Divorcing Her Mafia Family
Chapter 20

“You keep watching those girls,” Kostas said to Miklos from where they stood in the office overlooking the dance club. “Who are they?”

“I have no f*****g clue,” Miklos g*****d in frustration. “When they first came in, they reminded me of my wife and her two friends, but I think it’s only because she’s on my mind and she always has her two friends with her. If you look around this club, there are more trios of women than you can shake a stick at.”

“Which one looks like Dimitra?” Kostas asked curiously.

“The curvy one,” he let his eyes dwell on the woman in the private booth swinging her h**s far too enthusiastically. She was drunk, in fact all three of them appeared wasted from his vantage point. “Her hair isn’t red though.”

“Did she dye it? Maybe she’s here being sneaky.”

“Helios said her eyes were green when I asked him. He misses nothing. Also, Dimitra wouldn’t be caught dead in such a dress.” He let his eyes rove the curvaceous body of the woman now grinding on her blonde friend. “She has always been very conservative in her clothing. My housekeeper’s opinion is she thinks she’s fat.”

“Why do women do such things to themselves? Do they not know how much we love something to hold onto? Is she fat?”

“Not even close,” Miklos grinned at his friend, “she has curves in all the most delicious places.” He looked back to the girls, annoyed his eyes kept going to them. He had told himself he was done with all women but the girl with the wild red stripes of hair and the crazy ringlets was making his d**k hard in the worst way. How could he begin to promise his wife he would not look at another when the day after he slept with her, he was ogling a woman? He reminded himself it was simply the woman’s body type being so close to hers had his eyes going back to her.

“The blonde is something else. I want to take her ponytail in my fist,” Kostas said with a smirk.

“The other reason I knew it wasn’t Dimitra,” Miklos looked to his friend, “she is best friends with Darya Pappas. She,” he shook his head, “cannot possibly be related to Yannis or his wife. I saw Darya on Monday morning at breakfast, and she was nerdy, in oversized clothing and could barely make eye contact.”

“I have not seen her since she was a kid. Imagine Yannis trying to trade a child to me.”

“You tried to make her marry Jurek.”

“I had hoped a wife would settle him down.”

“He would have destroyed her. You would have had her b***d on your hands.” Miklos said looking at his friend seriously. “Your brother is a night crawler.”

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Kostas grunted. “He swore the girl who accused him of date rape was lying and setting him up to blackmail him. I stupidly believed him and paid for it to go away and then he turned around, flew to Greece and did it there.”

“I can’t believe he thought you’d bail him out the second time.”

“I can’t believe I did it the first time,” Kostas said bitterly. He followed Miklos’ gaze to the trio of women, his eyes focused on the blonde. Miklos had him thinking of the waif of a girl he’d met so many years ago. “Did Dimitra really say Yannis threw her out and cut her off?”

“Yes, and she hasn’t seen any of her family since the day she refused to marry your brother. Yannis then stole her trust fund left to her by her grandparents.” He slapped his friend on the shoulder, “I almost had a heart attack when she asked us to bring her his liver for the dog.”

Kostas eyed his friend curiously. “She did what?”

“Dimitra insisted we call her and ask her if she would know where he might be hoarding cash. Dimitra told her she was going to interrogate him. Darya told her to kill him and cut his liver out so she could feed it to the dog. The story is, after the meeting where she refused to marry Jurek, Yannis hit her, and the dog attacked him, so he kicked the dog breaking its ribs.” Miklos started chuckling at Kostas’ curse, “Dimitra told me she broke into their house, kidnapped the dog, and returned it to Darya. They took it back to Boston.”

Kostas swore and then laughed, “your wife is a spitfire.”

“She was a pain in the a*s growing up. I never once thought of her as anything other than an annoying kid sister. She was a terrible prankster and lived to get under my skin. I swear some of the s**t she’s pulled since Sunday is enough turn my hair grey.”

“What’s she done?”

“Burnt my bed.”

“What?” Kostas turned his head in stunned surprise. “Why?”

“Well, after dragging my a*s to church where she m****d and complained very loudly in a dress suitable for a funeral, how I have cheated on her for the last eight years, she apparently felt my bed needed to be burned.”

“You loved that bed.”

“Not as much as she hated it apparently,” he gave a loud sigh, “then she f*****g dyed me blue.” He quickly recounted the story of the replacement bed, being folded in half and his swim.

Kostas was roaring with laughter at the stories.

“She’s doing all this, so you’ll divorce her?” Kostas wiped tears from the corners of his eyes. “Why not just do it and be done? Call Vasilis’s bluff and let him replace someone else to run the business. You have enough work with the legitimate Laskaris company anyway.”

“I want her,” he said suddenly, very quiet. “She’s under my skin. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever had happen to me. One minute I was thinking of ways to make babies in the lab and the next I was plotting how I was going to seduce the hell out of her. Perhaps I’m having an early midlife crisis, but I want her.”

