Page 15 of Married to the Don (Kornilov Bratva Duet 1)

Viktor

“Enough!” I repeat, this time in English.

The man behind the desk is some mindless idiot we hired to check people in and take their money, but even he has enough brain cells to recognize who I am and know to listen to me. He steps away from the woman with his hands raised, but the image of him sliding those hands over her body is still fresh in my mind.

She looks from me to the clerk and then towards the corner of the room. I follow her gaze and see a small boy holding a cracker—stale, no doubt—his eyes wide and confused.

My vision goes red around the edges. The piece of shit clerk was going to assault a woman in front of a child. I could kill him. I gesture to the boy. “Who is that?”

The woman—Molly, I remember from the dossier Kent handed me—seems to come alive at the mention of the child. She straightens her shirt and moves past the clerk, keeping as much distance between them as possible. The little boy runs to her and hugs her leg.

No one said anything about a child. He wasn’t mentioned in the folder or by anyone at the homeless shelter when I asked about her.

One of the volunteers looked at the picture I showed her. She must have assumed I was a bounty hunter or some kind of private investigator because she told me exactly what I needed to know. “Molly usually comes here, but we were full tonight. The Twin Chandeliers is nearby and a lot of our overflow clients head there if they can afford it.”

“Is he yours?” I ask her now.

Molly lays her hand protectively on the boy’s shoulder and levels cold eyes at me. “Yes.” Her cheeks are red with embarrassment, but even after being found in the compromising position she was in, she manages to look dignified.

“Are we staying here?” the boy asks his mother, though he’s staring at me.

Molly looks from me to the door where wind is whistling through the cracks. Her face goes pale, and I can practically see the gears in her head turning. She was turned away from the homeless shelter and now the motel is proving to be a bust. She has nowhere to go.

“Yes,” I answer before she can.

Molly snaps her attention to me, eyes narrowed. “No, we aren’t.”

I smile, though it doesn’t reach my eyes. “You can eat whatever you want from the table over there and your room will be ready in a few minutes.”

The boy’s eyes light up, and he spins away from his mom and hurries over to the table, grabbing one handful of crackers and another of salted mixed nuts. She holds out a half-hearted hand to stop him, but he’s eating something, and it’s obvious that’s a weight off her mind.

“Who are you?” she asks, looking from me to the clerk. “Do you two know each other?”

She thinks there’s a possibility I’m associated with the asshole whose belly is hanging out of the bottom of his shirt. I spin around and face the clerk. “What’s your name?”

He looks like he hoped we’d forget about him entirely, and when I address him, he flinches but does his best to hide it. “Greg.”

“Well, Greg,” I say, wishing I could wrap his stained T-shirt around his neck and strangle him with it, but knowing I can’t because it would only traumatize the child more, “I’d like you to prepare a room for this woman and her son.”

“She doesn’t have any money.”

I stare at the fat oaf until he realizes I have no need for his commentary and begins the process of getting their room ready.

“Name on the room?” he asks.

“Use mine,” I say before Molly can say anything. I’m here for a purpose, after all. Better not to leave a paper trail. “And make sure the room is clean.”

“The maids cleaned everything earlier today.”

“And they do a shit job,” I say. “Do it again.”

“Me?” he asks. “But the front desk …”

“Then call another employee,” I command. “Get them here. Now. You don’t seem capable of running the desk in an appropriate manner anyway. Perhaps you’d be better served in another role. As a matter of fact, I’ll watch the desk while you clean her room. Now, go.”

Several more questions and comments no doubt sludge through the wiring of Greg’s brain, but he has enough intelligence to keep them to himself as he rolls a cleaning cart from the back room and out through the front door, leaving me alone with Molly and her son.

Fedor’sson.

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