The King - S.R. Jones Page 0,85
rather than simply waiting until he’s married, and he and his wife, as she’ll be then, can be together in their own place. I think about what a mess it’s been at home for him, and I feel bad. I told him to learn about basic biology and then went and made the same fucking mistake myself, didn’t I? Except, it seems I didn’t. Denis did, the dumb fuck.
Thank fuck, I always gloved up with that bitch. Seems like Denis was too stupid to take that precaution and believed her when she said she was on the pill.
I hit the bottom of the stairs and take my phone out of my pocket. I dial Michael, and he answers on the third ring.
“Yes, Daddy,” he says. It’s his new thing, taking the fucking piss out of the fact I’m in the same boat he is.
“Knock it off and listen to me,” I grouse.
“Something wrong?” His tone turns serious immediately.
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“What’s going on, Konstantin?”
“I don’t quite know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it. Baby isn’t mine, and Denis has betrayed me. He’s stolen from us, and I’m not sure how safe things are. Now, I know who the Bianchi family are and what they do, so I’m thinking they’re highly security minded?”
He laughs. “Dad, it’s safer than at yours. We’re talking five or six armed men, Dobermans, spiked and electric fencing. Her father is a paranoid man.”
“In this instance, that’s good.”
Me and the father of the bride are going to need a long sit-down talk in the next day or so, one I’m not looking forward to. We are going to end up embroiled—I just know it, and it will start with me having to ask him to keep my son safe. The Bianchi family, fucking mobsters of the lowest rent kind for years, until this Bianchi took the helm about thirty years ago now. He raised their game and turned them into the kind of mobsters no one messes with. He’s old, sixties, but his wife is in her forties, and Lucia is their kid together. There’s a half-brother, to the first wife, living out in Italy, building his own empire out there, on the Amalfi coast, and I hear he’s a hard, cold son of a bitch. He’s close to Bianchi senior, and has had lots of financial help to set up his operations out there. They say he’s a genius at the markets and with numbers; they call him the Amalfi Banker, which makes no sense as he doesn’t live in Amalfi and isn’t actually a banker.
Then again, they call me King K, and I’m not an actual king. My son is going to be in safe hands marrying into their family. It’s just not what I wanted for him.
“Can you stay there for a couple nights?” I ask.
“Sure, but don’t you need me there if things are unravelling?”
“No, Michael. I never wanted you to be part of this life. Now, you’re marrying into it, but you don’t need to be tied into it twice.”
There’s a long beat of silence, then he says something that makes my heart ache. “You do understand that I’m tied into it with you anyway, right, Konstantin? You’re my father. I love you.”
“I love you too, son,” I say, the words hard to get out but important. I don’t tell him enough. I struggle to say those words to anyone. I don’t know why. Maybe because I’ve barely heard them myself.
Maybe because nearly everyone in my life, except for Yulia and my sister, betrayed me. Even my mother to a degree, by being too weak to stand up to father, and for making me step up and become the head of the house when I was barely into my teen years.
“God, Dad, you sound like you’re choking on glass.” Michael laughs, and I smile. “You need to get with modern times. Men showing their feelings is the new in thing.”
“Yes, well, I’ll work on it.”
“Practice with Cassie,” he says and then hangs up before I can reply.
What the hell? Even Michael’s noticed the hard-on I’ve got for the girl.
“Vasily?” I shout.
“Yeah.” The reply comes from the study, so I head that way.
I find Vasily pouring over his laptop. He has access to the accounts, all of them except my personal ones.
“He’s taken nothing from the business accounts. Only robbed your personal account. This is on her, you know?”
“Liza? I know.”
“Fucking cunt. I think she’s jealous. She