I heard you are fucking the Riela girl,” Yuri says, throwing his hand of cards down.

It’s two pair. I grin, throw down my three-of-a-kind, and then I pull all the chips from the pot into my growing pile.

Yuri swears in Russian, and Gio starts to deal out the next hand.

“Don’t talk about shit you don’t know about,” I say, stacking my chips.

“But I know this,” Yuri says, his voice heavily accented, “I know you make truce because of this girl. If you are not fucking she, then why to make the truce?”

“You just don’t understand true love, Yuri,” Gio says, laughing.

I glare at Gio, who I can see eyeing the bowl of peanuts on the edge of the table. Yuri hates when people eat during a game, but I know Gio loves nothing more than snacking on peanuts with poker. His “P&P”–as he calls the combo of peanuts and poker–are one of the few things he likes more than M&M’s with ice cream.

I give him a look, urging him with my eyes not to do it, to leave the damn bowl alone. I should have tossed the thing out when I saw it sitting there, but didn’t want to make a scene.

“Raise,” Yuri says, sliding a stack of chips forward. “And call.”

We all match Yuri’s bet, then put our cards down. Gio has a straight. He laughs and bobs his head up and down excitedly. He slides all the chips toward him.

“Hell yes,” he says. “Finally.”

He leans in toward me, eyes the peanuts, and whispers. “If only I could taste this victory.”

“Don’t,” I hiss.

“So you truce the Rielas,” Yuri says, loud enough to show that he’s annoyed the two of us are whispering behind his back, “Because of this woman’s vagina? Is it special somehow?”

I lean in toward him, meeting his smug, obnoxious smirk with a cold stare. “Watch your fucking mouth.”

“Just I ask the question. You Americans are so sensitive about so many question.”

“We’re Italians,” Gio says, slapping his gut.

“You are fat,” Yuri says, pointing at him. “Italian-American.” He says the “American” part with a spiteful curl of his lips.

Gio reaches over and squeezes my arm. “Luca sure ain’t fat!”

“You never cared about a woman, Yuri?” I ask. “You some kind of machine, or you only fuck whores?”

He smiles. “When men are so powerful like us, there is no difference between whore and not-whore.”

“You calling Bella a whore?” Gio says, gripping the table and threatening to stand up, but not actually doing it.

“Let’s change the fucking topic of conversation,” I say. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” Gio says. “Let’s lighten the fucking mood in here.”

Without warning, Gio reaches over and grabs the bowl of peanuts. I can feel Yuri’s eyes on him, as cold as a dagger in the Siberian snow.

He buries his hand in the peanuts, grabs a thick handful, and slams it all into his mouth. A few peanuts miss his mouth and drop onto the table among Gio’s chips.

“These chips,” Yuri says. “From Monaco. Very rare.”

“Sorry,” Gio says, picking the peanut out of the chips and popping it into his mouth. He restacks his chips, and I can see the grease and salt from the peanuts putting a bright shine onto the chips, as if he’d just polished them.

Yuri deals us each a hand, but he’s gone completely silent. No more ball busting about Bella, just dead silence.

We play out six or seven more hands in utter silence. The only sound is Gio chomping on the peanuts. I’m pretty sure I can see a big vein on Yuri’s bald head popping out each time Gio chews. I’d tell the fat fuck to just stop, but it’s become an issue of face now. Gio and I will both lose face if Gio backs down now. The dumbass might as well just enjoy his P&P at this point. I do have to admit, Yuri came a bit too close to shit talking Bella, and seeing Gio get his greasy hands all over Yuri’s precious chips is a good little bit of revenge.

I’ve barely been paying attention to the actual game, but I suddenly am brought back into it when I realize just how much I’ve bet on this hand. Especially because I’ve got nothing in my hand. An ace high, but not even a pair to back it up.

I grin at my cards, hoping they’ll just let me get away with the bluff and cut their losses.

“I raise,” Yuri says, sliding a thick stack of chips in, twice the height of mine.

“Fold,” Gio says with his mouth full. He throws his cards down.

I try a few more times to get Yuri to fold, but I finally have to give up.

“I got shit,” I say, throwing my garbage hand down.

Yuri takes his chips, and he pulls out a silk cloth and begins to carefully wipe at the chips he got from Gio, which are covered in salt and peanut grease. Without looking up at either of us, he says, “I think I am done with this game for today. Also, Luca, I do call your woman a whore.”

Now I do jump up. I shove the table forward, pressing it into Yuri’s gut. Chips slide and spill onto the floor. “The fuck you say?”

“Your woman,” he says, standing and smiling. “She is whore. Bella Riela, she is whore woman–”

I leap over the table, and Yuri backs away. I jump off, throwing a wing-tipped kick right at his smug fucking head.

