“What the fuck do you mean he’s your godfather? Are you shittin’ me?” Beau snapped from the back seat as they peeled out of the parking garage faster than a bat outta hell.

  “You head me!” Mila snapped back. “Goddammit! Why? Why did this fucking happen!”

  In less than 24 hours Mila’s life had been completely screwed. She had completely dropped her “Angel” cover, what was the point bothering anymore? Her past had caught up with her and it was just as big of a shit show as she had imagined.

  “Angel” was easy. Angel was a nobody stripper from the town of who-gives-a-shit. A normal woman just trying to have some fun and make a living.

  Lyudmila, on the other hand, was intense. “Mila” was the treasured goddaughter of the Kuznetsov family. Raised alongside its first and only son, expected to marry him when the time came. Despite her age, she was on her way to becoming an enforcer, earning her place at the table.

  And now, four years of hiding had gone plummeting down the drain, all because she had the misfortune of crossing paths with one of Kuznetsov’s underlings. There was no more running now, not while she was back in his sights, and it was all thanks to these two!

  She had wallowed in self pity on the cold concrete ground for who knows how long before Dima had to carry her back to the car. None of them knew where to go or what to do now, so Dima was resigned to blindly driving around the city, sticking to the less busy side streets. It would at least give them some privacy to talk things out, but Mila was getting sick of being in there after the day she had.

  “How could you not tell us? You said your family was connected, you never said you were the connection! Were you lyin’ about all that?”

  “No!”

  “Calm down, both of you!” Dima shouted over them, raising his voice for the first time since Mila met him. “Ange- Lyudmila, whatever, please tell us what’s going on.”

  Angel took a deep breath and slumped against the window.

  “I was telling the truth,” she started, massaging the bridge of her nose beneath her glasses. “My family really was in business with the Kuznetsov’s, but they got caught laundering money for him. One of their employees ratted them out, it was a huge bust.”

  “You’re his goddaughter for Christ sakes, there’s gotta be more to it than that. It doesn’t look like he’s held a grudge.”

  “I’m getting there. He and my dad were good friends growing up, we’ve always been close with him.”

  “And his son?” Dima asked. “You said you two were engaged?’

  “Not exactly, but that was the plan for us,” Mila sighed. “His name’s Nikolai. He was my best friend. Hell, I haven’t seen him in years and he’s still my best friend.”

  Nikolai meant more to her than anyone in the whole world. They were born within a week of each other and had been raised together their whole lives. He was more of a brother to her than her actual brother. When the time came for him to succeed his father, they were supposed to run the orginazatsia together side by side. She wished it had been that simple.

  “Our parents wanted us to get married as soon as we finished high school. They had already pushed us to start dating, but we wanted out. When the bust went down, we saw our opportunity and took it. We faked a huge fight over what happened, and he set me up with some money and a fake passport, then snuck me onto the next boat leaving for America that very night.”

  Beau and Dima silently processed this plot that sounded like it came out of some cheap romance novel. Being engaged so young was a lot pressure, but she could have done a lot worse than a boss’s son.

  “You went through all that just to get out of your engagement? And you seriously expected that to work? Come on, we saw what you did tonight, you could’ve done better than that.”

  “Well it worked until now! Gimme a break, we were sixteen, it sounded genius at the time. Okay, yes, looking back it probably seems pretty extreme, but we were desperate. Neither of us were thinking about the big picture in the heat of the moment.”

  “Why didn’t you just talk to your parents?” Dima asked. “Besides, you say you and this boy were close. Did you not love him?”

  “Of course I loved him! My Kolya and I loved each other more than anything, just not the way our parents wanted us to. We tried to talk to them but their minds were made up. They said to give it time and we’d start to see things differently. Look, it’s complicated, you guys don’t know Matvey like I do, he gets what he wants, no matter what it takes. You don’t say no to him.”

  “Still, if you cared about each other that much it probably would’ve been easy to take things to the next level eventually.”

  “Yeah, you two would’ve had it made,” Beau said. Living a set life like that sounded like a dream. “Why not just fake it?”

  “We didn’t want to get married!” Mila insisted. “It never would’ve worked out. I didn’t want that life anymore! The whole point was to set up some strong family line and push out as many babies as possible. Forget it, you guys wouldn’t understand.”