“Then sleep with her and be done with it.”

“Therein lies the rub, Kostas,” he shook his head, his gaze flitting to the women chatting with Kimmie in the distance. “I did. It made it a hundredfold worse. I had the FBI in my offices today and all I could think of was the little witch and how she keeps testing me. She is fire and it is exciting.”

“Why?” Kostas eyed him curiously, “I’ve known you since we were small boys. You have said for years, you hated Vasili trapped you to the brat until she turned thirty. Now you want her?”

“I spent the entire night last night wondering the same thing. I have spent the last eight years avoiding her. I forgot how much she makes my b***d run. She gets me from zero to a hundred in seconds. It was the desire to give her the spanking her father should have. She knows me better than I know myself, even after all this time apart. She knows the buttons to push and how to get to me far better than anyone I’ve ever met. Perhaps, I’ve spent so much time with women simpering and pandering to my every desire, bending over backwards for me, I grew bored with it, with them.” He thought of her singing in his kitchen on Sunday morning, “you know she made pancakes for Eve Sunday morning and was playing songs about cheating husbands on my home stereo system. Sang it to me, right to my face.”

“She did not.”

“Yes, she did. It was the first time in years I,” he paused looking for the word, “I feel like I started breathing again. Since the honeymoon, actually. This is the first time I felt alive in a long time and it’s her.”

“She’s going to destroy your house.”

“Let it burn,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll build her a new one wherever she wants.”

“What if she doesn’t stop? If she really wants out, how do you force her to stay?”

“I won’t,” he said suddenly feeling his chest ache. “It would kill me to let her leave I think but I will not hold her against her will. I love her. I have always loved her. She is my family and while the love I have for her is changing from brotherly to husbandly, I won’t hurt her more than I have already. I want her to stay but,” he gave a sad shake of his head, “I cannot force her, no matter how much the old man is wanting an heir.”

“Vasili would be pissed.” His friend’s comment was not censored as he reconsidered his earlier thought. “He’ll kill you both.”

“No,” he shook his head. “No matter how harsh he can be with Dimitra she is his little girl. He may have zero respect for his wife but Dimitra, she is the reason he still breathes. All he wants is for her to be taken care of. If I told him I was letting her go to protect her, he would believe me. I could make up a reason, suggest she is in danger. He won’t live another four or five years. I’ll stay married to her until her thirtieth birthday, dissolve the marriage and whether he’s alive or not, the contract will be fulfilled. She can do what she wants then.”

Kostas was still looking at the girls. “They look like they sleep together.”

Miklos gave a laugh, “they did tell Helios they didn’t like boys.”

“If I were a woman and Helios was around, I’d say the same thing. How his d**k hasn’t rotted off from all the women he’s f****d is beyond me. I understand you keep him around because he’s a great manager and he brings the party for your club, but he has bedded more women than you and I combined and in only the last week.” Kostas made a face as he considered Miklos’ manager.

Miklos gave a shake of his head, “there was a time I agreed with you but now, not so much. See the blonde waitress?” Kostas looked to the woman talking to the women in the private booth, “he has it bad for her. She broke up with her fiancé about two months ago and he’s trying to turn over a new leaf to impress her. He has blue balls so big I’m surprised he can walk.”

“She’s not interested?” Kostas gave a snort of laughter.

“Her mantra is she doesn’t s**t where she eats.” Miklos laughed. “Repeats it constantly.”

“I should go flirt with her to drive Helios nuts,” Kostas grinned broadly.

“You should,” he agreed. “I want to watch Helios get tied up in knots. Let’s go get a drink at the bar.”

The two men trotted down the stairs to the noisy bar and sat on the end in seats reserved for Miklos. He could see the entire dance floor and the private booths from this spot. He looked around again, his eyes narrowing once more on the women in the booth.

Kimmie approached and grinned at him and Kostas.

“What’s so funny, Kimmie,” Miklos asked as she leaned over the bar and asked for another bottle of Prosecco for the girls.

“The hot girl summer trio up there,” she leaned a h*p on the counter and smirked, “thought you were a couple. They thought you looked pretty chummy.”

Helios gave a bark of laughter as he overheard the comment. “No way.”

“Yeah,” Kimmie evidently thought it was hilarious.

“Did you correct them?” Miklos asked laughing at her glee.

“I get paid to serve drinks not to gossip about my boss.” Kimmie made wide eyes at him.

Kostas reached out his hand, “you and I haven’t been introduced and I feel we should know each other. Kostas Masalis.”

“Kimmie None-Of-Your-Business.” She shook his hand with a quick one pump. “I don’t s**t where I eat, Kostas Masalis.”

“I don’t work here.”

“You’re friends with my boss.”

“Friends, not lovers. I feel I should make the point clear in case you were unsure.” Kostas flirted openly. “I like women. A lot.”

“If you have to tell a girl you’re into women, are you really into women?” Kimmie held her own.

“I’d rather show you.”

“I’m sure you would,” she winked at him playfully.

Miklos saw Helios fingers tighten on the bottle of Prosecco he was grabbing for Kimmie. The man never worked behind the bar, yet he was doing whatever he could to talk to her. He laughed at the man’s reaction. Jealousy was not an emotion he’d ever experienced. If a woman wanted to f**k around, she could go.

“Hey Kimmie,” one of the regulars at the club came up and leaned against the counter. “The guys and I want to cover the tab for the girls up there. Think you could get us to closer so we can say hi?”

“Maggie and her friends made it clear she’s not interested, and they tipped me well enough to keep the likes of you away. They just want to dance and drink. Leave them alone Spiros.” Kimmie looked over her shoulder

Miklos sat up as he looked back to the brunette. “Which one is Maggie?” Maggie? Short for Magda? His eyes were really narrowing on the group now. Was Kostas correct? Could this be another one of Dimitra’s pranks? Maybe this is why his eyes had been trained on the a*s of the woman who looked eerily like his wife yet not at all.

“The bombshell in leather.” Kimmie said.

“What are the other girl’s names?” Miklos pushed.

“They’re not interested Miklos.” Kimmie grimaced at him.

“Yaya and Mimi,” Helios gave her a look, clearly annoyed she’d flirted with Kostas.

He leaned towards Kostas who was eyeing him curiously, “Yaya, could it be short for Darya?”

Kostas eyes widened, “she wouldn’t.” He looked back to the girl with the red hair. “Do you think?”

They both stared at the trio and Miklos examined the shortest brunette of the trio. “I knew I recognized that body in the dress. Little b***h needs her a*s slapped.”

Kimmie was watching them huddled close together whispering feverishly. “Are you sure you two aren’t sleeping together?”

“How much have the girls spent tonight?” Miklos questioned Helios

“Nearly eight grand,” he saw Miklos’ mouth open. “They’ve been ordering the best liquor off our shelves. They bought two rounds for every woman in the club and made me say ‘f**k the patriarchy’ while serving them. The one with all the red streaks in her hair has a hankering for the finest vodka and has been through a pint on her own and another half pint besides. I believe she’s still working on it.” He added shot glasses to Kimmie’s tray.

“Her drink of choice?” Kostas whispered in his ear.

“I honestly don’t know. I’ve never gotten drunk with her.” He recalled her drinking at the bonfire she’d created, “she was drinking vodka when she was doing her fire-breathing tricks the other night.”

“How far would she take a prank?”

“Very far. I had two of those dancing things you see outside used car shops outside my offices today along with balloons reading honk for Miklos’ birthday.”

Kostas threw his head back and clapped his hands together once. “No!”

“Yes. The feds thought it was great fun.” Miklos’ tone affirmed he did not agree with the feds. The more he thought about it, the more he knew the girl in the private booth was Dimitra. “Mimi my a*s,” he muttered under his breath. He leaned sideways and looked back to the trio. “Give me the tray, Kimmie. I’m going to go say hi.”

“Uh, I don’t think it’s a good idea. They tipped me really well to keep the boys away.”

“How well?” Miklos frowned.

“Two and half grand.”

He blinked in amazement. “They haven’t been here three hours”

“I know. All I’ve had to do is keep the boys away and bring them clean shot glasses.”

Kostas turned to Miklos, “whose money is she spending?”

He shook his head, “she hasn’t spent a penny of my money ever. I gave her a credit card for graduation and told her to buy herself something nice and I never got a bill for it. Not once.”

“I wonder if she’s spending it now. You did say she is good with a computer, and she moved cash around for me.” He gave a pointed glance to Miklos.

He rose and took the tray from Kimmie’s tight grip, “let go, Kimmie.”

“Miklos,’ they’re just a group of girls celebrating a birthday.” She grimaced as he pried her fingers from the tray.

“Not one of them has a birthday today. I know them too well. Kostas, ready for a reintroduction?”

“Never readier,” Kostas grinned broadly, always up to backing his friend. He winked at Kimmie, “last chance beautiful. I can steal you away from your boss for the night.”

“No.” She glared first at Kostas and then turned her fury to Miklos. “I’m not giving back my tip. If they want it back, you’re covering it.”

He reached into his billfold and pulled a handful of cash and put it in her hand. “Thank you for keeping the boys away from my wife and her friends. Now, I have to go crash her party.”

“Your wife?” Kimmie stepped backwards in horror. “No. Which one is his wife?” She looked over her shoulder to Helios as the two men strode in the direction of the private booth. Helios gave a confused shrug as the pair watched Miklos and Helios duck around guests.

