Page 29 of Unwritten Vows

Derrick

There’s even more on the line now that Liza has accepted my proposal.

I’m incredibly relieved she said yes, but it’s overshadowed by the fact that I know without a doubt that my father is making moves behind the scenes and I don’t know what they are.

I don’t know how they apply to Liza and I.

I know I’m being overprotective of our relationship, but after what I saw in my father’s office this morning, I’m not taking any chances.

The venue might be private, but there are reporters milling around outside.

They snap hundreds of pictures, but Liza and I are the main attraction, as I knew we’d be.

“It was just a matter of time before you worked your way over to her, huh?” One of the reporters yells out at us.

I ignore him, but remember to tell one of my guys to leave a “present” in his mailbox later.

These fuckers know better than to say something like that.

I’m stiff as they snap the pictures of us—the proof of our courtship finally coming to light. “Are you okay?” Liza asks, peering over at me with anxious eyes.

I squeeze her hip tighter and pull her to me. “Of course, sweet Liza. I’m with you.”

She blushes at this, so I go back to scoping out the crowd and pushing my most dazzling smile onto my face for the reporters.

I’m relieved once we get through them and into the party. I refrain from telling everyone that I’m here with Liza, but her father certainly doesn’t. He answers their questions with pride. I smile through it all, even with the creeping feeling of dread in my stomach.

She senses the change in my demeanor as I search for threats, and at one point, finally asks about it. “Are you… looking for someone else?”

“Hmm?” I register her words a moment later. “What? No, no. I’m just… making sure you’re safe.”

I see the moment she winces and blinks a few times.

I know she tries to hide it, but I catch the obvious fear, and I hate it.

She can tell and almost instantly apologizes.

“I know I’m making too big a deal out of this.

Sorry.” If she wanted to ratchet my guilt up to an all-time high, that does it.

All I can think to do is hug her and kiss her forehead, swearing to myself that nothing will happen to her.

I keep her by my side for the first hour of the party, but her father drags her away at one point to talk with some business acquaintances.

I have to find Timur anyway to discuss a shared dock situation on the border of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

I know she’s safe with the feared Bolyar, so I go seek Timur out and find him on the other side of the mansion.

He stands with his son, a black-haired, oily, curled-lip douchebag if there ever was one.

He’s the same age as me, but acts at least a decade younger.

He’s got half his attention on a girl that looks suspiciously underage.

I focus on the less idiotic of the two. “Hi, Timur. How are you?”

“Ah, Derrick Stepinov. I’m great. I’m guessing you’ve come to ask about the dock?”

He knows he’s late on rent. He uses my boss’s dock for whatever nefarious activities he wants, and we allow it for a hefty fee. “I’m so glad you brought it up,” I say with a smirk, “so that I don’t have to walk through all of the niceties. Yes, it’s the dock.”

Timur waves his hand to ward the statement away. “I’ve spoken with Divny already. I wasn’t using it much, so we cancelled the contract.”

Divny sometimes thinks that he can handle business, when really he just ends up making terrible deals, and then forgetting to tell everyone else what he worked out with others.

I’m annoyed, since Timur knows my father and I are the point of contact for the dock, but I just bite down on my back teeth instead of voicing it.

“Hey, don’t worry,” his slimy son says. “We’ll still throw you a bone here and there. We just don’t need your dock. It’s not like we don’t want to be friends.”

I give Vin a narrow-eyed look, but Timur seems somewhat oblivious. “Excuse me, boys, I have to go.” He disappears into the crowd.

“Of course, Vin. Of course we’re friends.”

He has the same douchey half-smile on his face that he often wears. “Yeah, you and your Daddy are friends with everyone, right?”

He seems to find himself very funny, but I’m having a hard time keeping my composure and not punching that shit-eating smirk right off his face.

“Sure are, buddy. Heard the same about you and your dad. As long as Maxim allows it, of course.” Maxim is the powerhouse of the Boston Bratva, and as such, he is known as the brains behind the operation.

Which is a good thing, since Timur and Vin are such hopeless fucking morons.

The downward flicker of Vin’s stupid smirk spurs on my own. I’ve gotten to him, which is good, because I was very much trying to.

“Actually, we have a lot of other friends that Maxim isn’t even aware of. We often work independently of one another. We have land too, as you know.”