  If only they could know the truth. Like anyone else their age they wanted independence to make their own way in life, but it was impossible to get out. Originally, they had to keep up appearances to keep Nikolai’s sexuality a secret from his dad, so pretending to go on dates and fake all of the uncomfortable couple stuff was a necessity. Nikolai was the one who insisted she try to get out, he knew how much she hated it there and he didn’t want her to spend her life covering for him, no matter how much it hurt to be apart. They had made up their breakup to be so traumatic and painful that Nikolai would never be able to move on. Since he was with her of all his life the pain should’ve been easy to believe.

  “We’re tryin’ to understand,” Beau said, exasperated. “Apparently we’re your ‘crew’ now, you’ve gotta keep us in the loop, at least some of it. You’re not tellin’ us the whole story.”

  “I’m telling you all that I can-”

  “Bullshit!”

  Dima jumped and nearly swerved into oncoming traffic as Beau bashed his fist against the car door. He pulled over to the vacant parking lot of some diner until he could get everyone to simmer down.

  “Beau, relax,” he said, reaching back to his friend, but Beau pushed him away.

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  “No, she’s hidin’ somethin’ from us, she has been all night. We’ve only been gettin’ half of the story since we met her. How’re we supposed to trust you, huh ‘boss’? Kuznetsov’s a big fish and now he knows us and he knows we’re with you. You ran away once to save your own ass, how do we know you’re not gonna run out on us like you did to some guy you claim was your best friend?”

  “Oh shut up! You don’t know anything!” Mila shouted

  “Then explain it to us. What was so bad that you had to sneak around and run off to a different country? Why were you protectin’ each other? What was so bad about being with him if you loved him so much?”

  It was too much. This night was a horrible nightmare that Mila couldn’t wake up from no matter how hard she tried. It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t be real. She wanted to go to bed and never come back out. Her brain was ready to explode as the insanity of the last twenty-four hours was exhausting every bit of her. All of her anger and frustration was being held back by her final thread of patience and their incessant questioning was the straw that broke the camel’s back and her filter.

  “He’s gay!” she snapped as her temper finally got the better of her. “Nikolai and I couldn’t get married because he’s gay. We were young and scared and when our parents started arranging the marriage we panicked! They were already talking about babies and we cracked under the pressure!”

  Just like she was doing now.

  Mila felt dizzy and disgusted with herself, she could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. She couldn’t believe she just outed her best friend like that as the weight of her actions set it. She was a terrible friend, she was going to be sick.

  “...what?” Beau’s eyes widened.

  Mila groaned. Why did these imbeciles have to make this harder? Didn’t she deserve a break?

  “You’re being serious right now?” Dima asked, not believing what he was hearing. If something like this ever got out, even in this day and age, the fallout would be tremendous.

  “Do I look like I’m joking? Our plan was that Nikolai would be so heartbroken that he’d be able to justify rejecting every woman his father set him up with. He’d live as a bachelor until the old man died and he’d figure it out from there. It sounded perfect at the time and trust me, we had sneaking around to an art form, he could’ve made it work.”

  Of course they could’ve been seeing other people on the side, but that still ran the risks of getting caught. No matter who it was it would’ve been a scandal.

  “That explains why Nikolai wanted this, but I still don’t understand why you wanted to leave,” Dima said, taking over most of the talking while Beau remained uncharacteristically silent. “You sound like you wanted to go even before the wedding stuff.”

  “Neither of us were happy with the hand we were dealt and things would’ve only gotten worse if we let them stay the way they were. I finally had my ticket out, even if it meant leaving my best friend and my family. We made a great team, but Nikolai is tough, just like his father, he didn’t need me to run things with him.”

  “You have a good head for this sort of business, you would’ve done well.”

  “Ha,” Mila huffed, “I’m flattered, but just because I was good at something doesn’t mean I liked it. I guess I didn’t dislike it either, which is probably just as terrible, but it was a bad job with a lot of bad people that I didn’t have the patience nor the desire to deal with. Sure Kolya and I had each other, but this life destroyed my parents’ marriage. Even before the bust they were on the rocks, landed one of them in prison and drove my brother away when I was still little and he barely speaks to me now. I didn’t care if I was with the boss. I didn’t want to be dragged down like that. As great as that kinda ‘set life’ sounds, nothing is guaranteed. You’d do well to remember that.”

  “So strippin’ at some cheap club in Manhattan was your idea of a better future?” Beau asked, his snark overcoming his shock.