Miklos stood at the entrance to the booth and c****d his head to one side. From a distance he had believed she was someone else but up close, there was no denying Dimitra. Her cheeks, lips and nose and a*s were all his wife’s. She didn’t notice him right away, swaying her arms in the air to the music and dancing with her two friends.

He and Kostas blocked the exit to the booth with their frames and watched them dancing. He had a cocky smirk on his face as suddenly Magda noticed him first. He raised an eyebrow in her direction as she paused in her dancing and then nudged Dimitra with a shove to the shoulder. He didn’t have to be an expert in l*p reading to understand the expletive escaping her lips at being busted.

He held up the bottle of Prosecco. “What are we celebrating ladies? I know it’s none of your birthdays because I have all of your files on my desk after learning the three of you have been sneaking around for years.”

“We just wanted to celebrate and have fun. We sold our program.”

“Why the disguise?” he watched as Magda moved behind Dimitra suddenly no longer the confident woman in leather, she’d been moments ago. He was glad it was Magda wearing the outfit and not Dimitra.

“Because you ruin everything.” Dimitra folded her arms over her chest angrily. He watched as if she were trying to cover up her body in front of him crossing and uncrossing her arms and occasionally yanking on her skirt.

“Sit,” he motioned to the table. While the other two girls immediately did as he instructed, his Dimitra continued to square off with him. f**k. She was brazen and brave. It made his c**k twitch. “I said sit. I have no qualm about putting you over my knee right here in front of everyone. You disrespect me by coming in here and playing games. Sit down. We are going to have a drink.”

The tables were rounded with banquettes around them, and Kostas blocked the two girls from getting out, for the first time getting a good look at Darya Pappas. Miklos noted he looked back at him with a shit-eating grin. Clearly the girl hated his guts and Kostas was reveling in it. His friend always loved a challenge.

Dimitra slid into the booth seat, and he moved to sit beside her, setting the clean shot glasses and the bottle of wine on the table.

“Why the green eyes?” he looked to Dimitra.

“Because if Helios said I had brown eyes you would have known it was me. I wanted to have fun.”

“There are many clubs in LA.”

She rolled her eyes. “As if.”

“Admit it,” he poured the vodka still sitting on the table into a shot glass and held it in Kostas’ direction. “You came here to spy or do something else. Dimitra, is my club going to explode? Did you hack my payment system?”

Kostas stretched his arm along the back of the seat and smirked as Darya shrunk away from him, “Miklos, maybe she just wanted to dance like the big dancing men outside your offices today. It could all be innocent.” He fought a smile as Darya snorted at his joke. He tugged her ponytail, “Ms. Pappas, do not think for one minute I don’t recognize you. Stop shrinking away like a little wallflower, I know you have a mouth on you.”

“Not one I would be bothered to use on you,” Darya spit out and then g*****d as the double-entendre of her words floated around the table. Magda snickered as Dimitra face-palmed and grunted.

“Sweetheart,” Kostas spoke hotly, “I don’t recall asking you to use your mouth on me but if it’s something you want to discuss, I’m up for it.”

Miklos clinked shot glasses with his friend and then smirked at the three squirming women after downing his drink. “Dimitra, did you come here to cause chaos?”

“No!” she made a face, “I told you; we’re celebrating selling our program.”

Miklos looked to Kostas, “sounds fishy to me. What do you think?”

“I think if my wife,” he leaned closer to Darya almost breathing in her ear, “showed up at my club wearing hardly any clothes and was grinding her a*s all over the place, I would consider it to be one of two things.”

“What would those things be Kostas?” Miklos eyes danced as his friend grinned at him.

“Well, it could be your wife is pissed off at you and thinks you are not paying her enough attention, so she is showing you what you’ve been neglecting. Shake your a*s and you’ll come running?”

Miklos gave a nod of acknowledgement, “she has been complaining.” When Dimitra punched the table in frustration he looked to his friend, “perhaps not.”

“Then it can only be the other option.”

“Oh, this should be good,” Dimitra hissed furiously as she ripped the shot glass away from Miklos’ hand and tossed it back. “Tell me Kostas, what, in your infinite wisdom, do you suppose would be my intention to come dancing in a club?”

Miklos’ smile curved his lips as Kostas spoke. He could see his friend’s eyes dancing behind his serious expression.

“Well considering you are all in disguises and it is common knowledge I come every Tuesday night to have a drink with my friends, the Feds sent you here to try to gain intel. I understand Dimitra is trying to replace a way out of her marriage. Perhaps she made a deal with the devil to make it happen. It cannot be coincidence the day they show up at your offices, your wife dons green contacts and has her friends dressing so provocatively. I think we should have security search them for wires.” He paused and gave Miklos a wicked grin, “or we could search them ourselves?”