“Have you seen this shit?”
Demyan storms into my office with a newspaper in hand. He shakes it before slamming it down on the table in front of me.
“The society section?” I scoff. “You really do have too much time on your hands, Dem.”
He isn’t in a joking mood, though. “Look at the third page. Bottom left.”
Frowning, I glance down and see what Demyan is talking about, and instantly, my mood gets as foul as his.
My mother takes up one entire picture all by herself. She’s looking straight at the camera with a high-society sneer on her face. There’s no doubt that she knew she was being photographed. She owns the spotlight in a way I’m not quite expecting.
My eyes slide to the next photo in the array. This one includes my mother again.
But this time, she’s not alone.
Her gaze is focused on a tall, silver-haired man at her side. He’s laughing, his head thrown back with ease. Her hand rests casually on his arm.
“Who is this fucker?” I grit out.
“You’re joking, right?” Demyan asks. “You don’t recognize him?”
I peer closer at the man. He’s tall. Distinguished. Older, but he’s aged well, in the kind of way that only lots of money can buy.
Then it hits me.
“Donald Hargrove.”
Demyan smiles and nods. “The one and only. Son of a bitch looks like he just stepped out of a fuckin’ Brooks Brothers ad.”
“Remind me—some kind of media enterprise, right?”
“Television mogul,” Demyan corrects. “Owns the news network you see in every goddamn waiting room in the whole goddamn country.”
“What do we know about him?” I ask. “Apart from the obvious.”
Demyan rattles off the facts on his fingers. “He’s been married once before. Divorced now, for a couple of years, I believe. Apparently, the ex-wife still speaks highly of him.”
“How big was her settlement?”
“Big enough to buy France.”
“That explains that, then,” I say dismissively. “Kids?”
“Two,” Demyan says. “A pair of pretty boys in their twenties who are both modeling for European luxury brands. Social media follower counts like you wouldn’t believe.”
I roll my eyes. “Jesus. Stop before I puke.”
“You wanna read the article?”
“Blyat’. I suppose I should.”
I skim through the article until I stumble across my mother’s name. “Julia Makarova” is what they wrote, not “Yulia.” Leave it to Americans to make everything about their way of doing things. Somehow, that makes me feel slightly better about the whole debacle.
A quick passthrough of the first paragraph makes me turn up my nose. The piece reeks of cheap gossip and shallow humor.
The Svenson-Met Gala is the crown jewel of the city’s social calendar. In attendance was a who’s who of comedy legends, full-blown rock stars, and Oscar-nominated actors. (Apparently, the actual Oscar winners had a fancier charity to attend. Cancer is so last season.)
But there was no disappointment, because anyone who purchased the ten-thousand-dollar ticket to last night’s event was able to rub shoulders with the media mogul of media moguls: none other than the dashingly debonair Donald Hargrove.
This particular reporter came within a hair’s breadth of the man, and let me tell you, he smells as good as he looks.
Which is probably why it shocked quite a few to see him spend most of his evening with philanthropist and activist, Julia Makarova. As a woman of a certain age, one would think she would fly under Mr. Hargrove’s notoriously particular radar. But apparently, the man values personality as much as youth.
When pressed for information about his personal life, the silver fox played coy while Ms. Makarova just laughed me off. According to both, they’re just friends. Easier to believe than you might think. Especially with the legion of models and young actresses following the man around most of the night.
It’s true what they say: sometimes, God gives with both hands.
I glance up from the article. “This is trash.”
“A flaming dumpster fire,” Demyan agrees. “I can never understand why people lap this shit up.”
I scoff and fold the newspaper back over so I don’t have to look at Hargrove’s smug, polished smirk anymore. “My mother is an activist and philanthropist? Since when?”
“It’s not the craziest embellishment that’s ever been printed. We’ve donated to charities before.”
“The Bratva has donated to charities,” I point out. “I have donated to charities. It’s not her fucking money; it’s mine. For fuck’s sake, who is she even an activist on behalf of?”
“Women?” Demyan guesses. “The future is female and all that jazz.”
“I guess that does sound like her.”
“The ticket to go to this thing was ten grand,” he points out. “But I’m sure you already noticed that part.”
“Oh, I did. I’ll have words with her.”
“Don’t you keep a tight hold on her allowance?”
“I didn’t think it was necessary,” I mutter. “She had a hard enough time transferring everything back over to me when I returned from Russia. I didn’t want to monitor her spending on top of the rest of it. It seemed… degrading.”
“Look at you being a good son. Warms the heart.”
“Apparently, I’m going to have to stop now,” I growl, “if the woman is spending ten thousand dollars on a charity gala and drawing eyeballs we don’t need.”
“Hargrove approved,” Demyan says with a mocking waggle of the eyebrows. “Isn’t that enough for you?”
