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I scanned my gaze around the room as soon as I sat down, getting a feel for the place, the atmosphere, the people who had joined us tonight. Though this was ostensibly a friendly meeting, I knew there was always a chance for things to go south, and I was never going to let myself get caught off guard by that.
"Jose, good to see you," Maxim began, as he greeted everyone in the room, one by one, as though they were old friends. This was the part he was good at, making everyone feel comfortable, like they belonged there. But me? I wasn’t trying to make any feel too relaxed. I watched each of them in turn, reading their expressions, watching how they interacted with my brother.
"Are there any points of business you’d like to bring up?" Maxim remarked as he sank down into his seat and glanced around the room. There were a half-dozen or so other men in here, and each of them laid claim to some corner of this city. This meeting, though unconventional, put us at the center of any allyship they might have made—they met through us, they formed connections through us, and that ensured we were always going to be in the middle of anything that came from these meetings.
"I’ve had some issues with the Amis men coming into my territory," one of the men, Jose, piped up, glancing across the table at Chuck Amis, sitting opposite him. Amis tensed.
"Yeah, well, we have to carve out a new path now that the cops shut down our last one—"
"And you thought you’d do that without discussing it with me first?" Jose fired back. Maxim lifted a hand.
"Gentlemen, please," he remarked. "Let’s talk about this. This is what these meetings are for, remember? A chance to work out our differences without causing any long-term trouble."
The two of them glowered at each other for a moment, but I leaned forward pointedly, letting them know I wasn’t afraid to put myself in the middle of this if they decided they wanted to make it a problem. Both of them thought better of it, giving up before it went any further, and Maxim began to hash out a solution that would keep them both happy.
The rest of the meeting, much to my relief, went without much of an issue. Nobody seemed interested in causing any trouble. Soon, drinks were being handed out around the table, and Tony, one of the Italian bosses, leaned over to me and lowered his voice.
"Hey, you’re not seeing anyone right now, are you?"
I raised my eyebrows.
"I’m flattered, Tony," I replied sarcastically. "But—"
"I’m not talking about me," he snapped back angrily, as though I had said something utterly twisted. "I’m talking about girls. You don’t have one, do you?"
I shook my head. I was single. And, yeah, to be honest, it had been getting to me recently. I knew it wasn’t that much of a problem, given that Maxim had a daughter of his own and Olya would soon be returning from her studies abroad, but I wanted a family of my own. Not just to hand down the business to, though that was some of it, but because I was getting to an age where I was starting to crave it. Starting to crave the thought of someone to come home to, someone to care for.
"Why?" I demanded. I could sense Maxim listening in to the conversation beside us. He never missed anything, and as soon as he had heard Tony snap back at me, he’d shifted his attention over to us.
Tony glanced around and lowered his voice.
"I know of an auction happening later tonight," he explained. "Hot girls. Cheap, too, especially for guys like you and Maxim …"
"An auction?" I shot back, confused. What the hell was he talking about?
"You’re auctioning off girls?" Maxim demanded, joining the conversation.
"Not me," he replied, holding his hands up quickly. He knew as well as I did how much Maxim disapproved of those who bought and sold women. I wasn’t even sure why he was bringing this to us, if he thought we were going to agree and just go along to this auction to blow some cash on, on what? Some poor girl who’d been forced into what basically amounted to slavery just to get by?
"But there’s a closed-door thing taking place later tonight," Tony continued, grinning. "I’ve heard some good things about the girls there. If you’re looking for someone, you know, to keep you company …"
He trailed off pointedly, raising his eyebrows. I expected Maxim to chew him out, tell him to get the fuck out of our club, but to my surprise, he leaned forward.
"What’s the address of the place?"
Tony’s eyes lit up.
"Here, let me get it for you," he replied. I stared at Maxim, who didn’t even so much as make eye contact with me. Tony pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper and scribbled something down on it, pushing it across the table towards us.
"It should be starting now," he explained. "But you can still make it for the good stuff. They always have the hottest girls at the end of the night."
"Thanks," Maxim replied, and he rose to his feet, jerking his head towards the door and looking at me pointedly. "Damyan, I need to talk to you."
I followed him out of the meeting room, confused. What the fuck was going on? Never in a million years would he have paid for a woman’s company; I knew that much about him. We reached our office, on the other side of the corridor, and he pulled the door shut behind him.
"What the fuck are you doing, Maxim?" I demanded.
"Get your stuff," he told me. "We’re going."