I connect right on his temple, right where his vein was bulging when Gio chewed his peanuts too loud.

I hear him grunt, but he grabs my ankle and doesn’t let go. I hobble on one leg, trying to pull my foot free form his grip as I throw punches.

It’s a messy fucking fight, and we both end up on the ground, fighting with fingers to the eyes, teeth to the skin, and knees to the groins.

Gio just kind of stands there watching. I’m surprised he doesn’t keep eating his peanuts as he watches.

Yuri is laughing even as I get on top of him. His head is bleeding from my initial kick, but he bit me on the fucking forearm, and he tore part of my damn tattoo off.

I punch him clean in the face, and I feel his nose break under my fist.

I cock my fist for another hit, even as he gurgles and groans.

“Take it back,” I say. “Take what you said about Bella back.”

He tries to hit me in the ribs, so I drive my forearm down into his neck. I press down hard, threatening to crush his windpipe.

I watch his face go red, then white.

“Gonna give you one fucking chance,” I rasp. “One chance. Don’t fucking waste it.”

I let off just long enough for him to gasp, “She is not whore.”

I step up off him and kick him hard in the ribs again. He grunts and keels over.

“She is the princess,” he says, spitting out blood. His voice just short enough of sarcasm that I don’t bother hitting him again. “The beautiful princess.”

I look at Gio and raise a bloodied fist to him, shaking it as I shout at him. “You just had to have your P&P, huh? Jesus fucking Christ.”

I reach down and help Yuri up. He grabs his silk cloth and uses it to clean his face off, then holds it to his nose, stemming the flow of blood.

“Luca Gallo,” he says. “Why you call the truce? You can crush Tony Riela. He is more fat than Giovanni.” His voice sounds even more nasal through his broken nose.

Gio laughs. “Always good to have someone fatter than me around to make me look fit.”

I sigh. “Don’t fucking worry about it, Yuri. Is this fucking scuffle gonna mess up our deal?”

“No,” Yuri says. “Of course not. It was the fair fight. I lose.”

“That mean we get a better deal?” Gio asks. “Since you lost?”

“Maybe if you have not eat the peanut,” Yuri says. “But I think the deal we agree before, is fair. I consider all factor, and yes, is fair deal.”

“Expensive fucking peanuts,” I hiss.

* * *

“Seriously, Luca?” Bella says.

I tried to clean myself up as best I could, but one of the clean hits to my jaw left a bruise.

“This time I won,” I say.

One big disadvantage of having a woman around your place a lot: it’s a lot harder to hide shit from her.

“I knew this would happen,” she says, leaning in and examining my wound.

“I’m still the fucking kingpin, Bella,” I say.

She pulls away from me. “That is just so cool, Luca, I am soo impressed. The kingpin! Wow! Just like in the Spiderman cartoon!”

“It’s an operation,” I say, throwing up my hands. “A business with a bunch of moving parts. I can’t just shut the whole thing down overnight. Some of those parts need to occasionally be oiled. Even when they are on their way toward a shutdown.”

“Did you kill him?” she asks me.

“No, come on, Princess–”

“Don’t call me that right now, Luca,” she says, pointing a finger at me and grabbing her purse.

“Where you going?”

“I wanted to spend the rest of the evening with you,” she says. “I thought I’d surprise you by being here, but I suddenly would rather go home and work on my tax return. You are the badass kingpin, so you’ve probably done one of those, huh? Well, let me tell you, it’s the most boring thing I do all year, and I’d rather do it than spend time with the kingpin.”

“Come on, Bella.” I grab her wrist, not hard, but just enough to try to keep her from going. “The guy I beat up was Yuri. My Russian counterpart. We had a game of poker, and Gio couldn’t resist eating some peanuts, and–”

“You got in a fight because Gio ate peanuts? Do you realize how ridiculous this is? What kind of badass kingpin are you, fighting over literal peanuts?”

I consider telling her the real reason: that Yuri called her a whore. I think better of it, and decide to let her be angry about the peanuts instead.

“Just boys being boys,” I say. “Not a real fight. Hell, we were laughing and shaking hands again after it was all over.”

Luckily I’m wearing long sleeves, so she can't see the teeth marks and the missing part of my tattoo.

“Great,” she says, breaking free of my grip and walking toward the door. “Glad to know that even your most friendly meetings are going to possibly get you killed one day. I’m looking forward to bringing a kid into that mess.”

She slams the door on me, and I realize it’s one of those times where giving her time to cool off is the only thing that will help. If I go after her now, I’ll just get her more mad at me.