They pulled into a parking lot in the center of Bucharest, where a young gypsy man tried to help them park in hopes of earning a tip. Ana handed him a ten lei bill and shooed him off as her brother locked the car.

"So, tell me what you've been up to. Did you get mixed up with that guy again? What was his name? The one you met in London?" Adam asked, throwing his arm around his sister’s shoulders again while they strolled down the alleyway, under the blinking lights of some faulty night lamp.

"No, I've gotten over him. I don't need any of that, the guy was already getting ideas…”

Adam raised an eyebrow, "Define ideas.”

“Wanted me to live with him, meet his mother. I told him I don't have time for that sort of thing," she explained, making him frown. It hit a bit too close to home.

“So, he was serious about you,” he felt the need to defend the sad asshole he didn’t even know.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t serious about him. And I met a new guy, from Dubai,” Ana paused to point out and laugh at a woman in high heels trying to navigate the stone-paved roads of Lipscani. "Look at that fucking idiot. What kinda mindless dickhead is she trying to impress by breaking her ankles? Common, let’s grab a bite fast, I wanna drink.”

"If all these guys trying to impress you knew how you eat and curse like a convict, they'd be less enthusiastic," Adam joked.

"I'm a lady, what are you talking about?" she lightly shoved him, feigning offense. "But only when I feel like it. Today, I'm a thug, because my little brother needs a wingman!”

"Sure, what would I do without my bodyguard? You're a thug all the time, sis, you just dress it up well," Adam retorted and they paused to order two overloaded gyros.

Ana was the first to dig into her treat and she ate with such gusto that she turned at least a few heads.

“I need to keep up appearances; how else would I get all these suckers to fall for me?”

They fell in step again, this time walking slower as they enjoyed their late dinner.

“All this bad karma you’re racking will catch up to you one day, Ana,” Adam warned sagely, licking the sauce at the corner of his mouth. “Mark my words, one day you’ll meet a guy and fall so bad, you’ll follow him to the end of the world.”

She looked disgusted at the prospect.

"No one's going to mess me up. I promised mom we're going to be picking up guys until we're seventy, and then we're going to raise cats together."

"I'm sure that's exactly what mom wants for you. She'll be so proud to see you playing the femme fatale at seventy," Adam retorted, lifting his gyros in a mock toast. “So did you go see her when you got home?”

“Yeah, took her to the pool, gave her one of my swimming suits. Should’ve seen the guys turning their heads after her.”

The clubs and bars in downtown Bucharest were packed. The city always got raving reviews for its nightlife, but to the Stroe brothers nothing of the sparkling lights and loud music was novelty. To them, it was like returning to an old playground.

“Aren’t you a sweetheart,” Adam laughed. “You know what? I think you might just have something in that ice cold chest of yours. Probably a can of worms, but they’re good, decent, family-orientated worms.”

Ana nearly choked on what was left of her gyros with a loud snort of laughter.

“Family lovin’ worms? Damn right, my worms… all my worms, and all my cockroaches too love your stupid ass, baby bro.”

“You can shove those cockroaches where you shove all the dubious assholes and desperate lesbians.”

“Now you sound like the Adam I know and love!” She seemed satisfied as they stopped in front of one of the older buildings, the bar being past a stone archway and down below, underground. “Now let’s drink and screw the tiny woman to corporate hell!”

And drink they did, but their private party was crashed when Ioana, the team’s mechanic, called Adam to check on him, and Ana answered the phone for her brother who was ordering them more drinks from the bar.

The dyke didn’t need any further invitation than hearing Ana Stroe was in town; in thirty minutes she was in the bar with Adam’s programmer in toe: a tall, lanky farmer boy with a killer mustache, and a mellow attitude, named Tudor Tudosie, to everyone’s endless amusement. They called him Titi.

Ioana was a tall, androgynous woman, often mistaken for a skater dude – something she took as a compliment on most days. She and Titi had been Adam’s best friends since their first day at Politehnica, Bucharest’s engineering and robotics University. And she had been crushing on Ana for just as long.

