I sighed. This woman could really get to me. I couldn’t help laughing though when my computer screen showed Princess Fiona pulling apart the flower, saying “he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not.”
Me: You doubt?
Me: If there is one thing in this world you should never doubt, it’s how much I love you. I will be back up soon. I promise. Get some sleep because I plan on keeping you up the rest of the night.
My office door opened, and Keith held it for three men to enter. I leaned back in my chair as I watched them. One sat down, the other two stood behind him.
“Welcome to my club. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting before. My name is Dillan, and I own everything in this domain.”
“My name is Viktor Smirnov. I believe you knew my brother. And had hand in killing him.” The fists behind him clenched. His accent was thick, but he seemed to have a better handle on the language than Ivan had.
“I won’t deny that because there’d be no point. Did I pull the trigger? No. But I was ready to, and would have, had someone else not beat me to it.”
Viktor’s eyes creased in a way that showed he was trying to hold in his anger. “You so carelessly talk about murdering my only brother, our pakhan?”
I snorted. “Carelessly? No. Just thinking about it makes me want to raise him from the dead just to kill him myself. We had a peace pact between us. We all stayed in our own little corners. The Italians, the Russians, and me. Both families often came to my establishment. Your brother even used my fighting ring from time to time. Ask the man behind you, he was a frequent fighter. Everything was fine until your brother decided to cross the line. He kidnapped my girlfriend and held her hostage. She is a cyber genius. He forced her to hack into my bank accounts and that of the Italians. He was trying to corner me into a war I was ill-equipped to handle. He thought I would run to him for help. So many times, I have turned down his offer of partnership. He got tired of being turned down. My girl is smart, she managed to feed me information without him knowing. I found her right as he was about to violate her in the worst way possible. She still has bruises across her face from him. So, no, gentlemen, I have no reason to feel guilty about killing him or to hide it. On the contrary. I want everyone to know that if they mess with the people I love, they will pay for it.”
The screen on the computer changed to a flower with the last petal falling off, with the caption “he loves me” under it.
I groaned and rubbed my eyes. Keith lifted an eyebrow at me, I pointed at the screen while looking in the direction of the camera in my ceiling.
“Woman, go to bed and stop spying on me.” I turned back to the confused faces of the three men. “I should have known better than to fall for a hacker. The night we met; she locked me out of my whole system. Now…” I saw a video of Fred Flintstone banging on the front door, yelling for his wife, playing on my screen. With a sigh I turned my laptop around for them to see. “She’s doing this from her cell phone.”
The men snickered and I turned it back around in time to see the screen flash and go blank. I shook my head, deciding I probably didn’t want to know.
“Look, I’m sorry you lost your brother. Ivan and I were doing fine until he took her. We can have the same deal again, but if you choose to escalate this, I will understand.”
Viktor looked uncomfortable as he glanced at the back of the computer, making my curiosity spike again.
I glanced at the screen when the color change drew my attention. This time it was a black-and-white shot from the old show Hogan’s Heroes, where the bigger soldier was saying “I know nothing, nothing!”
That woman. Keith stood behind me, watching it as well. Trying not to laugh.
“What’s it going to be, Viktor?”
He cleared his throat and stood up. “You keep to your side, and we will keep to ours. Any chance you will give me the name of the person who killed him? We already know the Italians were involved.” His eyes drifted back to my computer, “now we know why the video footage was looping the entire time until the signal crashed from the fire.”
I stood up with them, now ignoring the meme on the screen with the baby sister from Despicable Me, the words saying “Not lil ole innocent me.”
Someone needed a spanking tonight.
“No, I won’t. They were trying to protect her, so they have earned my protection as well.”
