Then she seemed to remember herself and shook her head. “What about the deal? We need to get it all on paper, figure out a plan.”
“We’ll just have to be patient,” I said. “It’ll come together.”
There was a spark of wanting to see Tokyo that had nothing to do with Gavrik Imports, and I wanted nothing more than to feed that spark. I had been all over the world, but it would be my first time in Japan, too, and I would have loved to share it with her.
Instead of holing up in the library with thick history tomes, we decided to watch some travel shows instead, and found ourselves making plans for that trip in the elusive future. This was something Clem clearly wanted, and I wanted to give it to her. To us. A true honeymoon. This had to happen. I reached for my phone to book the tickets when my cousin Aleks called.
Clem slid away, knowing the drill by now. I’d leave in a hurry with no explanation, and hopefully make it home alive sometime before dawn. For now, she accepted that my family ran all sorts of businesses all over the world, so there might always be an emergency at one of them at any time of the day or night.
“Sorry,” I told her. “That strike at the warehouse might be getting out of hand again.”
That was how I explained the last bruise on my jaw, taking a random hit from an angry picketer. She bought it, but didn’t like it, just like she sighed and shrugged now. She still didn’t fully believe she had the rights of a real wife to demand my full attention, or plead with me to stay home where I belonged.
If she knew the truth, what would she say? Would she stick around long enough to say anything?
That night, I ended up going with Aleks and Max to track down someone who’d torched a bar that Dan had just purchased. Dan himself was on his babymoon at a spa hotel in wine country, and we refused to let him drive through the night to get back to help us.
After we rounded up the culprits, who seemed to be nothing more than low-level street gang members, we had a long meeting. Things were escalating, and while the men acting against us didn’t seem to have much overhead organization, we began to suspect they were a cover for something bigger.Something was brewing, and we needed to find out who was ordering the seemingly random attacks before it happened.
It was the worst possible time to take a vacation. When I crawled into bed at four in the morning, Clem pretended to be asleep, but I could tell by her breathing that she had laid awake worrying. As much as I wanted her to ask where I’d been or what I had been doing, I didn’t want to come up with another lie or half-truth.
If something huge actually went down, I might not be able to keep my Bratva background secret much longer. What then? I pulled her close and rested my chin against the top of her head, silently apologizing for ruining her sleep. She nestled back against me for the few remaining hours of the night, and the gentle sound of her breathing helped me shut off my brain and sleep.
At lunch the next day, Lilia showed up out of the blue, looking as tired and worn out as I felt. Gavril had been on the front lines as well during the last few weeks of escalation, in charge of gathering information from some of the men we captured.
Clem had already run off to have lunch with her friend Diana from accounting, and Lilia said it was probably for the best. Which meant she needed to talk about the family.
As soon as we slid into opposite sides of a booth in a nearby restaurant, tears began sliding down her pale cheeks. She was like a younger sister to me, and my first urge was to find whoever made her cry and smash them into oblivion, but we were both adults now. Her problems were similar to mine. We were both concerned about the war that seemed inevitable.
Going through it countless times never really prepared us; it only taught us how we could lose one another in the blink of an eye.
“Gavril’s been speaking with his Italian contacts,” she said. “It’s not coming from anyone there, at least as far as they know.”
“There’s always the possibility that it may be just the LA gangs coming together to try to take us out. We do put a big dent in their ability to do business.”
She sighed, shaking her head, dismissing the idea, the same as her husband and everyone else did. The gangs would never be able to put aside their grievances and get along, but we’d once thought the same about the Collective ever working with us.
“I’m so sick of talking about it and thinking about it,” she said. “Tell me what you’ve been reading.”
Lilia and I were the bookworms of the family, devouring anything we could get our hands on. It was a huge bond between us and a source of refuge when things got rough in the world outside of printed pages. I informed her that Clem and I were determined to start reading about Japan, letting her know the Koboyashis had invited us.
“It’s such a shame they couldn’t make it,” she said. “You really ought to take them up on it and go.”
“I wish. Clem is dying to, even though she won’t outright admit it.”
“Why won’t she?” my astute cousin asked.
I waited for the server to leave our salads, spearing a thick cucumber slice before answering. “She doesn’t believe it’s real,” I said.
Her eyes flew wide. “Wait. Is it? Since when?”
“Since the day I met her,” I admitted. If anyone would understand, it was Lilia, who believed in love at first sight and fate. “It was always real.”
Lilia ate a few bites in silence before giving me a piercing look. “Then you have to go to Tokyo,” she said.
I huffed. “How can I? Every day there’s something new. We’re under siege. Again.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Again. If it’s not now, it’ll be next month or next year. There’s always going to be something or someone trying to take us down. Put us on the back burner.”