IGNAZIO
I sat still, scowling up at a Mona Lisa painting.
The damn thing hung right across from me, some old replica in a faux-gilded frame, smirking down like it had a secret. I knew how she felt. I was in a room full of secrets too—specifically, Nikandr Mozorova’s.
He was talking—lazily—on the other side of me. Or more accurately, the desk in this so-called VIP suite of some uptown club in Manhattan.
Except this wasn’t a suite.
It was an office.
And despite what he told me, I also knew it was his office.
Large mahogany desk in the middle, lounge chairs along one wall, a fully stocked bar in the corner, television humming above it, and a pool table taking up half the other side.
All of Niko’s vices in one place: s*x, entertainment, alcohol—and most of all, business.
He leaned
