Ritmo was as busy as we could have hoped that evening. I caught a glimpse of Uncle Evgeni looking down at the proceedings from the top floor before he disappeared. It made sense that we were busy, after all: we were letting the women in for free, as long as they were in their heels and skirts. We were also giving away free drinks if they brought a hot, young guy in with them—the strict dress code turned away the unwanted ones. In the last three months or so, we'd been able to take this boring beachfront bar and turn it into one of the hottest clubs in the city.
“Have your fun now, Andrei,” my brother Nikolai said with a laugh. “You're on inventory tonight, remember?”
“Oh come on Kolya—that doesn't mean he can't take someone into the bathroom for a quickie!” Dima, my other brother, laughed.
I rolled my eyes at both of them and signaled the waitress for a refill of our drinks. My brothers both did the work when they had to, but they were much happier chasing after girls and lazing about, living the good life. They didn't seem to understand that they couldn't live the good life if they didn't do the work—but then again, they had grown up with our father's first wife in Petersburg, rather than out in the countryside like I had. It was another thing they liked to bring up when they were teasing me: that my hands were too rough for these women, that I needed a broad-hipped woman rather than one of these dainty Spanish girls.
“Inventory needs to get done, and it needs to get done right,” I pointed out, trying not to let their teasing get to me. “At this point, we're too big for little screw-ups on ordering.”
“You know you're just on inventory because you couldn't handle your real responsibilities,” my cousin Vanya said derisively.
I felt my face heat but carefully schooled my features to neutral, knowing that the flush wouldn't be visible here in the club but that my facial expression definitely would be. “They've never given you even a hint of responsibility in the business,” I said sweetly. Vanya was younger than I was, and given that his father was the head of the local mafia, Vanya had always lived a pretty cushy life. “Pretty soon, it'll be your turn to do inventory, I'm sure.”
“I won't have to do inventory,” Vanya said confidently. “I know better than to fuck the daughter of the real estate tycoon that my father spent months trying to woo.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Is it that you know better, or that you know no self-respecting Catalonian woman would ever sleep with you?”
“Hey!” Vanya cried indignantly as Nikolai and Dima cackled. I shrugged unrepentantly. When I had first moved to Barcelona to join my brothers in our uncle's syndicate, I hadn't dared tease Vanya, expecting that Uncle Evgeni would dole out harsh punishments to anyone who dared make fun of his son. But I'd settled in over the past six months, and I was starting to take part in the family bantering that went on. There was a certain sense of camaraderie, all of us Russians here together in a foreign city. I liked it.
“But seriously, why did you have to sleep with that cow?” Nikolai groaned. “Now we're doing all the research again, trying to find a suitable headquarters with a landlord who'll turn a blind eye to whatever we're doing to pay for the place.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Did you ever see 'that cow'?” I asked him. I leaned in conspiratorially. “Tits out to here,” I said, gesturing lewdly with my hands. The boys all laughed, and I sat back, feeling pleased with myself.
The truth was, I had known better than to sleep with Katarina, but the woman had practically thrown herself at me, and I'd finally had no choice but to take pity on her. I'd expected that she would be so grateful that it would actually make the deal even easier. But of course, her father had been upset that we had “ruined” his beautiful daughter, and he'd refused to have anything else to do with “disgusting Russian pigs.”
I'd expected Evgeni to have me sent off to the homeland after that, back to the fields and dirt where my aunts resided, or at least back to Petersburg where my father's primary residence was. The family had money, and in the time that I'd been in Barcelona, I had gotten used to having unlimited funds at my disposal. But one false move and Evgeni could make my life miserable.
But instead, he'd seemed amused by the whole thing. He'd clapped me on the shoulder. “Now, young Andrei, you see why business and pleasure don't mix,” he had said. “But if I'd known the bitch's legs would open that easily, I'd have chosen the pleasure for myself!”
Still, there was that whole messy fact of the deal going under and months of research (and some unknown amount of money) that had been lost. Evgeni had made it very clear that I needed to be punished for that, and I'd quickly agreed—anything to keep from getting sent back to Russia. I didn't know what I'd expected since I knew that we weren't tied up in any truly shady business. Just some money laundering, some real estate deals, and maybe a weapons deal or two. But I guess I pictured my punishment to be one of those crazy deals like you see in the movies.
Instead, I was on inventory duty at Ritmo, plus cleaning duty for two weeks. All in all, I considered myself to have gotten off lightly. Of course, it didn't feel that way as Dima, Vanya, and finally Nikolai, all pulled leggy, sexy women over the course of the evening and drifted off to have their way with the sluts, leaving me alone with my drinks.
