Page 55 of Debt to the Mafia King
“Good.” This time, she reached up on her tiptoes and pressedher lips to mine.
Everyone was right. I had been neglecting her, and that had to stop tonight.
The three men surrounding my father were all laughing. Only my father and I weren’t. He was eyeing me warily, and I was growing more and more impatient.
He’d wanted to speak to me alone, so I’d expected some kind of business talk, but no, they were just discussing their mistresses, how hot they were, and how different from their wives. It wasn’t a conversation I felt I could take part in because my wife was beautiful.
“I don’t think young Viktor agrees with us,” one of them laughed, but I barely looked at him. My eyes kept scanning the room.
Leah had been sitting alone on one of the white clothed tables nursing a glass of champagne and looking flushed, but I had looked away for just a second and she had vanished. I couldn’t see her in the crowd anywhere, and it was making me uneasy. Where the hell was she?
“It’s because my son is besotted with his young wife. He’s still enjoying the tightness,” Boris chuckled.
I turned to him with a growl. “Don’t even think to finish that sentence. My wife isn’t one of your whores. She deserves your respect.” I turned angry eyes on the rest of the men with the smug shit-eating smiles. “And don’t even presume to call me young again. I am neither a child, or someone you can mock. Keep my wife’s name out of your mouths and her body out of your eyes.”
An uneasy silence fell, but just for a second, before my father laughed again. “And what are the rules about keeping your wife’s body out of our hands because she seems to be enjoying Piotre’s hands on her.”
Confused, I turned, and there she was.
Dancing in the middle of the dance floor, the overhead lights making her dress sparkle. Even as I watched, she smiled up at the man who was twirling her, and she was laughing at something he said, like he wasn’t my enemy.
At my sides, my hands clenched into fists. “What the fuck is he doing here?”
“I invited him.” From his chair, my father shrugged. “And I’m glad I did. My new daughter-in-law seems to enjoy his company, but then, they are much closer in age than you and her. They probably have a lot in common.”
Fuck him, he had done this on purpose. He had separated us so that asshole could get his hands on her. I didn’t know what reason he would have to be in cahoots with our enemy, but more than likely, it was because my father hated me.
Then, of course, there were the rumors that Poitre was actually my half-brother.
“Maybe she will be able to smooth over the animosity between us all.” Boris laughed again. “It looks like young Leah might be useful after all.”
“Yeah, on her back.” Someone chuckled, and laughter filled up.
Rage filled me. It filled me so completely that I shook with it. I saw nothing around me but her in the arms of another man. Whirling, I closed my hand around the throat of the man who had spoken, lifting him off the floor so that he spluttered. His eyes bugged out of his head.
But I barely looked at him. My eyes were glued to the pathetic man in the wheelchair. My father. “Say something like that about my wife again.” I aimed the words at him and not the man clawing at my hand as he struggled to breathe, but I was talking to them both and any other person who might want to insult her.
“And I will pull out every single one of your teeth and make them into a necklace for her. When you insult her, you insult me.”
I dropped the man, and he fell to his knees, gasping. A murmur went up from the men around us. Yeah, they understood. On paper, the old man was in charge, but not for long, and they knew better now than to challenge me.
If any of them did, if even one of them looked at my wife sideways, I would end them all. There was no room in my organization for disrespect or disloyalty, and these men neededto remember it.
Ignoring the man at my feet, I turned to my father. “Do you understand?” I enunciated each word and saw the old man frown. The corners of his mouth tilted downward.
His time was over. Mine was just starting.
“If anyone so much as looks at my wife in the wrong way, I will end you.”
Ignoring the men, I strode away, pushing past the people who tried to step into my way and talk to me. The only thing I saw was her, laughing in the arms of my enemy, letting him touch her, and I wanted to kill both of them.
Catching her by the shoulders, I spun her around so fast and suddenly that she toppled off her stiletto heels and almost went down.
“Viktor,” my enemy stepped forward like he was going to help her. My glare stopped him dead.
“It’s time we leave.” Catching my wife under her elbow, I steadied her. “Please go to the car now, Leah. I have some things to discuss with—”
Her eyes flickered between the two of us, and her forehead creased. “We were just dancing. It wasn’t—”