I flip the page back over and study the man in the picture once more. He is handsome, charismatic. But there’s a kind of remoteness behind his eyes. A blankness where a soul should be.
I don’t fucking like it.
“This has the potential to be dangerous,” I say.
“Oh, yeah,” Demyan answers firmly. “The man is big-time. He’s fine-tuned for gossip, always looking for the next big story. Even if the author of this article doesn’t know exactly who Yulia Makarova is, he certainly does.”
“You think she talked about me?”
“I’m sure she gushed about how handsome you are. Her precious baby Awweks.”
“Say that again and I’ll rip your tongue out,” I growl as Demyan cackles and scampers out of reach. “Any dirt on the bastard?”
“I only had time for a quick check,” Demyan says. He settles back into his seat. “But it came up clean as a whistle. Either he’s never done a dirty deed in his life, or they’re all hidden way out of sight. I mean, not that I’m speaking from experience or anything, but what kind of guy has an ex-wife who sings his praises to national media every chance she gets?”
“So he’s a saint, eh?”
“On paper, yeah. Sure looks that way.”
“Fignya,” I pronounce. Bullshit. “No one gets to be as rich and powerful as he is without collecting a few skeletons in his closet. I want to find them.”
Demyan frowns. “Is there a reason we need to poke around? Seems… risky.”
“If he learns more about me and the Bratva than I’m comfortable with, I need to have some sort of leverage over the man.”
He shrugs. “Aye-aye, captain. Fair enough. I’ll keep digging.” He leans back in his seat and strokes his chin, humming out loud the way he always does when he’s thinking and wants to get on my nerves. “You know, if Yulia’s spending habits are bothering you, you could always cut her off.”
“Feels harsh.”
Demyan laughs in my face. “You’ve done worse.”
I wave him away. “I can handle her. She just needs to be reminded that I’m don now and she has to listen.”
“Hardcore, man. I can’t imagine giving my mother orders.”
“That’s why you’re in that seat and I’m in this one.” I fold up the paper and toss it in the trash. “Why couldn’t she have made friends with some boring civilian fuck, huh? A middle manager, an accountant. Someone with a mortgage and a home in the suburbs and a dog to walk in the evenings.”
“Because she’d be bored to death,” Demyan answers. “She’s chasing excitement. That’s the only reason she chooses to be around these egotistical, pretentious fuckers.”
“Or maybe she’s found kindred spirits.”
He whistles. “That’s a low opinion you have of your own mother.”
I sigh and relent. “She held her own when she was left in charge. She made mistakes, but considering she had no training and no experience, she did what she could. It’s just her belief that she has a God-given right to certain things that frustrates me.”
“Or maybe the two of you are so alike that you just can’t get along with one another?”
“Is this a session for strategy or for therapy?” I snarl. “Spare me the psychoanalysis.”
Demyan only chuckles. Then he fixes me with a careful expression. “You been by to see the old man recently?” he asks—even though he knows exactly how I feel about it.
“No.”
“I did,” he admits.
I roll my eyes. “You’re a fucking prince.”
He shrugs. “One day, we’re going to be that old. Maybe even that helpless, too.”
“I will never be like that,” I say fiercely. “And if that somehow becomes a possibility, I’ll put a bullet in my brain long before my body turns on me.”
Demyan looks unconvinced. “Not sure you can get away with that anymore.”
I frown. “And why is that?”
“Well, you’ve got a wife now,” Demyan points out, fixing me with a teasing smile.
“She’s not a wife,” I snap back. “She’s a tool. A prop.”
“A very pretty prop, though, you gotta admit.”
I shrug. “Hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, please,” Demyan scoffs. “Don’t lie. Don’t pretend like you don’t see it.”
“I don’t see anything I don’t need to see.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve seen: I’ve seen the way you look at her, sobrat. And you don’t look at your screwdriver like that. So, tool or no tool, she’s different.”
That pisses me off and he knows it. I turn my steely gaze on him, but he only shrugs. After a lifetime at my side, my anger no longer fazes him. It never truly did.
“I’m just saying, man,” he adds. “You can bullshit everyone else. But I’ve been with you a long time. I know when something interests you. Olivia fits the bill.”
“I don’t pay you to be my shrink.”
“No, you pay me to be your friend,” he corrects. “Which is way more pathetic.”
I give him the finger, then push myself up from the desk and head towards the door. “Follow up on the FBI investigation. I need to know if Lawrence has kept to his bargain or if he’s still trying to fuck with me.”
“What if he is?”
“Then I’ll send him his sister in pieces and he’ll have no one but himself to blame,” I snarl. “But honestly, I don’t believe he’s going to risk her life. He loves her too much.”
“Love, huh?” Demyan muses. “It’s been the death of many a man’s ambitions.”
“Yeah,” I growl. “I’m counting on it.”
