by Bella Rose
“Antonin was the one to murder Charlie Caglione!” Josef pointed at Antonin. “Perhaps he should have taken more care with the line of succession. If there was some other powerful underling ready to step in and take power, Antonin should have anticipated it.”
Ah. Here it was. This must be Josef’s latest attempt to throw Antonin to the proverbial wolves. This had been happening almost weekly. In fact Antonin was surprised that Josef hadn’t just grown tired of the trouble Antonin’s presence was causing and knifed him in the back.
Antonin did not even move from the wall where he leaned with forced casualness. He gave Josef a lazy, indolent stare and then smiled. “As I recall, you were the one to assure us all that there was nobody to take over since you murdered Charlie Caglione’s son. There was nobody capable of stepping in. I believe your reference was to the unsuitability of a female heir to take over any sort of leadership position within an Italian household.”
In truth it had been the Pekhan to suggest the bit about the female being unequipped and undersupported in a bid for a leadership position. But there was no point in calling out Mikhail directly. He might be Antonin’s father, but he was still the leader and did not appreciate being challenged.
“How dare you?” Josef moved towards Antonin. Several of his vory started to follow, but Antonin’s forbidding glare held them off. Josef took note of this and stopped his advance. “Perhaps you were foolish to believe the intel of another instead of gathering information yourself. You were ever a spoiled and lazy brat. It is only a pity that we all must suffer from your failings.”
Antonin didn’t respond. Josef had never been this bold before. Usually he attempted to undermine from the shadows by creating petty rivalries and picking off Antonin’s supporters individually. Josef rarely came right out and challenged Antonin in front of his father. It was odd that the man would do it now.
The Pekhan raised his hands to stop the bickering. Josef shut his mouth, and Antonin waited to see what the old man would do. Whatever the decision, it wasn’t likely to be in Antonin’s favor. His father had never been one to make things easy for his son and supposed heir.
“I want this deal tonight stopped cold,” Mikhail announced. Josef started to speak, but Mikhail glared him to silence. “Antonin will go. He will find out who this new leader is, disrupt the deal, steal the money, and return here to report on what he has discovered.”
Antonin utilized years’ worth of stoicism to avoid an outward reaction to the ridiculous order he had just been given. Talk about being set up to fail. He was supposed to go into a situation with nothing more than a handful of men loyal to him, disrupt a deal he knew almost nothing about, gather intel on a person that might or might not be there, and then steal a cash payment which was almost certainly heavily guarded. His father might as well have ordered Antonin to bring him the moon on a platter with a side of borsch.
Josef was grinning from ear to ear as if he had just been given the gift of a lifetime. It angered Antonin to have his enemy so obviously favored in this bullshit assignment. On the other hand, perhaps Antonin could find a way to make this a success and finally grind Josef beneath his boot heels once and for all.
Antonin gave an unaffected shrug. “If that is what you wish, I will see it done.”
“He lies!” Josef snapped. “He intends some sort of deception. I know it!”
“How can you know that?” Mikhail asked sternly. “He cannot lie and say he has done something that has not occurred yet.”
“I spoke out of turn,” Josef said quickly. “But surely you can see that he is overly confident.”
“He is my son,” Mikhail said harshly. “If he is anything but confident, he would never show it.”
Antonin snorted. That at least was correct.
***
JULIET PUT HER hand on the armrest of the car and wished she didn’t feel so queasy. There was no time for weakness right now. She had to be strong if she was going to bluff her way through this deal. It didn’t help that the deal happened to be of vital importance to Caglione interests. Her family wasn’t going to survive much longer if this sale went south.
In the front seat of the Lincoln, Giovanni turned around and gave her a smile. “Are you ready?”
“Of course.” She couldn’t have given him any other answer, and he knew it. At least Giovanni was loyal. He had been one of her brother’s closest friends. Now he was her ally as she attempted to save the Cagliones from their own gender-biased stupidity.
Juliet got out of the vehicle and smoothed the fitted jacket of her black suit. She had opted for a black pencil skirt in order to acknowledge her femininity, but there were no frills, no color, and very little in the way of jewelry. She wanted these Armenians to know she meant business. Two semi-truckloads full of electronics and high-end computer equipment wasn’t a shipment of weapons, but it was still a lot of money. She had two million dollars at stake here.
“Here they come,” Giovanni murmured.
He stood beside her, hands clasped before him and a forbidding expression on his swarthy face. Giovanni was a good man and a great supporter, but sometimes she wished he was a little more intimidating and a little less pretty.
“You’re sure all the men are in place?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
Her stomach roiled with nerves. She unconsciously placed her hand low on her abdomen before snatching it away. She needed to be careful about showing any sort of weakness or fragility. She could not afford to be seen as anything but a strong leader. That meant leaving her personal issues somewhere outside this stupid warehouse.
“Ah!” The Armenian leader exited his vehicle and raised his hands high in the air as he swaggered over. “You are even more beautiful than the rumors suggest!”