“What are you drinking, water?” a woman asked from my right elbow. I turned and gave her a considering look, noting the low-cut black top and the tight, lipstick-red skirt. She had smoky eyes and long, dark hair that curled softly down her back. Definitely the kind of girl I'd love to take home for the night—only again, I was on inventory. I cursed internally but decided to chat with her anyway, since she was clearly interested. Maybe I could still have that quickie in the bathroom that Dima had teased me about.
I held up my glass. “Vodka, straight,” I told her.
She put her head back and laughed, exposing the long, tanned line of her throat. “Of course you are. You're Russian, aren't you?”
“Is it that obvious?” I asked her dryly. I knew I had a slight accent, and my classic, chiseled features were a dead giveaway.
“You know,” the girl told me, sliding closer—close enough that her ample breasts were grazing my arm. “I've never been with a Russian guy before.”
God, this was going to be too easy. I grinned down at the woman. “Well, you know where I'm from—but what about you? Are you from Barcelona?” I asked her.
The woman laughed again, and I decided I liked the sound, liked the fact that she clearly wasn't shy about making noise. Mm, I could practically hear her screaming my name already.
Of course, if we went for a quickie in the bathroom, we would need to be somewhat discrete. It wouldn't be the first time that that had happened, but I was in enough hot water with my uncle already without causing a scene in the bathroom. I groaned inwardly, not wanting anything to spoil the fuck that I imagined having with...whatever her name was. But the only way to not let anything spoil it was to take her out on a different night.
I knew what the odds were like. She was looking for someone to go home with tonight, and even if I got her number, there was no saying that she'd be feeling as frisky tomorrow, and definitely not later in the week. My chances would diminish the longer it took for me to get her in bed.
But I wanted her in a bed, with the whole night ahead of us. I wanted to fuck her senseless, feel those legs quivering as I pounded her again and again and again.
I was getting hard just thinking about it, and I realized that I wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to what the woman was actually saying. I forced myself to tune back in, right at the point where she asked what I was up to that night.
I grimaced. “I have to work the night shift tonight,” I admitted. It was honestly embarrassing having to admit it. It was embarrassing having to do it. Not that I had anything against hard work, but it wasn't like I was doing this because I needed the money.
“Are you a doctor?” she asked, sounding surprised.
That sounded better than admitting that I was a member of the mafia group that owned this place and that I needed to do inventory and clean the floors that night. I nodded at her. “Yes, a doctor,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Should you be drinking all that vodka right before your shift?” she asked.
I shrugged and grinned rakishly at her. “I'm not going into surgery or anything,” I told her. “I just have to be there to...examine people.” I expected her to see through the lie, but she seemed to want to believe it.
“Oh, okay,” she said.
“You know, I'd much rather examine you,” I told her, giving her another obvious once-over. It was such a dumb, cheesy line, but she giggled all the same.
“Maybe another night,” she suggested. She scribbled her number on a napkin. “There, so you can call me,” she said, winking at me as she slipped away towards the crowd. “Have a good night at work...”
Watching her walk away, her hips swaying as she went, was frustrating as anything, especially when I glanced over a few minutes later and saw her chatting with another guy. I could have had her if it wasn't for this stupid inventory shift tonight. I tried to remind myself that this was because of my mistake, that I was here because I had slept with Katarina. But it was small consolation.
Suffice it to say, it put me in a bad mood for doing inventory.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sarah, our bar manager, said as I flung down another box. “I know the glasses and things are wrapped up for shipping, but they're not going to hold up to that.”
I scowled at her. “So we'll order more glasses,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “The whole point of doing inventory is so that we know what we need to order,” she said. “And hopefully, we won't need to order the things that we already have.”
“Does it really matter?” I asked impatiently. “We're making money now. We can afford a few more glasses.” Sarah gave me a tight-lipped look, and it sparked the anger already there inside me. “You're just some fucking employee,” I reminded her. “You can't tell me what to do. I could have you fired.”
I knew I shouldn't be saying that; the poor girl probably didn't want to be there any more than I did. It wasn't like inventory was some fun thing to do, especially not in the middle of the night. And I could tell from the way she got pale and quiet that she was worried, that she thought I might actually take away her job.
I sighed internally and went back to shuffling around the boxes to be counted, hoping that the way I gentled my actions would count as an apology. We didn't talk for the rest of the shift, each working our way through our own sections of the list.