“Any affiliations with the Bratva?”
“Only secondary. No direct dealings that I could find, but I have not dug very deep. Their information is surprisingly secure and I would need to use one of our hackers to break into it. I did not think you would want me to possibly insult them by breaking into their system and potentially getting caught.”
“No, no that would be bad. But Rya, is she involved in any criminal activities?”
“Not that I can see. Like I said, she has no arrest record and appears to be a fairly normal girl, considering she was raised in the environment of the MC. They treat their women, at least those that they marry or consider theirs, very well. Since Rya is the step-daughter of a high standing member, and also the daughter of a former member, it would be logical that she was treated well.”
Taking a seat again in the chair, Dimitri stared at the spot where Rya’s head had lain. “What else?”
“She has traveled quite a bit. All to vacation destinations.”
“Anything unusual? Any sign that she might be working for the Ice Demons and doing their business overseas?”
Stefan laughed. “No, I don’t think so.”
“How do you know?”
“Look at her social media sites. That woman loves to take pictures of everywhere she’s been. She has quite an adventurous streak and has visited many places and done daring things like sky diving and swimming with sharks in a cage. I’m emailing you the links to her different social media sights, you can take a look for yourself.”
“Thank you. So in your judgment you do not think she could be a spy?”
Most people would have laughed at that question, but Stefan, like Dimitri, had been born into the Bratva, so he understood the constant need for a level of precaution most would consider paranoid. “No, she is simply an unusually beautiful woman with a taste for adventure.”
“Lose all the information you have on her. I want no record that she’s been researched. Understood?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Stefan.”
“I hope you are enjoying yourself, Dimitri. I will see you when you get back. We will drink and you can tell me if this girl was as good in bed as she looks. She has many pictures of her in a bikini and I would love to get my hands on her. Those tits…I’d suck on them until she was sore.” Stefan made a pained noise and Dimitri gritted his teeth.
Dimitri almost told him to fuck off, but that would have alerted Stefan that Rya meant more to him than a simple night of sex. While he trusted Stefan to a point, the only person he trusted with his life, and Rya’s life, was Alex. “I will see you next week.”
After hanging up, he sat back in the chair and tapped his lips. So Rya came from a family similar to the Bratva. He wondered if she knew about the club’s criminal dealings; he would bet she did. No matter how careful people tried to be, they would eventually slip up and say something around her. If Rya had been raised among these bikers, then she would have seen or heard something that would have tipped her off. And he remembered the way she’d said ‘Club business’, as though just those two words would end a conversation. She was loyal, and he liked that.
More importantly, he remembered how she had spoken fondly of the men who helped raise her. If she could love them in spite their criminal dealings, maybe she could…
No. Absolutely not. He would not even think it. To do so would be torture. For years, decades, he’d managed to make a life for himself under the restrictions of the world he’d been born into, and while he wasn’t happy, he survived. He just had to hold on a little longer, to wait for the bastard who sired him to die so they could end the bloody feud and move on.
If the old man wasn’t so well-guarded, Dimitri would be tempted to kill his father himself. But if he did, he would be signing his own death warrant. He had too many people, good people within their family, who were depending on him and Alex to take over the Novikov Bratva. If he or Alex died, there would be a blood bath as the rival factions battled for supremacy, not to mention the outside families that would make war. No, he knew his lot in life, and it did not involve indulging his fascination with Rya.
Five hours later, he stood in the large foyer of the rented lodge, waiting for Alex’s submissive, Ilyena, to arrive so they could take the helicopter to Boston for a party. Alex stood across the foyer speaking with the dark-skinned Nico and rough-looking Ivan, both men good friends of Dimitri’s, but he waited on the other side of the room out of respect for Ivan. This morning, before he’d heard about Rya, he’d attempted to buy Ivan’s submissive, which caused a problem between them. Normally, Ivan would have laughed it off, but to Dimitri’s surprise, Ivan seemed serious about this girl, Gia, he had won during the Submissive’s Wish Charity Auction.