I slip the lovely red silk wrap Quinn bought me off of the back of my chair and wind it around my shoulders. Then I lift my chin and stare Massimo down.
“I’ve taken precautions. If anything happens to me, a file will be released to the families. To all the members of all the families, to be exact, not just the heads. That file contains everything I’ve seen and heard since I was a child. All the conversations no one thought were important to hide from me because I was female. All my memories and experiences. All the things I’ve witnessed. Everything has been written down and saved in duplicate. If I die for any reason other than advanced old age, those files go out.”
I cluck my tongue. “Just imagine the information I have, Massimo. Daughter of a Mafia don, wife of a Mafia captain, sister of the head of one of the Five Families…I’m a fucking mother lode of fun information.”
Massimo’s face turns red. A vein in his temple throbs. He snaps, “Bullshit.”
My smile grows wider. “Is it? I guess time will tell. But there’s one thing we both know for sure, and it’s that you’ve always underestimated me.”
I hold his infuriated stare for a beat before I turn my back and walk away, leaving him alone at the table.
41
Rey
Paris, September
“What the fuckedy-fuck is that thing?”
“It’s called haute couture, Riley.”
“If ‘haute couture’ is code for garish and ridiculous, then I get it, Hollywood. Seriously, where in the world could you go out in public wearing a giant balloon dress? Unless there’s a flood, then I suppose that hideous plastic polka-dot concoction could be super great as a floatation device.”
Sloane sighs. “I see living in the wilds of a Russian forest has done nothing to elevate your sense of style.”
Riley snorts and looks down at Sloane’s skirt. “This from a woman who thinks hot-pink tulle miniskirts covered in sequins and bows is the height of fashion.”
“Don’t you dare diss Betsey Johnson! And couture is magical, Smalls. It’s wearable art.”
“It’s lame is what it is. Can we leave now? I’m starving.”
We’re sitting in the second row of seats at the Fendi runway show, right behind Victoria Beckham. To my left is Nat, the black-haired beauty engaged to the head of the Bratva in the US. To my right are Sloane and her younger sister Riley, arguing the merits, or lack thereof, of French couture.
They bicker constantly, but the love between them is obvious. Over the past three days since we arrived in Paris, they’ve fought as much as they’ve hugged each other.
We watch the final model strut down the runway, then stand and clap with the rest of the audience when the show is over and the designer walks out to thunderous applause. Then we make our way through the crowd, headed to the after-party at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
We’re followed by no fewer than two dozen bodyguards.
Armed and eagle-eyed, they’re spread out across the room, moving through the well-dressed patrons like sharks through water. The protection was a nonnegotiable condition all our men insisted upon, though not the only one. The list was long.
A girls’ trip to Paris is much more than a simple getaway when the “girls” belong to four of the most powerful, dangerous men in organized crime.
Men who hate each other.
They probably hate it even more that there’s no stopping us once our minds are made up.
But all it took was a single conference call between the four of us to convince us that a girls’ trip was exactly what we needed. If these men of ours are going to be at each other’s throats for the next forty years, we’ll be the glue that holds this shit show together.
And we’re bonding the glue in Paris, buying haute couture and eating haute cuisine.
Nobody ever said politics had to be conducted in dreary surroundings.
Chatting about the show, we travel to the museum in a convoy of armored SUVs with blacked-out windows. We enter through a private elevator in the back of the building. Once we’re inside, the bodyguards spread out again, keeping their predatory gazes trained for any hint of danger.
The after-party is held in the nave of the museum, an elegant three-story space of carved arches, white marble columns, and glossy marble floors. Displays of mannequins clad in designer frocks are clustered on raised platforms. The walls glow with purple washes of light. Uniformed waiters pass champagne and canapés on silver trays. I spot four celebrities within the first five minutes of our arrival.
We gather around a tall cocktail table draped in linen at one end of the room and talk, eat, and people watch as more guests arrive.
Until Riley says suddenly, “Uh-oh.”
