finally asked.
“ Da , what do you hink, zhenshchina ?” He looked down at her with a raised brow. His question sincere, he awaited an answer from his trusted wife.
There was a tense pause in the room.
Royal removed her hands from his black trousers that barely hid his steely erection only inches from her face and sat back in the bed against the headboard. Pushing her long hair from her face, she pressed her bare lips together and pulled the sheet over her exposed breasts.
“I just don’t trust him. Gabriel, I mean...not Anatoly. And I don’t think that you should trust him either, Dmitry. I can see it in your eyes even though you’re trying to hide it. You’re excited that there might be one more opportunity to fix things between you and Ivan, because you loved him so much, even though he was rotten bastard . My opinion is this...if that boy is anything like his father, it’s best that you just kill him tonight and save yourself the trouble. No one will think ill of you for it. I know that I won’t. In fact, I would be proud of you.”
Silently, Dmitry watched her with an unreadable look in his crystal blue eyes that were accented by tiny, intricate crow’s feet that were truly pronounced now as he slightly furrowed his brow.
He was shocked at her candid advice, but grateful for her truthfulness.
Since the incident in Memphis and the incident in Sochi, Royal had become more guarded than ever before. She was starting to be as cold and calculated as he, only without being involved in any illegal activities. This fact reminded him to tread carefully with his wife, his new equal.
Sitting beside her in the bed with his knees up, he planted his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.
“ Ahh ...you know me well. When I saw him, I did have a hopeful...I was hopeful,” he stopped his sentence. Turning to her on his elbow, he grabbed her caramel face and ran his thumb over her pink lips. “Have I really made you so jaded, Royal Stone?” His minty breath tickled her nose.
“ Da ,” she answered with an equally stone face. “I only hope that I haven’t made you soft.” Running her hands through his blondish, gray locks, she leaned in to receive his kiss.
Hungrily, he pulled her to him with one hand and tore his pants off with the other. Opening her legs and balancing his weight as to not hurt her, he pushed inside of her warm body with one long, vicious, coiling stroke.
“As you can feel, my love, I don’t know the meaning of soft,” he whispered into her mouth as he devoured her.
***
Anatoly sat on te couch in his hotel suite talking into the black, Apple laptop on the table in front of him. Now comfortable in a pair of jeans and barefoot, he drank his scotch under dimmed lights, trying to calm himself from the day’s events and prepare for the evening.
With a platter of pickles in his lap, he slouched over and listened attentively as the men debated the latest issues.
Over the last few months, Anatoly and his men had moved more guns internationally than his father had moved in years. He used all of his contacts, met with as many bosses as possible and constantly pursued the all mighty dollar.
As he promised his father, after the operation in Sochi, quietly he had concreted the Medlov Crime Family at the top of the organized crime food chain. And where at first, many had assumed that he was unable to fully step into his father’s lofty shoes as boss, now only a few questioned his reach and his eagerness.
He was building an impenetrable force of men, who were willing to do the hard work in seedy places of the world where no one wanted to go and willing to do the most unspeakable acts in the name of Vory.
As he sat listening to the men, he went through each of the deals meticulously and went down his notepad of questions, just as he had seen his father do time and again as boss.
Tapping his pen against
Alexander McCall Smith
Nancy Farmer
Elle Chardou
Mari Strachan
Maureen McGowan
Pamela Clare
Sue Swift
Shéa MacLeod
Daniel Verastiqui
Gina Robinson