Page 31 of Wrapped in Perfection

"Shut up." I take my towel and smack him with it. "Don't disrespect her."

Boris grunts. "So, you did hire her to get in her pants?"

I point at him and Sergey. "You two need to grow up. She came highly recommended and is talented. Shut your mouths about her, or we're going to have problems."

They both give me a smug look. I ignore them and go to the locker room, not into listening to them.

Maksim follows me.

"I don't want to hear your bullshit about her not being Russian." Maksim means well, and I understand giving opportunities to Russians in our community, but we're also American, and sometimes he forgets it. We fled Russia in the middle of the night, and we're a shining example of the American Dream. I strip off my clothes and walk naked to the shower.

The water is cold, but I step under it, hoping it helps get Anna off my mind.

"We need a plan B if we can't get Lorenzo to sell us his land. It's too much to lose. Even if it's something that makes the loss smaller."

I take a few pumps of the soap in the wall container. "It would have been smarter for us to have a plan B before we bought those pieces of land."

"We didn't know the mayor was going to sell the parcel to Lorenzo."

I grunt. "No, but we still should have been better prepared. It was cocky of us to do something like this." If we don't get the land, we won't go bankrupt, but it will hurt. And it will put a lot of our guys out of work—men who rely on our projects to feed their families.

Maksim steps in the space next to mine, and my other brothers come in the locker room.

I finish showering, dry off, and put on my clothes.

"Let's go to breakfast and figure out a plan B." Maksim comes out of the shower and opens his locker.

"Sorry, can't today."

"Why? What's more important than this?"

"East Bay."

"The foremen have it under control."

I sling my bag over my shoulder. "I'm taking Anna to the showrooms."

"Since when do we do the designer's job for them?"

I slam my locker, fed up with everything, my patience wearing thin. "She's new to Chicago. I need to add her to the accounts. If I'm with her, it will save time. I can place the order today, instead of dragging it out, since Lada screwed us so bad."

Maksim's icy blue eyes turn to slits. "Make sure you're keeping our priorities straight, little brother."

I step toward him. "I thought the twenty million we have wrapped up in East Bay is a priority?"

"You know what I'm getting at."

"Mind your own business." I step back.

"If she's under a contract with our firm, it is my business."

"Okay. You win."

He shifts on his feet. "What's that?"

I'm so over this entire conversation.

"I'll give her the address of the showrooms, have her go on her own, then drag numerous materials all over Chicago. She can present to all of us, and we can debate about it all. In the end, we'll go with whatever she advises us because that's what we always do with any of our designers. At the end of the week, I'm sure we'll know what we want and then we can order everything. It'll cost us a minimum of two hundred thousand for the time delay, but hey, at least you'll have your say."

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