileen are corralling me to an exit.

“Wait. What--?”

“Don’t look a fucking gift horse in the mouth, Addy,” Eileen says as the rest of my security flanks us and ushers me out the disastrous dinner.

4

Dele

“I

saak Vorobev is dead,” Eileen informs me on our way to the salon the next morning.

“How tragic,” I mutter blandly.

After the conversation preceding his heart attack or whatever the hell happened at dinner, his death is no loss to me and only a minor inconvenience in my negotiations with his family. When you’re in the mafia, viciously insulting someone is as common as a sunny day. If it doesn’t involve stealing money and turf or killing a family member, it’s usually forgiven and forgotten within a few days.

“We’ll allow them to grieve and then pick up on negotiations,” I say. “Think they’ll be open to letting them using our smuggling routes and storage facilities to help move their weapons? Maybe even cede some of our drug market to them?”

“Maybe,” Eileen says.

Eileen is very sparring with words when she has nothing to say. That’s not new. But usually she’d have something to say about this. The fact that she’s not concerns me. I have to ask her about it later, though, because we pull up to the salon, and I’m immediately ushered out and have to put on the socialite personality of Addy Bianchi that the public expects to see.

The massive two story hair salon, namedBianchi’s, is more than just a salon. It’s an experience where anyone who thinks they’re anyone wants to be. Already, it’s booked out six months, and we have plans to build another in the heart of Manhattan which will make for two places with expensive clientele to launder millions of dollars through that no one will blink an eye at. Between the salons, the non-profit to produce wigs for those who have lost their hair, and the online store, no can prove my money is dirty even if they suspected it was.

I don’t know a damn thing about doing hair or hair products. But as soon as my rich clients see me, they usher me over for pictures and try to inflate my ego over something that the only reason I was able to pull off is that I have the money and privilege to hire the smart people who know the chemistry of hair and hair products to do it. But as long as they’re paid and I keep a good work environment, they’re content to let me be the face of all this and don’t ask questions.

It's not long before I’m overwhelmed by the people and attention and also winded. So when no one is looking, I try to slip away to one of the luxury, private rooms in the back to rest for a few minutes only for familiar brown hair to catch my eye at the bar with fat rollers in her hair.

“Cres,” I call out in surprise.

She turns to me with a grin.

“Addy,” she replies with a wave.

She pulls me into a hug when she sees me, and if she notices my stomach in the way, she doesn’t say anything. Or maybe she just knows it’s not safe to say anything.

I’m inclined to believe the latter when she says, “Come on to my room. We can talk there.”

I follow her to where she’s rented a private room for her experience. No sooner than the door is closed, and she’s plopped on the couch do I ask, “What are you doing here? How are you here?”

Cres doesn’t answer and instead says, “This is actually a really cool idea. Your salon. I mean, if I’m going to spend five to eight hours every two to four weeks getting my hair done, I may as well do it somewhere like this.”

“It wasn’t just my idea. You helped.”

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