“No,” I say simply.
Stosh holds his hands, palm up. “Yes.”
“No,” I say again.
“And why not?” Stosh asks, though he thinks there's nothing I can say to influence him.
“I do not want a wife.”
“Everyone wants a wife, Roman.”
I try to remind myself that I need to demonstrate respect for Stosh. He is my boss. And yet what he saying is absolutely ridiculous. A wife for a hitman? It's absurd. I can't afford that kind of weakness. Neither can he. What is he thinking?
“I do not want a wife,” I say again.
“Well, maybe you do and maybe you don't,” Stosh says reasonably. Still, the smirk curls the edges of his mouth. “But this is the job. Dimi was willing to do it, and now it falls to you. There's no one else, and it's already been arranged. I've already agreed.”
“Ask Alek.”
“Alek is not Dimi’s replacement.”
“Then pick someone else,” I growl.
“Who else is there?” he says, though he knows I can't possibly have an answer for that. “She's the Don's daughter. A regular princess. If you don't like her, that's all right. They're mostly just good for cooking and cleaning anyway. Making babies, you know.”
I shake my head tightly.
“If she's ugly, just give her a place to live and go about your business. All you have to do is make a house with her. Take a girlfriend. Hell, take a boyfriend if you need to. Take twenty, I give no fucks. You're the man.”
“Dimi was a fool,” I say.
“Ha!” Stosh exclaims, slapping his palm on the table and making the plates jump. “Yes, he was! He was a fool who got himself killed. Would he still be alive today if he had married the Don's daughter? That is the question. That is the thing you have to consider. I arranged this to provide for your safety, Roman. You should be thanking me instead of making trouble. You really should.”
I close my eyes tightly. I don’t have a choice, and I know it. Bound to some Italian princess? No, this is not the life I wanted. I can't believe Gyorgi didn't mention this to me when he sent me here.
But I can tell that Stosh is expecting my gratitude. Though he is still smiling, there is something else behind the smile. Something sour. I don't know him well enough to know if I can refuse his generosity without consequences. And with Dimi’s death fresh in his mind, he may simply think he's protecting me. Or he may simply be pushing the agenda to ensure better business. I can't really tell.
In theory, it's not my place to know. I'm just a soldier. I do what they tell me.
Taking a deep breath, I press my lips together and nod. Stosh’s eyes brighten but I don't want to hear another word. I stand up from the table and leave the bakery, trying to figure out how I’ll explain this to Alek while I can still hear Stosh chuckling behind me.
CHAPTER 6
MARIE
Pulling the living room curtain back with just one finger, I can see Nuncio sitting on the corner of the stairs, looking at his phone. He’s smiling like he's watching cat videos or something. Nuncio loves his cat. I snap the curtain back into place and walk down the length of the living room to the kitchen.
Pulling my blue silk kimono tighter around my waist, I fill a kettle and put it on the stove for tea. A nice herbal tea might soothe my stomach. Sleeping in made it bad. Missing lunch made it worse. Right now all I want to do is go back to bed but I can’t imagine I’ll be able to sleep again, just lay there and stare at the ceiling, wishing my belly would calm down.
When I woke up this morning, my stomach was all in knots. First it was this feeling of sort of a druggie bliss. I felt so heavy in my bed, like I was weighed down by sandbags. Then little by little, different parts of me woke up. My shoulders, my back.
Once my hips started to feel alive, there was an unfamiliar ache in the middle of me. For a moment I couldn’t remember what it was, and then everything came back, rushing in all at once.
The men in the bar. Hurrying to the elevators. Crashing against them in their hotel room, in the dark, where they just undid me. Disassembled me and put me back together again in a different order. Like a new woman…
And then, those tattoos.
My stomach twists again urgently. I feel like I’m going to throw up. If anybody finds out about this, I'm dead. This is not an exaggeration, I will literally be dead. Even though Daddy has been trying to come to some sort of agreement with the Russians, this sort of thing would be a mortal insult.
Just giving away my virginity would take years for him to get over, but hopefully there's no way he would have found out. But a Russian, that's a whole other matter. This has got to go away.
Hopefully, he's just passing through. Maybe visiting family? Surely, they have families. He said he was from Atlanta, after all. I hope that means he's flying out today. Maybe he can have lunch with his grandma or something and then take it on the road.