Page 32 of Vicious Betrayal

"Nah, those aren't the pipes you had your fingers in. She keep you up all night? I see some daaaark circles under those eyes." He spins a finger in my direction.

"I'm gonna break that finger if you don't get it out of my face."

"Same girl from the club?"

I glare at him.

"I'm going to take that as a yes." He looks altogether too pleased with himself. "Good for you." He raises his glass in a mock toast, and for a second this feels like any other night, him needling me and me grunting back at him. Then his face smooths into a more serious expression, and I frown.

"What?"

"So… I did a little digging. Just to look out for you in this, brother. Wasn't trying to pry, but you seemed a little worried about the whole thing. So I looked into this girl a bit."

"And?"

"Her last name is Svenkova." He watches me for a reaction. "Ring any bells?"

I frown. Vaguely, now that I think about it, the name rings a bell. "Svenkov is her family name?"

Rian nods. "Maksim Svenkov is her father. He's a small-time pakhan, one of the real low-level families. He does business with a couple of the other Bratva families but doesn't have the reach the bigger crews have. Not a nobody, but he definitely doesn't have much pull in circles like ours."

Fuck. I rub my jaw, thinking. "So she's his daughter."

"The youngest one. There's a brother who's set to take over eventually, and an older sister who apparently just got engaged to some older guy with connections to the organization, arranged, from what I hear." Rian shrugs. "Oksana's the wild one, from what I can deduce. Rich girl who does what she wants because her father's soft on her. Which tracks with what you've said."

I don't say anything right away. I'm running back through every conversation we've had, every piece of information she's volunteered or withheld, trying to figure out if there was a moment she was lying to me and I missed it. I can't find one. I don't recall her ever saying her last name, and I never asked. It never seemed to matter in the moment. My mind is spinning, trying to figure out if I've actually fucked up way worse than just fucking a twenty-year-old.

"How the hell did you not know?" He leans forward. "You run background on everybody, Cormac. It's the entire job."

"She wasn't a threat. She was a girl at a bar." I rub my hand over my mouth again and sit back, letting out a heavy breath. "Mob bosses don't let their daughters run wild at places like that club, even with security. It's too risky, and you know how those fathers are about their daughters' virginities. It's like the Middle Ages in those houses. They're all bargaining chips, and even being out in one of those places suggests they might have been compromised. I didn't think to look into her because I couldn't fathom she'd be the daughter of anyone who could be a problem for us. I figured she was some trust fund kid with an overprotective father who didn't know where she was half the time. Never occurred to me to run the name because there was no reason it should've been anything more than that."

Fuck, that was stupid. But it made sense. Saying it out loud, it still makes sense. I've never known a mafia daughter who was ever allowed out of the house like that. Maksim Svenkov must have his hands full or be a real pushover to allow it.

"Well." Rian sits back. "Turns out it was."

"Fuck," I mutter. "This could be a problem."

"Depends how you look at it." Rian takes a drink. "It's not the same as if she were someone like Declan's daughter, or one of the O'Sheas', something that'd actually blow back on the organization in a real way. Svenkov's a smaller outfit. He's not going to start a war with Declan Murphy over his daughter sleeping with an enforcer, even if he finds out. He doesn't have the muscle for it, and he knows it."

"That's not the part I'm worried about."

"No?"

"If he finds out his daughter's been sleeping with the top enforcer of an outfit more than twice the size of his, and there's nothing in it for either of them but the fact that I wanted to and she let me, that's not just a business relationship gone wrong. That's a smaller pakhan finding out a bigger organization's man is using his daughter, whether that's what's really happening or not. It's not just an age gap anymore, Rian. It seems like I'm getting leverage on him. It's a huge power imbalance."

Rian's quiet for a second, actually thinking about it instead of joking his way past it. That tells me he sees the problem too. "You think he'd come after you."

"I think it causes possible problems for Declan, which would make him fucking pissed at me for doing something this stupid. And I think a man like that, whose whole authority rests on being respected by men bigger than him, doesn't have a lot of good options if it looks like his daughter got used by someone else's enforcer. He can't do anything. That makes him look weak to his own people. And he can't come after me directly without starting something he can't win." I shake my head. "Best case, he makes sure she can't see me any longer, and her life is going to be more difficult as a result. Worst case, he decides the only way to save face is to make it Declan's problem. Declan doesn't need a problem like that over something this stupid."

Rian shrugs. "So don't let him find out."

"That's your advice? Not to break it off, but to make sure no one finds out?"

Rian studies me for a moment, turning his glass slowly around. "Is this serious? With her. Or is it just a fling?"

I think about this morning—the bike and the diner, the way she devoured the waffle, her laughter on the back of my motorcycle. I think about last night and her on her knees, in my bed, tied up in ropes, begging for me, covered in my cum, tasting it, filled with it. She's driving me to distraction, and she's perfect in every possible way for what this is. A temporary thing. She's half my age, and it can never be anything else. I know that very clearly. A girl that age doesn't and shouldn't have room in her life for a scarred enforcer who is aging faster than he should, and who will very possibly die violently before I could ever even begin to grow old with her. There's no version of this that ends with the two of us building something that lasts. She'll get bored of the novelty of it eventually—the danger and the age gap, the thrill of doing something her father would hate. Then she'll go find something that fits the life she's actually supposed to have. It's not cynicism; it's just what happens.

"It's a fling," I say. "It has to be. There's no version of a girl her age wanting a man like me for a lifetime. I'm not delusional about that."