Chewing on a pear-and-gouda tartlet, Nat says, “What’s wrong?”
I’ve already spotted the problem. “Oh, just a little ticking time bomb over there.”
Nat and Sloane follow the direction Riley and I are looking.
On either side of the opposite end of the room, two pairs of men stand glaring at each other. On one side are Declan and Quinn. On the other are Kage, Nat’s fiancé and head of the US Bratva, and Malek, Riley’s fiancé and head of the Bratva in Moscow.
All four of them have their arms crossed over their chests and expressions of murderous rage on their faces as they stare at each other over everyone’s heads.
Sloane laughs. “Oh, look. The boys are here!”
Nat says crossly, “I knew they wouldn’t stay at the hotel like they agreed to. I think they’ve been following us around every time we go out.”
I say, “Of course they have. They can’t help themselves. All that big-dick energy comes with some serious caveman side effects.”
“Should we intervene?” asks Riley nervously. “I don’t like that look on Mal’s face.”
The look she’s referring to is directed at Quinn, who’s glaring right back at Malek with his teeth bared.
It’s no worse, however, than the look Kage and Declan are sharing, a glower of blistering hatred which could peel the paint right off the walls.
I say, “Don’t worry about them. It’s just saber rattling. They know better than to go at it with the four of us as witnesses.”
Sloane laughs again. “Right? They know what they’d be in for when they got home, the poor bastards.”
“They might be bastards, but poor they’re definitely not,” says Nat, turning to smile at me. “How many carats is that diamond necklace, anyway? Fifty?”
“Close, but no. And look who’s talking. How many carats is that ring?”
“Ten.” Nat beams down at her engagement ring, a huge chunk of ice that must’ve set Kage back millions of dollars. “But he thinks I need something bigger. When he saw Sloane’s ring, he got really mad.”
“Speaking of engagement rings,” Sloane says, elbowing Riley with a smile. “When are you and your giant Russian assassin going to tie the knot?”
“Probably not until after the baby’s born,” Riley says, caressing her stomach. In comparison to the rest of her petite frame, the small bump she’s growing looks big. “Though if it were up to him, it would be tonight. I’m not in such a hurry.”
“Why wait?”
She snorts. “Because gangster weddings are such calm and simple affairs, maybe?”
I smile. “Amen.”
Sloane waves that off and sips her champagne. “Then go to a justice of the peace or something. They do have those in Russia, I presume?”
“Don’t be a snob. Russia isn’t the middle of nowhere.”
“Except that cabin you live in with your man and his pet crow is literally in the middle of nowhere.”
“Pet crow?” I say, interested.
Riley smiles at me. “His name’s Poe.”
“Ah. After Edgar Allan. Very clever.”
“So’s the bird. I swear that thing is smarter than most of the guys Sloane’s dated.”
Nat deadpans, “Wouldn’t be hard.”
“Very funny, assholes,” says Sloane breezily. “I’ll have you know I once dated a Rhodes scholar.”
“Once being the important word in that sentence,” says Nat, laughing.
“Besides, nobody’s smarter than I am, so why bother dating a smart guy?”
“I’m sure Declan would have something to say about you thinking you’re smarter than he is.”
“Oh, he knows. I tell him so all the time.”
Nat rolls her eyes. “Of course you do.”
Inside her cute little blingy handbag, Sloane’s phone rings. She unzips the bag, takes out the phone, and sighs when she sees the number on the readout. “Oh, Stavi. Give it up already.”
“Stavi?”
Sloane smiles at me. “My ex, Stavros. He wants me to text him a pic of my shoes.”
I lift my brows. “He’s into women’s footwear?”
Her chuckle is dry. “Sis, like you wouldn’t believe.”
I haven’t said a thing to her about the section regarding her ex Stavros in the contract Declan and I negotiated, and I never will. It’s enough that he agreed to take it out. And as long as Stavros stays alive, I’ll keep my promise to Declan that the whole incident will remain between the two of us.