Traded to His Enemy, Pregnant With His Heir novel · Chapter 42 of 48

Chapter 42: On My Side

"Then in front of his own men," I said.

"Not yet," Ilya said. "First in front of mine."

He picked up his phone and made one call in Russian.

"Noon," he said to me when he put it down. "The table. Sit wherever you like."

At noon the long table was full of overcoats and cold air.

The grey-bearded brigadier sat at Ilya's right with his gold tooth showing.

The one whose thigh I'd packed with my scarf was there too, on crutches, because he'd refused to stay in my hospital.

I sat halfway down, between two men who'd stood up for me twice.

Galina was in the kitchen doorway with the little one on her hip and a dish towel over her shoulder.

Ilya didn't sit.

He stood at the head of the table with both hands flat on the wood.

"I remember," he said, in English.

The table went still.

"All of it. The year. My wife. Our daughter. The wedding."

The grey-bearded one shut his eyes for a second.

"I also remember something I never told any man at this table," Ilya said.

"In February I went alone to Seamus Conlon's back room on Broadway. He told me my wife is his daughter."

Nobody moved.

"I knew a thing about him that would get him killed by his own crew in one night."

"I used it to buy her a year of being left alone."

"I didn't write it down. I didn't tell you. I didn't tell her."

He looked down the table, at every face.

"Two of ours died on Commonwealth. My driver died in Southie. The boy in the lane shot me to bury it."

"If I'd told this table in February, any one of you could have ended it with a phone call in December."

"I put it in one head. Then somebody shot the head."

The man on crutches said something under his breath in Russian.

It wasn't kind.

Ilya let him say it.

"Then end it now," said the brigadier at the far end. "Tonight. Send the thing to Broadway."

"By morning his own men put him in the harbor, and we bury nobody else."

Three or four of them nodded.

Ilya reached into his jacket and took out a pen.

He went into his office and came back with one sheet of white paper.

He bent over the table, and he wrote.

It took him a long time.

His handwriting was small and square, the way it was in his black books.

← Chapter 41 · All chapters · Chapter 43 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend