Page 15 of Filthy Promises

At 6 A.M., I try on the green dress, take it off, put on the navy pantsuit, take that off, and finally resign myself to the green dress.

At 7 A.M., I’m on my third cup of coffee, jittery and nauseous.

At 8 A.M., I leave my apartment, looking better than I have in months and feeling worse than I have in years.

One way or another, at 9 A.M., my life is going to change forever.

I just wish I knew if that was a good thing…

… or a very, very bad one.

5

VINCE

THE NIGHT BEFORE

My father’s study always makes me feel like I’m ten years old again.

I smell the cologne soaked into leather, the stench of cigars that lingers no matter how hard the maids scrub or how much disinfectant they lather across the marble floors.

This room has seen pain. Blood. Tears.

Far too much of it was mine.

But through that suffering, through those trials, I learned what it cost to build what my father built. And, harder yet—what it costs to keep it.

Because it’s one thing to raise an empire from the dirt.

It’s another thing entirely to keep the grubby fingers of underworld parasites away from it.

That’s the task before me. Soon—very fucking soon—my father will step into a graceful retirement, and it’ll become my duty to fend off the wolves at the gate.

That thought calms me. Those wolves don’t know what’s coming for them.

They’ll all be skinned and made into throw rugs by the time I’m done.

With a grin, I straighten my tie, shoot my cuffs, then pound my fist against the heavy wooden doors.

“Enter,” comes the gruff command.

I pry open the door and step inside.

Andrei Akopov sits behind his sprawling desk, silver hair slicked back, eyes sharp as ever. At sixty-two, he still has the imposing presence of the man who stowed away from St. Petersburg with nothing but lint in his pocket and insatiable hunger in his belly.

I’ve seen the sepia-toned pictures—he was scrawny in those days, but even then, you could see how his frame would fill out once he sank his teeth into America.

And so it did. What began as a humble sewing factory became a textiles powerhouse. From there, he expanded into electronics, logistics, industrial supplies, this, that, the other…

Now, there is no limit to what Akopov Industries does. The sun does not set on our family’s empire.

“Vince,” he says, pointedly not standing. “You’re late.”

I check my watch. “By three minutes.”

“In our business, three minutes can cost millions.”

I resist rolling my eyes, but only barely. This lecture hasn’t changed in twenty years. “Noted, Father.”

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