The newcomers were greeted with hugs and more shots of Jäger, cheering to their team’s success and the first ROACH contract, but as all drunken parties tend to, the discussion steered towards more embarrassing subjects, with a bit of help from the ever-gracious Ana.

“Did you guys hear about what that miniature bossy bitch did to my poor baby bro?” she asked, drinking from her tequila mixed beer like the thug she was for the evening.

“Ana, for fuck’s sake, I told you I don’t wanna talk about it!”

It was too late though, with Ioana on one side and Titi on the other, Adam was already served brotherly pats on the back in hopes that he would break down and share all the dirt.

“He just needs more drinks, and I need a marguerita after all this beer.” the elder Stroe sibling commented, ignoring how Ioana’s hand had somehow found its way to her thigh, even as the other was patting Adam sympathetically. Ana moved to sit up but Titi was quick to stop her.

“No no, you stay here, I serve you my queen” it was not just Titi’s looks that were over the top, his entire personality was like a walking, talking absurd theatre.

“Now, attaboy,” she praised, pleased. “Bless that mustache of yours.”

“See, you appreciate me unlike Adam!” Titi complained, already turning for the bar.

"I don’t appreciate shit right now,” the lead engineer declared, emptying his glass. “Will shave my fucking head and go live in the mountains. Wanna know what happened? I got rejected. Haha. Let’s drink to that,” he sounded uncharacteristically gloomy for Adam.

Titi paused and turned. Ioana gaped, frozen mid pat on his back.

Ana took another dramatically long sip from her drink. “The King is dead,” she confirmed.

The party ended as per tradition for their small, unlikely group. They drank until the sun was nearly rising, then concluded their night by crashing just outside of town, where ‘Tantica’, Titi’s family matriarch – mother of five, grandmother of eighteen, and great grandmother of six, led their family business of organic cucumbers with a golden fist. The oversized family lived on a farm, dominated by the main building that looked like some drunk architect took five different house projects and pieced them together in a psychedelic mosaic.

Exhausted from his flight and all the brooding, Adam was the first to fall asleep in one of the guest rooms, and Titi was next sent to sleep by ‘Tantica’ for being ‘disgustingly drunk’.

That left Ana Stroe to go smoke in the courtyard under ‘Tantica’s’ old walnut tree, and Ioana was quick to follow. Leaning against the tree’s bark, the mechanic winked at the gorgeous red-haired woman.

“You know I can’t keep my eyes off you,” she started smoothly, but ended with a drunk grin and a wink. “So… do I get to fuck you on the stove like Ion fucked Ana?”

Ana laughed, blowing the smoke. “No shit, Ioana Marcu quoting literature?”

Ioana shrugged, running a hand through her short mohawk to mess it awkwardly. “That’s the only part I remembered from the book?”

“Can you even fuck me, Ioane? Have what it takes?” Ana teased, blowing the smoke towards the other woman who lost no time in pulling her in a deep, passionate kiss that tasted like expensive cigarettes.

“Can I?! I can go all night long for you.”

“Less talk, more action,” Ana interrupted, pulling away to lead the other woman towards the back of the house, where the hay stacks were kept for the horses. She lay down straight in the hay, reaching out a hand.

Ioana leaned forward, intent on lying over the temptress and capturing her lips, but she was roughly pushed downwards instead. Ana pulled down her borrowed knee length sweatpants, revealing expensive lace lingerie.

“Fuck it, Ana, you’re something else, I can’t…”

“Shhh,” Ana sounded both commanding and impatient as her black painted nails dug in the shaved sides of the younger woman’s scalp. “Get to work, Ioane,” she instructed, leaning her head back, her hair vibrant in the dull colors of the hay.

She dragged from her cigarette again when her sexy lingerie was pulled aside, and a moist, experienced tongue touched her. She blew the smoke up to the wooden beams of the stable, but never closed her eyes. Her eyes fixed the ceiling while she made the other woman work long and hard for a prize she had no intention of giving.