Page 3 of Hate to Love You
“Of course, Boss.”
He grabs his walkie and holds it to his sweaty lips.
“Simon, go open the door. Boss says keep it quiet.”
As he climbs out of the car, I see Pasha reaching for the door handle on the passenger’s side.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” I snap.
“But I thought—”
“You thought wrong,” I hiss, “sit your ass down.”
He takes his hands off the door handle defensively.
“My bad,” Pasha shrugs, snapping the gum in his mouth and pulling his phone from his pocket. “Whateva you say, Big Ro.”
I clench my jaw.
Everything’s a joke to this kid.
And why shouldn’t it be? He’s soft. Just like Mother was.
Before she died, she used to call him “??????,” because she said he was her “sunshine.” Pasha got our father’s blue eyes like the rest of us, but he’s the only one of my six siblings who got Mother’s blonde hair.
Armed with the Antonov good looks, and our powerful reputation, the world had always taken it easy on him. And it shows.
I love the little shit, maybe the most of all my siblings, and Pasha certainly has his strengths. But sometimes his cavalier attitude really grinds my patience. Especially when he forgets his place and gets too chummy with me in front of the other men.
That’s when I have to step in and check his ass back in line.
“We never go in first. That’s what the men are for.”
“Gotcha,” he says, waving me off. “While we’re waiting, do you wanna see Isabel? She’s the influencer I met on—”
“No,” I snap irritably. “I want you to stop using the head between your legs more than the one between your ears.”
I yank the door open and step out into the cool autumn air. At nearly quarter after three in the morning, the street is quiet, aside from the rustling leaves scraping across the pavement. Pulling my cigarettes from my pocket I light one, turning to the dark brick building and leaning back against the car.
I’m certain that Igor is inside, stalking room to room, subduing anyone he finds…searching for Murphy O’Brien.
The rat.
To be fair, I’ve suspected he’s worked for the Irish since the very beginning. After all, his background was far too clean for any drug dealer I’ve ever known.
Which is exactly why I hired him.
It was also why I had my sister Anastasia do a profile for me. And since she’s one of the best hackers in the world, she found all the dirt on him that he and his little Irish pals tried to hide when they sent him into my den.
For the last few months, we’ve been letting him think we’re oblivious, while secretly monitoring Murphy’s activities. His mission was clearly to try and gather intel on our shipping operations in order to report back to the Irish, with whom we’ve been embattled in a bloody territory war here in New York.
So, we let him do his “job.”
After all, every good rat needs to think he’s undetected.
But I know. I know everything. Because that’s my job.
The war has been going on for nearly two decades, but after a messy confrontation last year, me and Cillian McCleary, head of the Irish Mafia, came to a shaky agreement on boundaries.