The King - S.R. Jones Page 0,51
gave her to Andrius.”
Denis frowns, I can see the cogs turning. “But… I mean, the two things I know about Andrius are he’s so fucking cold he’d cut your tongue out, fry it up, and make you eat it. And he hates anyone who hurts women, so that doesn’t make sense, boss.”
“Exactly, that’s how fucking unhinged Allyov is. He stole his hitman a woman, when his hitman spent his whole life seeking vengeance on people who do that shit. As it turned out, they fell in love.” I laugh. “Couldn’t make it up. She’s fucking adorable, though.”
“She’s fucking hot is what she is,” Vasily says.
I whip round and smack the cigarette out of his hand. “Don’t fucking disrespect my friend’s wife,” I snap.
He glares at me, and I can see he wants to make something of it, but he won’t. I’d cut his fucking balls off. Then we both glance around as I realize I’ve just lost my cool in a courtyard of a legitimate business where people probably don’t go around slapping their employees. Vasily laughs as if it’s a joke, and then punches my arm.
Fucking hell, I need to remember to keep the mask in place. I let it slip too easily when these fuckers are back in my life.
“So … Allyov,” I say, getting us back on track. “Allyov, Popeye, and the question of a vacuum that needs filling. I could do it myself, but I don’t want to. I’m too focused on the legit side of things. The Greeks? Stamatis seems like a good man, but he won’t want this. Andrius is far too busy with his little woman and their baby. So that leaves this fucking vacuum, and as Andrius rightly said, nature abhors a vacuum.”
Vasily shifts his weight from one foot to the other and takes a deep drag of his cigarette, the third he’s lit in a short space of time. He needs to cut this shit out before he fucks his lungs for good.
“I thought there was no solution,” I say to him. “Thought you were needed in Moscow, but then I read through your last ten or so reports again, and I saw that you were delegating more and more to Bohdan. We know him, right? Trust him? I’m not saying you leave Moscow all together. What I’m saying, Vasily, is how about you step up and take over a much more lucrative area. London. And you, Denis, you step up and work for Bohdan to help him run Moscow?”
Vasily stares at me. “It rains so much here.”
“Yes, it does.”
“The women are okay, but they aren’t a patch on the Russian girls.”
“Maybe, but they have fire. They’re more direct, dirty. They like to drink and fuck, and they don’t hide it.”
He smirks.
“Come on, Vasily. It will be like the old days, you and me together. Haven’t you missed me?” I mock pout, and he barks out a laugh.
“I have missed you like the nail they had to remove from my foot all those years ago.”
He’ll come if I order him to, but I want Vasily to choose this. He’s a great second, but he’s moody, and he will work better here if it’s where he wants to be.
He stiffens, alert suddenly, and I follow his gaze to see him staring at Zoey as she enters the smoking quad. She walks to the middle, to the tree, stares up at it with her face tilted to the sun, then she throws her arms around the tree and hugs it.
We glance at one another, then turn to stare at the woman hugging a fucking tree in front of all her colleagues as if that shit is normal.
After a moment or two of hippy-dippy tree hugging, she wanders over to a bench on the left side of the yard, and sits on it, her feet on the bench, knees drawn up and her head tilted up to the sky.
“Who is that?” Vasily asks.
“That is Zoey, with a Y,” I say.
“She’s….”
“Yes, she is,” I reply. I know what he means. She’s no Cassie, but Zoey with a Y is a striking and unique young woman. She’s kind of aloof, and she’s also in a world of her own much of the time.
“You should see her artwork,” I tell him. “Astonishing.”
“I’d rather see her pussy,” Denis snorts.
Sometimes he’s a total fool. Denis isn’t the brightest tool in the box, but he’s built like a tank with deadly skills, and he intimidates anyone, so I keep him