Chapter Seven

 

Ivan told Pavel everything that had happened the next morning in his office. Pavel’s eyes were wide with shock and Ivan could easily see why his father had deemed Pavel ‘a puppy’.

“You’re lucky that you weren’t killed,” Pavel breathed, wonderingly rather than chastising.

“Trust me, I’m well aware,” Ivan replied. “We’re due to have lunch with the old man today. I’m bringing just you—I want to show him the list of the others we’ve got and see what he thinks about who I should make a second lieutenant. I’ll expect you to participate.”

“Participate?”

“Give you opinion. Speak up. Share your knowledge.” Ivan rolled his eyes. “I don’t want stooges, Pavel, I’m not my father. If I’m going to do this then I’m going to do it right.”

“You’ll have to forgive my saying so, sir, but… you never seemed inclined to be into the whole teamwork thing before.”

“Yeah, well, before the only thing I had to worry about was which club I was going to next and who I was going to pick up when I got there.” Ivan downed the last of his coffee and finished organizing his papers. “Double check, make sure we haven’t forgotten anything.”

Pavel went through the papers. “You’re certain about this, then?”

Ivan nodded. “He’s giving us a good deal, better than I could have expected, and his territory is right next to ours. It’s convenient.”

“They have a good position on the docks as well. The Murphy family is their only real competition there.”

Nobody wanted to deal with the Murphys. The term ‘crazy drunk Irish’ came to mind when someone mentioned them. Yeah, he’d much rather be working with the O’Gills. “All right then. Call the driver, let’s head out.”

When Ivan got to the designated meeting spot—the same bar as last night—he found that it was predictably empty. Sean was seated in the corner booth, already eating something. To his left sat Kelly, some papers in front of her.

She didn’t look all that happy to be there.

Pavel nudged Ivan. “Is that his daughter?”

“Yeah, name’s Kelly.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Sure, until she opens her mouth.”

Pavel grinned. “Are you telling me that you’ve found a woman who’ll actually go toe to toe with you?”

Ivan scowled. “Wipe that delighted grin off your face, Pavel. She’s annoying as they come.”

They walked over and sat down. Almost immediately, as if he’d been hovering and waiting for them—and he probably had been—the bartender came up to take their orders.

Once he left, Kelly pushed the pile of papers over towards Ivan. “So that everything’s aboveboard,” she said, arching an eyebrow as if daring him to contradict her.

“I wasn’t aware I was in the presence of a lawyer,” Ivan shot back. He nodded at Pavel, who put the folder of their papers up on the table. Ivan looked at Sean, who seemed amused. “I have here some papers, so you can look at the state of our affairs and the profiles of some men I want your opinions on. I need more than one lieutenant, no one person can do everything although god knows that Pavel tries.”

“Really? I thought your outfit was small enough that you’d only need one,” Kelly replied sweetly.

The O’Gill family had five lieutenants, a standard number for a good-sized mob family. Ivan tried to ignore her jibe about the size of his own operations. “Other than that, I was hoping you could take a look at our books and tell me where we can improve. My father had a way to doing things that didn’t… let’s say it didn’t get us the best results.”

“You can stop kidnapping people’s daughters for one thing,” Kelly said placidly.

“Thank you, I’m well aware of that,” Ivan snapped. Bringing up the whole operation that had caused his father’s downfall was unnecessary and she fucking knew it. What the hell had he done to get this woman to hate him so much?

Ivan was more convinced than ever that she had to be the one who’d arranged the shooting. Why else would she be objecting to him so strongly and determined to carry on the investigation herself?

“All right, you two,” Sean said firmly. “Like cats and dogs, honestly. Kelly, if you could go and take care of the accounting for last week’s shipment.”

Kelly looked appalled. “You’re going to bench me?”

“Unless you two can be civil to one another,” Sean said mildly.

Kelly’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “I can be civil.”

One hour later, Ivan was pretty sure that he and Kelly had entirely different ideas of what it meant to be civil.

He tried, really he did, but she just kept countering him on everything. He got it, okay? He hadn’t been groomed properly by his father and he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Honestly, Pavel knew more about running the family, thanks to running around after his father, than Ivan did.

But that didn’t mean Kelly had to rub it in his face very chance that she got. You’d’ve thought that she was the one mentoring him instead of Sean by the way that she talked.

And Sean let her. He seemed amused every time that she and Ivan would get into an argument, folding his arms, his eyes twinkling.

Pavel kept his mouth shut unless he was spoken to directly, answering questions honestly and intelligently but otherwise staying out of the whole thing. Probably a wise decision. Ivan couldn’t blame the guy for wanting to dodge the Battle Royale between himself and Kelly.

Despite the near-constant sniping, however—and honestly, Ivan wasn’t going to apologize for that, if Kelly was determined to go at him then he was going to give as good as he got—they managed to hash everything out. He now had three men on the short list for lieutenant. He’d promote just one for now and then add the other two on later as their organization—hopefully—grew in strength and needed more men in charge to keep things in line. He had a plan for building his business, and Sean had pointed out some pitfalls and how to best gain favor with the businesses in their territory that were now terrified of the Sokolovs and uncooperative thanks to his father’s bad business practices.

In short, he had the beginnings of a proper plan. For the first time since his father had died, he wasn’t scrambling wondering what the hell to do next.

Of course, it was just a beginning. He’d have to come back to Sean for more help soon he was sure. When he eventually met with the other dons, for one thing. He’d attended those meetings but had never had to talk, only standing in the back. Sometimes he’d wandered out to the lobby or downstairs and flirted with whatever girl was around. So yeah, he’d missed a bit.

But not anymore. He wanted to impress the others when he officially sat with them as their equal.

