by Nicole Fox
Before I can react, doors on either side of the room open and burly bodyguards step out. One grabs the senator, another grabs Bella, and the last two aim their sights and weapons on me. Once again, we’re surrounded.
“Did you think I would be unprepared?” my father asks, standing up and folding his hands behind his back. “I was not going to leave myself open to attack while you were loose in the building. Like I said before, I trained you. I’m no fool.”
I turn to face him and realize that the anger flowing through me has been replaced by something strongly resembling pity. I feel bad for my father.
“But you are a fool,” I say, realizing it at the same time the words are coming out of my mouth. “You had a family who loved you. People who were loyal to you. You had more money than most people will ever see in their lives. You had everything, and yet you traded in your family for more money. You traded in your family for guards who only care about the money you can give them.”
“Do not underestimate my men,” he says, glancing nervously at the bodyguards holding Bella and her father.
“What do you think they will do when I offer them money?” I ask, turning to look at the man on my right. He’s young, barely in his twenties, and he blinks nervously when I look at him. “I will give you twenty thousand dollars right now to lower your gun.”
The man glances at my father, eyes wide, and then adjusts his stance.
“I’ll double it,” the senator says, wincing when the bodyguard holding him squeezes tighter.
“Forty thousand dollars.” I shrug. “Seems like a good offer. What do you say, Father? Will you match it?”
My father snorts. “I do not need to. These men will not turn on me.”
The young man looks conflicted, so I turn to the man on my left. He’s middle-aged with gray around his temples and lines around his mouth. “Your friend is hesitating. Would you care to take the deal? Lower your weapon, and we’ll give you forty thousand dollars.”
He blinks once and then lowers his gun. “Deal.”
My father roars just as the man on my right lowers his gun and cries out, “No, the deal was mine.”
“You hesitated,” the other man says.
A fourth voice is added to the melee when Bella kicks the shin of the man holding her. His arm slips up around her face, and she bites his forearm, drawing blood. As soon as he lets go, she draws the gun she had hidden in her waistband and shoots him. The bullet hits his shoulder, but takes him down just the same.
I spin towards Senator McNair, who is fighting with his captor now, and when he realizes I’m focused on him, he ducks down, giving me time and opportunity to put a bullet between the eyes of the guard holding him. The man stumbles back against the wall and then slides down it, eyes blank and glassy.
But another shot rings out, and Bella’s dad folds over and falls to his knees. Bella screams, and I spin around and fire blindly at the middle-aged man. Two shots hit him, and he goes down, dropping his gun on the way. I kick the gun into the corner and then turn to face the young guard. His eyes are wide, face pale, and he’s holding his gun like it’s a life raft and he’s sinking in the ocean.
I point my gun at his chest and tilt my head to the side. “How about instead of money, I let you have your life?”
“Draw your weapon,” my father cries. “Fight them.”
The guard looks at my father and then, without further hesitation, drops his weapon, steps over his fallen friends, and walks out the door. As soon as the office door shuts behind him, Bella drops to her knees beside her dad and my own father begins to spin a new story.
“Yet another challenge you’ve conquered,” he says, clapping his hands slowly. “I’m proud.”
“Fuck you,” I say, spitting at his desk. “You would have sat there and watched me be shot and killed before your eyes without a drop of doubt. Don’t lie to me.”
“Does it matter how I felt then?” he asks. “I prefer to live in the present.”
“When ‘then’ is one minute ago, I’d say it matters,” I say.
My father shakes his head. “No, it doesn’t. I feel differently now. I’m ready to offer you a position in The Society. Clearly, you would make a worthy partner, and I would be stronger with you by my side.”
“You’d be stronger with your entire family by your side,” I say. “The way it was before. Or, at least, the way I thought it was. But you have always been by yourself. You made that choice. You chose to break away from the family and start your own organization. You chose to betray us and then kill us off when we became a burden. You’re the reason you’re in this position. You could have been the strongest man in the city—maybe the country. But instead, you took the risk to strike out on your own, and it didn’t pay off.”
His mask slips for a moment. He glares at me before he’s able to find his smile. “Yuri, enough of this. You have had your fun with the bitch, but she isn’t worth giving up the power you can have. Fucking her is not worth the wealth you stand to inherit. You can pay for pussy. And besides that, what else can she give you? Are you really going to throw everything away because your moral compass is too literal to see shades of gray? Because that seems foolish to me, and I’ve never taken you to be a fool. So, the choice is yours, son. You can have wealth and power or you can have the girl. Who are you going to choose: your family or a bitch?”
I’m vibrating with rage, but I take a deep breath and look him in the eye. “My family.”
Then I shoot him in the chest.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Yuri
I’m sitting at the same table I sat at the first night Bella and I stayed in the hotel. She was wearing the red dress I bought for her with no panties underneath, and we danced. She hated me, but I already loved her. My feelings for her had already begun to change me, had already softened me in ways that would never be able to be undone. And for that, I was grateful.
“A lot has changed since the last time we were here.” Mike Thomas was also at the hotel that night, and now he’s here again.
“A lot has,” I agree. “But not everything. You’re still with the CIA.”