I didn’t come here to get into a pissing contest with this idiot, but now he has me curious. “Oh please. Name one friend you’ve got that isn’t tied to Maxim.”

Vin looks around, leans in like he’s got a big secret, and then drops the bomb. “Edoardo. I’ve got Edoardo.”

My eyes dart over to where Liza and her father stand, just before I think of my own father. Is everyone turning on their own these days?

The mafia everywhere is filled with black-souled men like me, only looking for more fame, wealth, and power.

But Edoardo is something different entirely.

He’s the one who goes too far. He’s the one we look at to remind ourselves that perhaps some shred of our humanity is left to us, since he has absolutely none.

He has sold and killed innocent women—even children.

Rather than keep it quiet, he makes it clear that he’s willing to go to any length just to make money. He enjoys it.

“It’s no different from you and your father, right?”

I do a double take when I register what he’s just said. “What? I don’t have a deal with him.”

Vin’s smile grows and his eyebrows shoot up. “You know as much as Divny about what your father does, huh? You get in bed with all the ladies, your dad gets in bed with the bosses? Is that the deal you two have?”

He looks back and forth from where Liza stands with her father to me. Although I’m fuming, I just roll my eyes. I need to come up with a reason to get away from this guy quickly before I knock his fucking lights out.

“I’m sure we both get more action than you do,” I say, before heading straight back in the direction of where Liza stands.

I’m so preoccupied while walking that I bump directly into my ex, Mara.

We have a “frenemies” type of connection on social media, although the end of that fake word is often stressed for us, and was throughout most of our relationship, too.

I certainly don’t hate the girl, but I don’t like her much either.

I know I have to put in a moment of speaking to her just for optics, so I talk.

“I saw your last video,” I say, taking a sip of my champagne.

I really couldn’t give a shit less what she posts, or the false rumors she spreads about my dick, but I can at least attempt to get under her skin.

She always gets so fidgety when I point out how much of a bitch she is.

It’s like she loves and hates the lifestyle at the same time.

“I told everyone what an absolute sweetheart you are.” She tries to act unaffected, but she’s thinking too hard, I can tell.

Now is when I can strike, for ultimate payback, even if it’s just for me, since there are no cameras around. “You know from experience that those rumors aren’t even remotely true. That was low, Mara. Even for you.”

“I was pretty wasted those few times.” She squirms a bit as I stare, then adds, “All’s fair in love and war.”

“Love,” I scoff. “As if you’ll ever know what that feels like.” I grab another glass of champagne and savor a long sip.

She swallows hard, and I can see her obvious discomfort. Good. She deserves it.

“What are you doing at one of these things, anyway?” she asks, in a painful attempt to change the subject.

She’s batting 1,000 today. I’m so glad I get to be the one to tell her this. I let a lazy smirk light up my face. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” she asks in a preoccupied tone, looking around, probably for literally anyone else to talk to.

“My next relationship is with the Bolyar’s daughter. He’s around here somewhere.”

I love the way her face changes before me. She looks like she wants to say something but can’t get the words out for a full ten seconds. Then finally, all that pops out is,“Oh.”

“Surprised?” I asked with a raised brow.

She still thinks of nothing to say, and all I want to do is make her feel worse.

“I should be thanking you, actually. After you, I can deal with any cold little ice princess my father decides to stick me with.” It’s true.

Although Liza isn’t like any of the women I’ve dated, one of the reasons I dealt so well with her initial reaction to me is because most of the women I’ve been set up with have been far worse, in far different ways.

She downs the last bit of her wine and grabs another, holding it up to me in a mock salute. “Well... to you and your new relationship. May you live together in infamy and bathe in tubs of money.”

The words hit me in a strange way. I try to shake it off, but it bugs me, even after she turns away. It’s because that’s what you two will represent . But why the fuck do I care about what we’ll represent? Who cares if we’ll have a lot of money and everyone will know it?

But the answer comes to me a moment later. My father. It’s because my father wants all of that, and for him, it’s the only reason we’re doing any of this. I can count on one hand how often my father and I haven’t been on the same page about something, and this is one of them.

I just feel like my grasp on Liza and a life that I glimpsed for a mere day, is already starting to loosen. Or maybe I never had a grasp on her at all.