Page 10 of Sold to My Ex's Brother
“I don’t know what Mr. Valiski is planning, exactly,” he confesses, leaning forward and lowering his voice as he looks around. “But... But whatever it is, it’s attracted a few dozen people. They gave us a list at the start of the night, to make sure we took care of the people who’d been invited.”
“Just men?”
He nods. “Looks like they all are. Artem told the female staff members not to come in tonight, I’m not sure why.”
I’m starting to get a bad fucking feeling about this. I might deal in a lot of shit, a lot of shit that would mark me as a far worse man than my brother, but there’s something about this that doesn’t sit right with me.
Is he dealing in... in women? Artem has been particularly quiet recently, and that only happens when there’s something he’s dedicated himself to—something that he’s trying to get off the ground, often to prove me wrong in the process.
I look past the bartender, towards the door. “They’re down there?”
He nods again.
I knock back my vodka, dragging my hand over my mouth. “Let me through.”
He freezes. He doesn’t want to deny me anything, he knows who I am, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to get on my brother’s bad side either. It’s not my problem, where he lands in the politics of this place, but I’m damn certain I’m going to shake him loose one way or another.
“Let me through,” I repeat, rising to my feet and stepping around the bar.
He is still just standing there, staring at me, clearly calculating who exactly he is worried about pissing off more.
And he makes the right choice after a few beats.
He pulls open the small door that leads to the bar and I step through, heading directly to the door that I saw that man emerge from. Pushing it open, I head to the other side.
At first, it just looks like a storage area, crates of alcohol stacked up in every corner. But then, I hear movement, and glance around to see the same man who came to ask about the drinks stubbing out a cigarette.
Fuck, I could go for one of those, though I only keep them in my car.
“You got the drinks?” he asks me, not bothering to check who was actually in front of him. But when he looks up, he freezes, his eyes widening.
“Pakhan,” he blurts out. “I-I’m sorry, I had no idea?—“
“Where’s my brother?” I cut him off coolly, paying no attention to his sharp tone. He can talk how he wants, all I care about is finding out what’s going on here.
“Right down here,” he replies, gesturing through the door he just came through. “I can take you to him, if you want.”
I nod, and he leads the way, taking me outside and then to a small door that leads down a set of steel stairs. Our footsteps clang with every step, and, as we head down, I can hear noise emerging from the room before us, a growing buzz of what sounds like excitement.
The man pushes open the door for me when we reach the end, and I step through the narrow frame, glancing around the room. Nobody seems to notice me arriving. They’re all distracted, about thirty or so men sitting around various small tables arranged around what looks to be some kind of stage in the middle.
I scan the faces around me.
No sign of my brother.
He’s clearly still preparing whatever this is, ready to handle anything that comes his way. Something grips at my chest, and I get the feeling that there’s something wrong here, something terribly,terriblywrong that I can’t quite put my finger on.
I slip into a seat at one of the tables, the man opposite me flashing me a broad, conspiratorial grin.
“You made it just in time,” he tells me. “They’re just about to start bringing the girls out...”
“Girls?”
He stares at me for a moment, clearly confused as to why I don’t seem to know what’s going on here. “You don’t know...?”
But before he can finish what he is saying, there’s a flurry of activity over by the stage, and everyone in the room turns to pay attention to what’s happening before us.
My brother steps out from some backstage area just out of sight, raising his hand to calm the mutter of excitement around the room.
