Page 22 of Merciless Bratva Soldier

My other problem is Daniel Reed. He isn’t sniffing around my woman because he suddenly realized what he lost. He smells money the way a rat smells a sinking ship, and there’s an itch inside my skull that won’t go away until there’s a substantial distance between him and Vera.

“There’s a file with the Secretary of State,” he says. “Two years ago, Reed Hospitality LLC, a bar he opened in Berwyn. Closed months ago. Every piece of equipment was put up as collateral for a loan from a company called Lakefront Equipment Finance.”

I wait.

“Owner is a guy named Sergei Orlov… married to Zorin’s sister. The money behind Lakefront comes out of Zorin’s brokerage. My bookkeeper friend has seen the transfers.” Another pause. “And Reed signed a personal guarantee. If the company can’t pay up, he does. There’s more…”

That’s when uneasiness makes itself at home in my gut.

“Reed isn’t the only bar owner that owes them money. He is the only one whose ex-wife lives above the bakery you walk into every night.”

Somebody in Zorin’s office went through that file looking for her name. That was their biggest mistake.

“Is he paying?”

“No. My friend at Lakefront sent me a screenshot of the letter. Notice of default, dated six weeks ago. Three missed payments. They’ve called in the whole balance.”

“How much?”

He tells me. It isn’t a number a man like Daniel Reed can pay back in three months.

I put my fork down. “So Zorin holds his paper,” I say.

“Zorin holds his paper, Zorin’s foreman signs for Maxim’s freight, and Reed walks into Zorin’s office on the same afternoon.” Anton is quiet for a moment. “You don’t know what they talked about, so don’t go acting like you do.”

Twenty-eight days post-surgery, Yevgeny presses two fingers along the scar and watches my face while he does it.

“Good,” he says. “Now listen, because I will only say this once.”

I listen.

“You may sleep on whichever side you like. You may lift a bag of groceries, not a sack of flour. You may not lift a man, or a woman either, before you ask.” He takes off his gloves. “You may twist the way a person twists to look over his shoulder in traffic. But don’t hit anyone for another month.”

I smile. “And the rest?”

He blinks at me. “Whatever else you do, for heaven’s sake, do it like there is still something inside you that hasn’t finished healing. Because there is.”

Vera turns the sign and locks the door behind me that evening. She makes my coffee and pours herself one, which she doesn’t usually do this late, and sits on the stool across from mine with the notebook between us and her chin in her hand.

“There’s a bakery in Pilsen closing at the end of the month,” she says. “The owner has a deck oven. Six years old. She wants nine thousand five hundred for it.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s very good. It’s also eight thousand dollars more than I have left once I give Rosa thirty.” She taps the column with her pencil. “And I need to keep something back in case the walk-in compressor dies on a busy Saturday.”

I watch her closely. “What are you thinking?”

Every instinct tells me to fold her into my arms, smooth out those worry lines across her forehead with my lips, and tell her that I have the money. I also don’t want her in my debt. The moment she starts worrying about the money she owes me is the moment everything changes, and I won’t be responsible for that.

“I don’t know yet.” She rolls the pencil around her fingers. “I thought about selling Galina’s earrings. They’re real gold. They’re worth something.”

She touches one. Small, plain, but obviously classy.

“I’m not going to sell them,” she says. “I just wanted to say it out loud so it doesn’t sit in my head pretending to be a plan.” She smiles, her cheeks turning pink when she finds me looking right back at her. “And don’t offer.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Vera closes the notebook and folds her arms on top. She looks at me the way she might study a painting that’s suddenly hanging crooked on the wall. “Tell me something real about you, Nikolai,” she says softly.