Right now, I suspect I can count myself among them.
It’s a shitty feeling: keeping April at arm’s length, rebuking her attempts at closeness—it’s all so wrong. The other night, every part of me was screaming against it: Don’t let her go. Don’t push her away.
Don’t you leave her alone, too.
But I don’t have a choice.
I pocket my phone and stride into the Venus Lounge. “Welcome!” Stanislav greets me with a warm handshake. “It’s an honor to have you here, moy pakhan.”
I'd rather have stayed home, I think but don’t say. “The honor’s all mine,” I reply instead. “Your numbers speak for themselves.”
The thing is, they do. After his mediocre performance last quarter, Stanislav took it upon himself to crush the competition. When I heard he was planning to open a new location in Little Italy,