“And you’re still with The Petrov family,” he says, taking a sip of his drink. “Though I hear you’re leading them now.”
I shrug. “I’m sure you hear a lot of things. Isn’t that your job?”
“More or less.” He looks around the room, his eyes catching on a red-headed waitress carrying a tray of food to a table of foreign businessmen in the corner. She’s pretty, but I’ve seen better. Much better. When he looks back at me, he’s all business. “Do you have the thumb drive?”
I fish the small technology out of my pocket and hand it to him, glad to be rid of it. “This is everything we have. I like you okay, Mike, but I won’t take kindly if you call on me for help again. After this, we’re done.”
He drops the drive in the inside pocket of his suit jacket and holds his hands up in front of his chest in a small show of surrender. “Done. You’ve handed over everything you had on Ivan and everything Ivan promised me about The Society, so I have no further use for you.”
It has been two weeks since he died, and I still don’t know how deep my father’s deception ran. Was it just the family and The Society? Were there more? The desire to know pulled me into his office day after day for the first week. I’d stay there until early in the morning, only leaving when Bella would ask me to go with her to visit her dad at the hospital. He hated me and still does, but she insisted visiting him would change his mind. So, I went. But if I wasn’t at the hospital, I was rifling through my father’s papers, looking for every clue I missed over all the years we worked together.
On some level, I wanted to figure out when the life I’d thought I had had ended, and unfortunately, with every discovery, I learned that life had never existed. The loyalty my father spoke of was not an honor code by which he wanted us to navigate life. It was to keep us compliant, to keep us from asking questions. Everything he taught
me was for his own benefit. He taught me to carry out his orders without question and trust him with my life. And I did. Until the very end.
“You also have no reason to look into our activities again, right?” I toss a twenty on the table to cover our drinks. Mike reaches for his wallet, eyebrows raised, but I wave him away. “My treat.”
He smiles a thank you and then nods. “From this moment on, you are the FBI’s business, and hell if I’m going to mix myself up with those assholes.”
I barely stifle a laugh. “Aren’t you all on the same team? The feds?’”
Mike Thomas tosses back the last swig of his drink and grimaces. “That shows how much you know.”
He pats the pocket with the thumb drive, tips his head, and walks out of the hotel at an easy, casual pace. As soon as he’s gone, a familiar shadow sidles up next to me.
“Tell me we aren’t staying here for dinner,” Bella says, sliding her hand down my thigh. “I mean, it’s a bit nostalgic and all, but I’m over hotel restaurants.”
I turn towards her and catch her red-stained lips with mine. She tastes like vanilla and a dinner mint, and I want to skip dinner and eat her instead. But I promised. Her father is out of the hospital and resting comfortably at home, and I promised Bella a night on the town. A normal dinner date like a normal couple. After I met with the CIA agent, of course.
“No, we aren’t eating here,” I say, pulling away and looking down at the figure she cuts in her dress. It’s black and slinky, clinging to all of the curves I love so much before flaring out around her thighs. She looks like a classic Hollywood starlet, her black hair curled at her temples and pinned above her ear. I reach out and pinch a lock of her hair in my finger. “I have a reservation, but suddenly I’m not hungry.”
Bella stands up and moves away from me quickly, wagging a finger. “No. This is not going to devolve into sex before we even get to dinner. I’ve had the carnal side of Yuri. I want to see Yuri the gentleman.”
I close the distance between her, pulling her body against mine, letting the warmth of her sink into me, and bend down to nip at her nose. “What if the gentleman side doesn’t exist?”
Her eyebrow raises slightly, and she stretches up on her toes until her lips brush against mine. Then, before I can pull away, she bites my lower lip between her teeth, hard. I jerk away from her with a yelp, and she gives me a deadly smile. “Then my ladylike side will fail to show up tonight.”
Even with my lip throbbing, dammit if she isn’t sexy. I wrap an arm around her waist and lead her from the hotel bar, every eye glued to us, trying to decide whether I want the ladylike Bella or not.
***
Artifice is the hottest restaurant in the city. It’s a hipster honey trap that lures them in with repurposed barn wood, smooth glass surfaces, and organic everything, but it’s also home of the best ribeye in the city and has a killer view from the private penthouse dining room.
“This view is incredible,” Bella says, gazing out the window at the skyline and the deep blue water stretching into the equally blue sky.
I admire her. In the weeks since everything happened, she has come alive before me. The circles under her eyes are gone, along with the hollows in her cheeks. She’s filling out, looking healthy and strong, and if possible, looking even more beautiful than before. “It really is.”
She blushes when she sees me looking at her, and turns her cheek into her shoulder. “I see you’re letting your gentleman show just a little.”
I smirk. “Only because you bit me.”
She reaches across the table and takes my hand. “Since it got us here, I have no regrets.”
“Where is ‘here’?” I ask, swirling my wine before taking a drink.
Bella narrows her eyes and bites back a smile. “Is that a trick question?”
“It’s a tricky question,” I admit, sitting up and resting my forearms on the table. “Our relationship started because my father told me to kidnap you, and now we’re out to dinner together. So, are you still my captive?”