“And far more deadly.” She pulled out a 9mm weapon. “Now. Do you have the money?”
“Do you have the merchandise?”
She turned to nod at Giovanni, and for just a split second she thought she saw a familiar face high in the shadows of the room. Then she blinked and it was gone. Completely missing Juliet’s hiccup, Giovanni strode over to the tractor trailers stored inside the warehouse and unlocked them one at a time. He swung the doors open.
“You’re welcome to dig around,” Juliet told the Armenian in a mild tone. “Or you can take my word for it and leave with your merchandise immediately.”
“I think I’ll take your word for it,” the Armenian said silkily. “I know where to find you should I be dissatisfied.”
“True,” she agreed. “However, I would discourage against attempting to barge into my home and exact some kind of revenge. My men would take exception to that method.”
“Of course!” The Armenian laughed heartily and started shouting at his men in a language Juliet didn’t understand.
Within minutes the trailers were hooked up to the Armenian’s big diesel trucks. He handed her a briefcase, and the deal was done. Juliet pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. It wouldn’t do to show the guy how much this meant to her.
“You’re not going to count it?” The Armenian gestured to the suitcase.
She raised an eyebrow. “If you have a counting problem, my men know where to find you. They will be happy to exact the different in pounds of flesh if need be.”
The man seemed delighted with her apparent bloodlust. His dark eyes were sparkling with mirth. “You’re quite the force to be reckoned with, Juliet Caglione. I shall look forward to doing business with you in future.”
Juliet froze in place. She watched the man climb up into one of his diesel trucks. The Armenians left the scene, and the warehouse was quiet. Finally she saw her men begin to appear from their stations around the interior of the warehouse. She breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was so tempting to start jumping up and down and doing the happy dance. She’d done it! She had completed a two-million-dollar deal that gave her family the money to infuse their businesses and ventures with some much needed capital. This money
would be the beginning of a new era for the Cagliones. And in no time at all, they would be strong enough to push the Russians off their turf.
“Hello, Juliet.”
It happened so quickly that Juliet’s head was spinning with shock and horror. One second she was standing beside Giovanni. The next her back was pressed against a very hard, very male chest. The scent of him overwhelmed her, yet not in a bad way. It was somehow familiar. Although any familiarity became a moot point since he was pressing a knife to her throat.
Giovanni leaped into action. He raised the muzzle of his 9mm and aimed at a point just behind and above Juliet’s head. “Let her go, you Russian bastard!”
“I don’t think so.” Her captor’s words were accompanied by the feel of his hand plucking the briefcase full of money right out of her grasp. “I’ll be taking this and leaving your lovely mistress just outside the door.”
“Like hell!” someone shouted.
There was a warning shot fired, and Juliet yelped as she felt the bullet fly so close to her cheek that it made her hair flutter.
“Shit!” Her captor began cursing in English and ended in what she could only assume was Russian. “Are you men really so willing to sacrifice you for the cash?”
She wasn’t about to tell him that yes, her men would absolutely sacrifice her for cash. Instead she tried a different approach. “Please. My men have orders to bring the cash back. I don’t want to die. I’m pregnant.”
The man behind her froze. The knife at her throat clattered to the ground, and her men rushed him en masse. Juliet got shoved aside in the scuffle. She turned around to see who it was that had attempted to rob her and found herself staring at the lover she hadn’t been able to forget. She’d only known him for a few hours, but she would never forget that battle-scarred face.
Chapter Five
THE WOMAN WAS lying. She had to be. Yet Antonin had to admit to himself that he hadn’t used protection when he’d had sex with her. It had been roughly three months since that night in the bar. He hadn’t seen her since. He hadn’t attempted to make contact or inquire about her welfare. She should have been nothing to him, and yet he’d had the opportunity to end her life and take the cash and he chose not to. Instead he had allowed himself to be taken prisoner by the Cagliones so that he could find out a little more about their new leader.
“You Russian piece of shit!”
Someone hit Antonin so hard in the face that he felt his teeth loosen as his lip split. He tasted blood, but if they were trying to get a rise out of him they would get nowhere like this. They were only getting blood on the floor of the limo. In fact the vehicle was rather crowded with four of her men plus Juliet, and of course Antonin on the floor.
“Stop beating on him.” Juliet’s tone suggested she was bored. “The man is a prisoner, but that doesn’t mean we have to act like animals about it.”
One of the men leered at Antonin. “I say we sell his pretty ass. A few times being fucked in the ass would likely soften him up.”
“Are you going to be the first buyer?” Juliet’s voice was icy. “Because you’re the one who seems so obsessed with fucking him to begin with. How about you just shut your mouth before you truly disgust me and force me to act upon my feelings.”
Antonin had to give credit where it was due. The woman was good at putting her men in their places. It was something that a lot of female leaders tended to have troubles with. Gangs and mafia families often had far too many alpha males to make it easy for a woman to claw her way up the hierarchy.
