MATTEO (book 2)

25. MATTEO

Oleg walks into my office. "You have a nice warehouse here, Reign. All you Italians snatch the good warehouses."

The Reign Warehouse is an old mansion. It looks completely normal from the outside, so normal that people often stop to take pictures outside of the building, completely unaware of what goes on inside of it.

"Maybe if this business ordeal goes good, I can tell you who our supplier is." I motion for him to sit opposite me.

He takes the seat, looking around. "We need locations for smuggling, but everything we view is owned by Italians."

I nod my head. It's how we keep people like him out of New York.

"Russians own loads on the North." I raise an eyebrow.

"But they're cafes, not a lot of business comes through, half of them are closing because they cannot afford to keep it afloat."

He isn't the leader, he's merely a Russian with money and power who ranks higher than most people.

"If they can't afford to keep cafes they won't have a chance with anything else, you know that."

"Your buildings are cheap-"

"I cannot give you any of my buildings. 90% of them are occupied and the others are on Italian territory."

"This is the proposal. I have been given permission to hand over the entire south side over to you in return for a portion of the west."

Absolutely fucking not.

Russians place themselves where the shouldn't be, the Italians react. The juniors, the associates, the capos. They all react, and it isn't pretty. It will start a gang war and at the moment, I cannot be bothered for that.

Just like if the Italians place themselves where they shouldn't be, like Russian territories, the Russians will react.

"I can't make that decision myself but you would udnerstand if i told you the likelihood of that happening is very, very low."

"We should form an alliance, Matteo."

I laugh.

He's being serious.

Oh.

My laugh fades.

"Look, Oleg, while I like that girl of yours, and I like watching your other girls, there's nothing more to it. We are still enemies. Now, if you want to discuss serious smuggling and my vendors, and how we get them into the country I'd be happy to assist but we can't be... friends." I lean back.

He nods his head. "Where's your showgirl? I want a drink."

I call Malory, knowing she's here for this reason. She struts in with a bikini on, barely covering her nipples and gets to being a show girl.

She pours him and I a drink and then stands in the corner of the room, a blank expression on her face.

He talks about how they smuggle in guns, and asks for advice. We pretty much do the same thing, only instead of night time, we arrive in broad daylight with women going to the docks to pick them up. Police are less suspecting of them.

We chit chat for a while. I learn a lot about how the Russians do stuff we didn't previously know before and that's because he overshares far too much.

"Where do you get your girls from, Oleg?"

He smiles. "There's a guy, he does all kind. Children, men and women. Sex and organ."

"American?"

He shakes his head no. "Canadian. He hosts a meet once a month, each time with new people."