*Adrik*
Viktor returned with the map, to see us laughing at the exchange. “I always miss the good stuff,” he said, laying out the map in front of Misha.
“Sephie brought up a good point that if one of us meet with this guy, he’s going to piece together who we work for. But then she said he might only speak Italian, which is going to be problematic, implying that she should be the one to meet with him. Misha shut her down,” Andrei said, still laughing.
“That’s not happening, sestrichka. Not when you’re like this,” Viktor said, looking at her sternly.
“Dammit. Three times,” she said.
“What about Chen? We give him an earpiece. We tell him exactly what to say to this guy. Sephie can still translate if needed. Everybody’s happy,” Stephen said.
“Except Chen. He won’t be happy. He’ll be trying not to have a heart attack that whole time,” Sephie said.
“We can coach him through it,” Andrei said. “He’ll be fine. He can totally do this.”
“We’ll be watching him the whole time. He saw what I did to Smith. He’ll know if this guy makes one wrong move, I’ll take him out,” Stephen said.
Sephie thought about it for a minute. She looked to me to see my opinion on it. It was a reasonable plan. It would keep us anonymous. He would have a hard time tracing Chen back to me and it would still get us whatever information this guy supposedly had.
Sephie sighed, then looked to Viktor. “Can I borrow your phone, Papa Bear? I’ll ask him and see what he says.”
Viktor dialed Chen’s number, put it on speaker, then handed the phone to her. I walked to her so she wouldn’t have to get up. She leaned against me while she talked to Chen. He was understandably apprehensive when she first laid-out the situation.
“You can say no, Chen. No harm. We’re just exploring our options,” I said. I might’ve known he would be less likely to say no to me.
Chen thought for a few moments, then sighed. “As long as you guys are there to make sure nothing happens, I’ll do it. And as long as Sephie can translate whatever this guy says to me in another language. She can tell you. I’m from a French family and my French is horrendous. Foreign languages are not my forte.”
“We’ll all be there, Chen. You have my word,” I said.
After the call ended, Viktor and Misha went over the map where they saw this guy. “We should ask to meet with him somewhere close to where he lives. I want to fuck with his head just a little,” Misha said, a mischievous grin on his face.
They found a small café near the guy’s apartment. Stephen looked it over, coming up with a few possibilities on where he could be to cover Chen. “This has potential,” he said. “I need to check it out, but it could work.”
“We can be here,” Viktor said, pointing down the street to another apartment building. “We can park on the street and not be obvious, but still close enough to hear and see everything.”
“Go check it out,” I said. “Andrei stays, the rest can go.” I had a short conversation with Sephie the night before about how Andrei was handling the Tori situation. I knew she wanted a chance to talk to him without the other guys around to make sure he was okay. This would give her that chance. This would also give Ivan time to go to the jewelers to pick up her ring.
Once the four guys left, I walked to Sephie. “I just have a couple phone calls to make downstairs, then I’ll be back up,” I said, leaning down to kiss her temple. “Are you warm enough for now?” I asked.
She smiled sweetly at me. “I’m okay for now,” she said. It took her at least three times as long as normal to stand up on her own, but she managed to do it. Her face beamed when she stood in front of me.
Andrei said, “that was so painful to watch, but I’m so proud of you, spider monkey.”
“This is a big day for me,” she said, her gorgeous smile across her face. I leaned down and kissed her quickly, but passionately, not trusting myself to be able to stop.
“I’ll be back soon,” I said, winking at her. I knew she was completely aware that I’d asked Andrei to stay just so she could have a chance to talk to him. I was also looking forward to her thanking me later for it. *I’ll take anything I can get until she’s healed fully again*.
*Sephie*
Once Adrik left the penthouse, I looked at Andrei who was quite happy to have been the one that had to stay behind this time. He couldn’t keep his boyish grin off his face. “You know, I still laugh when I think about how I used to think I was torturing you guys when you had to stay with me. You’re still fighting over who gets to do it most of the time,” I said.
“You’re way more fun than pretty much anything else we have to do,” he said, still grinning at me. I grabbed his arm, pulling him toward one of the couches.
“I still need help sitting down on the couch. And I might’ve lied. I’m totally cold again,” I said as we walked slowly to the couch.
“I knew it! You’re always cold lately. Even more so when you’re hurt,” he said, helping me down onto the couch.
“See, you should trust your observation skills more, Bubba. You know more than you think you do. You’re the one that saw what was happening when I leveled Misha up when we saw Trino. You need to trust what your eyes are telling you,” I said as he sat down next to me, putting his massive arm around my shoulders so I could lean back against him. “And even though he’s likely never going to know it was because of you, Max has you to thank for his life today.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, I still can’t get over how close I was to not saying anything last night.”
“Wanna know what the acupuncturist told me the first time she saw me and Ivan after we were taken?”
“When she told you that you took the worst of it to save Ivan this time?” he asked.
“Yeah. I argued with her. I know you’re shocked. But I told her I didn’t do anything except run my mouth when they had us. She told me that even though I might not have been aware of what I was doing, my soul knew. She said, ‘you listened.’” I grabbed his wrist with my good hand, holding onto it while I talked. “You listened last night. You might not have been aware of what was going to happen, but your soul knew,” I said. He squeezed me gently.
“So, that’s where you get all your sage advice from,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice when he said it.
“Not all of it, but she does say some incredibly wise things. Like all of you, I think she was meant to be in my life.” Andrei was quiet for a moment, so I asked, “how did you sleep last night, Bubba?”
He sighed. “Mostly okay. I usually don’t sleep for a couple of days after I kill someone. I did sleep some last night, though. That’s a new one for me. I feel better about this time than I ever have before, which is weird if you think about it. The few people I’ve killed before I didn’t really know. I knew Tori in the biblical sense and I’m most okay with this one. Kinda doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“Or it kinda does,” I said.
“How so?”
“You knew she deserved what she got. You knew what she was planning on having done. You knew she was capable of planning it again, should this time not work out. You knew her dark side. I think you’re beginning to see the difference between people like Ivan and Adrik, who’ve made peace with their dark sides, but who still choose to operate in the light whenever possible, and those who give in to their dark sides, like Tori clearly did. No one made her revenge fuck Max. No one made her make plans to have him killed because she got fired again for being a crazy bitch. That was all her. And she had to pay the consequences of those actions,” I said. He remained quiet, but kept a tight hold on me, so I continued. “Just like I told Ivan, sometimes Karma uses you to deliver justice. You just handed down her sentence, Bubba.”
“You really do know exactly what to say, exactly when we need to hear it. I have no idea how you do that, but please don’t ever stop.”
I held up my pinky to him. “Pinky swear,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, how do I keep forgetting you people don’t do this in Russia? Okay, so the pinky swear is like the holiest of holy swears. Like it’s so holy that I’m now bound to always tell you what you need to hear in every lifetime, in every realm, in all timelines for all eternity. That’s how holy it is.”
He chuckled, grabbing my pinky with his. “I’ll do the same for you, spider monkey. I’m just not as good at it as you are.”
“Yet. You’re not as good as I am, yet. This is why you should practice, Bubba.”
“I thought I was the trainer in this relationship,” he said, laughing at me.
“You are. Mostly.”