There were jeers around the cabin of the limo as the other men teased their comrade. Finally the vehicle seemed to stop moving. The doors open and men spilled out. Two stayed behind to get orders from their mistress.
She was glaring at Antonin. “Take him to my study. I want to have a chat with our friend, the failed thief. In the meantime I need to speak with the boss about the money.” She patted the briefcase full of cash.
JULIET’S BRAIN WAS spinning in so many different directions that she was heartily afraid she was going to burst into tears and lose her shit right in front of everyone. She had to get out of the spotlight for a minute and get it together. That meant getting this Russian piece of meat away from her. He was too disturbing to her composure.
She marched up the stairs toward her grandfather’s office with the briefcase in hand. Papa would put the money in the safe, and they would suddenly see a huge change in things around here. There would be money to make things better and to help the businesses run more smoothly. There would be no more corruption in and around their territory. She would see to that.
“Papa?” She quietly entered his office.
Her aging grandfather and the boss of the Caglione family was napping in an armchair by the bay window. Juliet sighed. She wasn’t sure what she was really expecting. For all that Papa refused to hand over the reins of the operation, he was too old and tired to be taking on this sort of responsibility.
She walked to the safe and twirled the dial. The combination was her grandfather and grandmother’s anniversary date. It always had been. She eased the door open with as little noise as possible and began unloading the briefcase carefully into the safe.
“Who is it?” Papa shouted suddenly.
Juliet leaned back so that she could see Papa around the safe door. He seemed to relax when he recognized her. “It’s just Juliet, Papa. I have some money I need to put in the safe. That’s all.”
“Was your deal successful today?” Papa asked in a scratchy voice filled with fatigue.
Juliet sighed. Sometimes she felt so very alone. “Yes. It was very successful.”
“Did you lose any of my men?”
She ground her teeth. His men? Ugh! “No, Papa. They’re all fine. We did bring home a Russian prisoner.”
“A Russian?” Now her grandfather seemed a little more awake. “Where did you get a Russian?”
“He attacked us and tried to take the money,” she explained.
Her grandfather snorted. “Then I hope you will put a bullet in his brain and be done with him.”
“I need to see what I can learn from him first, Papa,” Juliet told him. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to question him and see what sort of plans the Russians have? They’re trying to take over our territory. Perhaps we can discover a way to push them back out.”
“Kill them all,” Papa grunted. “That’s the only way. Those Russian bastards come over here from their country by the dozens. It reminds me of when our kind were first emigrating from Sicily.”
She considered her grandfather’s comment. Perhaps putting a bullet in the man was the best way to deal with him. But she needed to know a little bit about him first. Especially since he was the father of her unborn child.
SO THIS WAS Juliet Caglione’s personal office? Antonin looked around with interest. One of the reasons he had never allowed himself to decorate, clutter, or otherwise claim any space was the impossibility of doing so without giving too much of his inner self away. He could not afford to show weakness or to give another person a way to get to him.
There were photos of Juliet with her family members. It was readily apparent that family meant a lot to the woman. Antonin knew without asking that the young man was her brother. The man that Josef and his crew had murdered simply because he was the Consigliere of the Cagliones.
Antonin steadily worked at the zip ties holding his hands as he looked around the office. He was a little shocked that the men had put him in here and left him totally unsupervised. In truth he could have been out of his bonds and away from the property three times over by now. Yet he was staying because he wanted answers about Juliet. That meant he needed to stay and see what she had to say for herself.
The door opened and Juliet Caglione herself stepped into the room. She shut the door behind her and stood very still, staring at him as though she could not quite believe her eyes. Finally she spoke, but it wasn’t what he expected. “What’s your name?”
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He blinked in surprise. It had not occurred to him that she wouldn’t know at least his name if not his place in the family and his familial connections and other acquaintances. “My name is Antonin.”
“What’s your last name, Antonin,” she pressed.
He cocked his head, studying her. There was a thickening around her midsection that did perhaps lend some credence to the possibility of her being pregnant. “My name is Antonin Mikhailovich.”
“Mikhailovich,” she murmured. “You Russians don’t do family names the same way we do. So you’re the son of Mikhail.” She stopped talking and her face grew pale. “As in Mikhail, the boss guy of the Bratva? As in you are Mikhail’s son?”
He cocked his head, wondering what thoughts were running through her head. “If you’re thinking about some scheme to hold me ransom and kick my father’s organization out of your territory, you might as well forget it. Family ties won’t save me.”
“Apparently we have that in common,” she said with a snort. “So basically you’re telling me that you’re a useless hostage unless we want to throw you in some underground fights.”
Was she being serious? Underground fights were a very lucrative portion of any criminal enterprise, but throwing someone like him into the ring would be idiotic. Surely she was messing with him.
HIS SUSPICOUS EXPRESSION suggested that the man wouldn’t know a joke if it kicked him in the nuts. Juliet finally sighed and shook her head. “I’m kidding. You know? Like I’m just fucking with you.”
