Page 7 of Reckless Bratva Daddy

"That depends entirely on what you turn out to be instead."

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth, brief enough that I might have imagined it if Naomi hadn't made a small, strangled sound behind her notepad that she quickly turned into a cough.

He signed in one clean motion, no hesitation, no line struck through, no margin note, nothing negotiated down or padded up. It was so far outside anything I had prepared for that I actually froze for a second, blank, mid-gesture, a state I did not think I was capable of in front of a client.

Three rehearsed rebuttals sat useless, tucked into a folder color-coded for a fight that never came. Some small, ungenerous part of me almost missed it, the version of this meeting where I got to defend every clause I'd written and prove I knew exactly what I was doing. Instead I was left holding a signed contract and the uneasy sense that I had just been handed something far more valuable than money, though I couldn't have said what.

"That's it?" I said, before I could stop myself.

"It is."

Naomi's whisper reached me again, slightly less quiet this time, close enough to a real voice that I had to fight the urge to kick her a second time. "Rich people are so weird."

I cleared my throat and reached for the folder, already three steps ahead in my head, already drafting the confirmation email, already picturing the vendor calls I'd make within the hour to lock in everything that had just become real. My mother's house had a signature on it again, only this time the signature was working in my favor instead of against me, and for one full second I let myself feel something close to relief.

Dmitri didn't stand.

"One more thing," he said.

I stopped, folder halfway to my chest. "Of course. Whatever you need."

"I'll want you handling every detail personally," he said. "Not your team. You."

I should have said no. Handling an event this size alone meant burying myself for weeks, meant Naomi covering everything else while I disappeared into one client's every whim, meant no room left for anything or anyone outside this contract until the night it was over, and meant precisely nobody standing between Dmitri Zolotov and me for the entire length of that time.

I said, "Fine," and felt the word land somewhere I hadn't authorized.

4

DMITRI

The lake had frozen at the edges again, a gray rind creeping out from the shoreline that would not commit to real winter for another few weeks yet. I stood at the penthouse window with coffee I had no real interest in finishing and let the morning's schedule move through my head the way it always did, item by item, until it reached a name that did not belong on a schedule at all: Cora Walsh.

I had told her I wanted her handling every detail personally, and she had said fine in a voice that suggested she was already regretting it. I had spent the flight back to Chicago telling myself the demand had been about control and nothing else. A man who let strangers into his life did not survive in mine. I had made a career out of making sure nothing personal ever had leverage over me, and yet I had gone out of my way to keep one woman close enough to use against me, which was either the least reckless decision I had made in fifteen years or the most.

I set the coffee down before I could examine that too closely and left for the office instead. Business did not care what name I was thinking about, and by nine I was standing in a warehouse on the south side that had nothing to do with penthouses or event planners or anything soft enough to keep a man distracted for long.

Nik already had three phones going when I walked into the back office, one against his ear, one buzzing face down on the desk, and a third he was actively ignoring on principle. He held up a finger, finished a sentence I didn't need to hear the end of, and hung up without saying goodbye to whoever was on the other end.

"Morning," I said.

"The Sorokins moved their delivery window up two hours and didn't tell us until it already happened. Grimaldi's people are asking about the Cicero corridor again. Kirill's numbers on the Milwaukee shipment don't reconcile." He said all three like a grocery list, no shift in tone between an inconvenience and a problem. "Which one first?"

"Grimaldi."

Nik finally set the second phone down, which for him counted as full attention. "They want a formal meeting. Their exact words were that they wanted a reasonable conversation among reasonable men, which from Sal Grimaldi means he's already decided he's taking the corridor and wants a room full of witnesses when he tells us."

"He can have his meeting."

"You're not worried?"

"The Cicero corridor moves produce and textiles. It's not worth the blood it would cost him to take it, and Sal's smart enough to know the difference between a threat and a negotiating position." I picked up the ledger Nik had left squared on the desk, already knowing what page I wanted. "Set the meeting. I'll go in person. A man who shows up himself is harder to threaten than a man who sends someone."

"That's a very on-brand philosophy for you this week."

"Careful."

Nik smiled, the small private one he used when he'd landed a point and knew better than to press it. "Milwaukee's the one I'd actually worry about. The numbers came back wrong twice this quarter, both times on Kirill's shipments."