  “Glad you could join us,” Mila said, rolling her eyes. His rotten attitude was the last thing she needed right now. “You know what, yeah. It’s not ideal, but I’m living for me, on my own terms. I do what I want, go where I want, when I want. And, ironically, I’ve never had to get my hands dirty here.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. She’d gotten rough before with some of the club’s rowdier customers when the bouncers couldn’t be bothered to do their damn jobs, and she had done more than a few favors for her friends when they needed some muscle. Old habits died hard, but she was able to put them to good use here.

  All three sat in silence for a good while as they let everything sink in. Mila pressed her head against the cold glass on the window, the heat from her face fogging it up and blurring the outside. She never wanted to look back on that part of her life, not like this, even though she still thought of her loved ones she left behind every day. Many times she wondered what they were up to and how they were doing without her, so she guessed this sort of answered that.

  “Do you think he will force you back?” Dima asked quietly, afraid to disturb the silence. They were responsible for mixing her up in all of this and the guilt was eating him alive at the thought of throwing her back to the wolves.

  “He will. Don’t beat yourself up about it, if he’s staying here in the city than it was only a matter of time until he stumbled upon me on his own,” Mila admitted. She could feel the guilt and self-loathing radiating off of him as she patted his wide shoulder. She turned back to Beau. “As painful as it is to say this, and believe me it is a deep pain, you’re right. If we’re going to be in this together, and we are whether we like it or not, we need to trust each other. And as long as we’re being honest, I’m kinda glad I’m not alone here. So… thanks.”

  “Wow, that was actually kinda sweet,” Beau teased. “Who knew you had it in you?”

  “Slightly less glad now. Let’s keep it simple, you guys have my back and I’ll have yours. Deal?”

  She held her hand out to seal it. Dima, happy to have reached some form of amity, took it right away. Beau wouldn’t shake her hand if his life depended on it and only tapped his hand on top of theirs, but Mila knew that was the best she was going to get out of him.

  “Oh, and this should go without saying, but just to be completely transparent; if I find out either of you breathed a word of what I told you to anyone, they’ll be finding pieces of you all the way from Staten Island to the Hudson river. Got it?”

  She’d already proven that she could deliver on her promises and that was before they knew who her family truly was.

  “Yes ma’am,” they stammered.

  “Good! Now take me home, I need an aspirin.”

  “So, what do we do now?” Dima asked as he pulled back onto the road.

  “You guys don’t do anything. I don’t want to make any big moves until I talk to the old man and get an idea of what’s going on. For now, stop any action you’ve got going on the streets, once I figure out where we stand, we can go from there. And for the love of God, flush that weak powder tonight. You’re not gonna be peddling that cheap shit under my name.”

  “I hate to keep askin’ questions…” Beau started.

  “But you’re going to anyway,” Mila grumbled.

  “Do you have any idea why he’d be here?”

  “I imagine he’s setting up shop here for something, New York is a big catch. Nikolai said they were going to wait out the fallout from the bust in Belarus. They have a hunting lodge there. I guess this was the next step. I’m not sure if I’ll get any specifics outta him right away if I ask.”

  “I know you said to lay low, but we should keep an ear out. No matter how discreet he was there’s bound to be some talk about what he’s been up to.”

  “We haven’t heard about any big names moving in, a silent take over like that is creeping me out.”

  “It had to be recent,” Dima said. “We’d never seen Vitaly around until a few weeks ago when we borrowed the money, but he was already marking territory in the neighborhood.”

  “You know, I think I may have gone to school with that guy,” Mila snickered.

  “No shit?"

  “I thought he looked familiar, guess I didn’t recognize him without the braces and glasses. Hate to say it, but he aged well. I’m not surprised he ended up working for the organization.”

  “With your history with them, I’m surprised he didn’t recognize you,” Beau said. “You’re pretty unforgettable.”

  “Aw, you really think so?” Mila smirked. There had to be a punchline coming.

  “Well, you’re gonna be stuck in my head like a shitty song forever.”

  That’s more like it.

  “You sure know how to sweet talk a lady, but to be fair, the last time I saw him I was still a brunette and a c-cup. Don’t worry about him bugging you again. If I have any favor left at all with Kuznetsov, we’ll be off limits to him and the rest of his gang. But like I said, keep your heads down until I’m sure.”

  Mila tried to used the long ride to start formulating a plan, but the adrenaline faded and her energy drained faster than a busted dam. After everything she’d been through in one day, she deserved a little rest. Despite the bumpy drive in a car with no shocks, she was out like a light.