With their bargain struck and the details dealt with, a plan in place, Ivan could now devote himself to the task of finding out who was trying to kill the O’Gill family and why.

And he knew just where to start.

“I think she’s good for you,” Pavel said as they got into the car.

Ivan stared at him. “Good for me?”

“Yeah, she keeps you on your toes. You need someone who will do that, sir, no offense.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean?”

Ivan’s driver, Thomas, was new to the whole gig. He wasn’t Russian but had grown up in Sokolov territory. His father ran an auto repair shop. Pavel had been Father’s driver, and sometimes Ivan caught him heading for the driver’s door instinctively. But Ivan wasn’t going to do that to Pavel. He’d earned his place.

Thomas, fortunately, knew enough to know that he was to keep his mouth shut when he heard a lieutenant needling the boss about a girl.

“It means that you’re a smart man,” Pavel said. “And you’re an attractive one. C’mon, that apartment we kept the girl in? That wasn’t just for show. If it was, you’d have a fireplace and all of that. You took plenty of girls back there, you know how to sweet talk someone. Most girls will just fall all over you—you need someone who’s going to be your equal and won’t take your bullshit.”

“She wasn’t not taking my bullshit, she was attacking me for no goddamn reason.”

“If you say so,” Pavel said, in a tone that suggested he did not at all agree with Ivan and thought Ivan was protesting too much.

Ivan glared at him. “I do say so, thank you very much, and I’m the boss.”

“Didn’t you also tell me that you wanted me to have a mind of my own and express my own opinions?”

“About the damn operations, about the business, not about my love life.”

“Oh come on, sir, you can’t tell me that you didn’t find her at least a bit attractive.” Pavel grinned at him, waggling his eyebrows. “Big blue eyes like that, hasn’t that always been your weakness?”

“She’s Irish, for one thing,” Ivan pointed out.

“Last I checked the only person making you marry a Russian girl someday was your father, and he’s not around anymore. Alliances happen all the time.”

“I’m ninety percent sure there are a bunch of other princesses I could marry that would provide me with just as good of an alliance and a hell of a lot less sass.”

“But then you’d just be bored, wouldn’t you?” Pavel replied. “Admit it, you enjoyed sparring with her. Having somebody actually challenge you for once, a girl who can hold her own with you instead of just a wham bam thank you ma’am? Don’t tell me it doesn’t appeal to you. And you’ll need a strong spouse—if something happens to you while you’re childless or if your child isn’t old enough, she’ll have to take over the family and you want her to be capable of it.”

Ivan had to admit, at least to himself, that Pavel was right. If he was looking at things from a purely political standpoint, he couldn’t do much better than Kelly O’Gill—not unless he wanted to risk it and wait another few years until his family was more powerful and he could marry into one of the top five Italian families or one of the more powerful Russian families.

If he married into one of those families now, they’d only offer him the expendable daughters, the ones who were idiots—or a ruthless one who’d kill him and take over and then help the Sokolovs get absorbed into the bigger family. Either way, he’d lose.

And he couldn’t really afford to wait. Being in the mob business was one of the few places in the western world where you still had to get married young—that is, if you were anyone important. Nobody cared if a grunt died childless. But if a boss died without an heir? It was pandemonium. The resulting in-feuding could lead to a war with other families as well.

No, he needed to marry, and he needed an heir, and he needed a wife who could handle things the way Pavel said if something happened to Ivan that took him out of this world early. Kelly was smart, she seemed to know how to run the business, and she could hold her own against any of the dons at a meeting, judging by how ruthlessly she’d been cutting into Ivan all through lunch. A few old men weren’t going to intimidate the likes of her.

But personality wise… no way. He wasn’t going to marry someone he couldn’t stand.

And all right, so maybe Kelly was attractive. Maybe she had that old-fashioned kind of beauty that he’d thought didn’t exist anymore. Maybe she was the kind of woman that any man would be proud to have on his arm when he went to the opera for the regular I-look-richer-than-you-do posturing that all the mob families got into at the Met.

But that didn’t mean that he was going to marry her. Fuck’s sake, they could hardly stand to be in the same room together. They weren’t even going to make out, never mind marry.

Pavel was just stirring up trouble.

“There are other fish in the sea,” Ivan told him. “Kelly’s not the only solution out there. And I’d like it if my wife didn’t want to cut off my balls while I slept.”

“Suit yourself,” Pavel replied. “It was just a suggestion.”

Besides, Ivan reminded himself, Kelly was probably the one who’d ordered the killings.

But wait…

Kelly was a good match for marriage. He couldn’t just start interrogating her, both she and her father would object to that. Sean probably didn’t even think of Kelly as a possible suspect, just as a possible target.

If he asked Kelly out on a date, it would look perfectly natural. Why wouldn’t a new, young boss, one who needed a wife, ask out the attractive daughter of the boss next door? Why wouldn't he start testing out potential partners?

Kelly could hardly say no, that was the other thing. To refuse the date wasn’t just a matter of a woman saying no to a man, it was a political statement. It meant you didn’t want to be seen in public with the other person. Saying yes meant that you were okay with that and therefore open to a possible alliance down the line. Saying yes or no wasn’t saying yes or no to the individual—it was saying yes or no to the organization as the whole.

As a result, most men asked the father’s permission first before asking out the daughter. No one wanted to play Romeo and Juliet.

Yes, getting Kelly out on a date would be the perfect setting. Her guard would be down, they’d be somewhere public—somewhere neutral to both of their families—so that she couldn’t, say, murder him with a steak knife. And he could subtly pump her for information.

It was practically perfect. If he could just get enough admission of guilt—perhaps wear a recording device to play back for Sean later—this whole thing could be wrapped up in just one evening. He wouldn’t even have to bother slogging through all that paperwork.

There was just one tricky part.

Getting her to say yes.