Bella’s lips slip into a pout. “Are you trying to ask me if I want to role-play later?”
I nearly shiver at the thought and then quickly refocus my thoughts, which are rapidly turning dirty. “No, I’m asking who we are to one another.”
I never thought I would be the kind of man who wanted to define a relationship. Before Bella, I was fine with a long string of one-night stands and booty calls. I was happy just to have a warm body to help relieve the stress, but now, I can’t imagine being with any woman other than Bella. I can’t imagine not seeing her smiling up at me, her blue eyes bright and shining with laughter. I can’t imagine not wrapping my arms around her small waist and running my hands down her hourglass curves. In the short time we’ve known one another, I’ve fallen head over heels in love with her, and I have no idea if she feels the same way.
After all, I did kidnap her.
“That is complicated,” Bella says, grabbing the complimentary glass of ice water and taking a sip. “After all, you did kidnap me.”
I nod and tuck my hands in my lap so she won’t see my fingers shaking.
“But we’ve been through a lot since then. I’ve come to see you as much more than some mindless brute who threw me in the back of an SUV, and I hope you see me as more than a victim.”
“Of course I do,” I say, surprised she would ever think otherwise. “You’re incredible. The strongest person I know.”
She gives me a soft smile and then returns to chewing on her bottom lip. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything,” I say. And I mean it. I’d tell her my deepest, darkest secrets if she asked. Anything to make her mine.
“That night in ... Ivan’s office,” she says, avoiding referring to him as my father. “He gave you a choice.”
“My family or the bitch,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“And you chose your family.” Bella looks up at me, her blue eyes wide and searching. “What did you mean by that?”
“Honestly, I didn’t think about it at the time,” I say. “He called you a bitch and then wanted to refer to himself as my family, and I wanted to show him that he wasn’t my family. Not anymore. Not after what he’d done.”
“Oh.” Bella shifts in her chair, folding her napkin in her lap. “Okay.”
“But,” I continue. “I’ve realized in the two weeks since that I was choosing my idea of family over his. My father taught me that family was nothing but blind loyalty and devotion no matter what. He taught me that he was my family and the only person I could count on. But I learned that family was more than that. Is more than that. Family isn’t about blood or loyalty. It’s about love and choice. My father chose money over me, so he isn’t my family.”
She blinks quickly, her eyes glassy. “And what did you choose?”
I tip my head to the side. That answer is easy. I smile at her. “I chose you.”
Immediately, tears spill out of her eyes, and I’m so unprepared for it that I start and then slide around the table to sit in the chair next to her. “Bella? What’s wrong?”
She laughs through her tears and wipes at her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Nothing. Everything is perfect.”
I wipe a stray tear from her cheek and grab her chin, lifting her face to mine. “Then why are you crying?”
Her lower lip trembles and more tears start to come. It takes me a moment to realize they’re happy. She shrugs. “The hormones?”
My forehead wrinkles as I stare at her, trying to understand if she’s saying what I think she’s saying. When her eyes glance down to her stomach nervously, my heart clenches.
“Are you pregnant?”
Her smile is almost a wince as she nods. “I just found out this morning. Are you mad?”
I grab her hands and bundle them in my own before bringing them to my chest. “Mad? How could I be mad?”
She’s staring at me like I’m a mythical creature. “Because it’s unplanned and unexpected and a k
id is a huge responsibility that will change everything, and we haven’t even decided what we are to one another, so throwing a kid into the mix feels crazy, and—”
I wrap my hand around the back of her neck and pull her to me, silencing her worries with a kiss. She’s stiff for a moment before she sinks into it, sighing against my mouth. When we pull away, she looks dreamy.
“None of that matters,” I say, drawing my thumb down her cheek. “Besides, I know what you are to me.”
She raises a dark brow. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I say, pulling her close again, rubbing my nose against hers. “You’re my family.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bella
Three Months Later
I pinch the fabric around my waist and sigh. “There’s no way this is going to zip.”
Ivy laughs and rubs her hands together. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, my friend. And I have a will.”
“And I have a growing human taking up residence in my abdomen,” I say, turning to the side to study my small bump in the mirror.
“Didn’t you just get the dress fitted three weeks ago?”
“Yeah, but the baby was a pomegranate then. Now it’s a banana.”
Ivy scrunches her face in confusion. “Wouldn’t a banana be smaller? Slimmer?”
“I don’t know. That’s just what my pregnancy app says, and regardless, this dress is way tighter than it was three weeks ago. Even if I get it zipped, I’ll squish the baby.”
Ivy circles around me, lips twisted to the side. She looks killer in her deep purple bridesmaid dress. Since she’s the only bridesmaid in my rushed wedding, I let her pick it out herself. I wasn’t much up to dress shopping between bouts of morning sickness. The hem reaches to a respectable mid-thigh, but the cut of the top is daring. If she doesn’t go home with one or more of Yuri’s brothers, it will be a miracle. “I don’t think you can squish a baby. It’s all protected in there.”
“How would you know?” I ask. “You’ve never been pregnant.”
