by Nicole Fox
He bows his head, kissing the curve of my neck. The heat of his skin transfers to me and the heat rolls through me in quick waves, sending shivers through me. When he looks at me again, the world becomes small enough that I can’t recall anything, but the ache, the vulnerability, the way his body—tattooed and scarred—belongs to me in this moment.
He cradles my face in his hands. The callouses on his palms are rough, almost scratching my face as my body moves with his thrusts. He places a kiss on my forehead, my cheeks, and my lips.
I open my legs wider. His thrusts pick up their pace. He knows how to hit me in the exact right spot and I can feel the coming tide. I stare at the red handprint tattooed on his shoulder, trying to block out the sensation to make the moment last. I place my hand over the tattoo, but my hand is smaller than the outline. My fingernails dig into his skin as he drives into me, small moans catching in my throat.
He bows his head again, but this time he nips at my shoulder. My hips buck, meeting his thrusts. Our bodies beat against each other as every collision takes me closer and closer to the edge.
When the crashing pleasure comes, I barely feel him come inside me. It’s all-encompassing and must be what it’s like to pass into heaven.
Our sweaty bodies press against each other, my hands ending up near his waist. When he slides down beside me, I entangle myself in his body.
It feels so wrong and so right all at once.
17
Maksim
The morning after the ice-cream parlor, Cassie and I have dinner together in the dining room. The way she laughs is something I know I’ll always remember.
The day after that, we drink wine on the terrace, talking about our histories. She tells me about how she once received a present from her father with a bloody fingerprint on the wrapping paper. I tell her about how my first murder was a test by the Bratva and I killed the man without hesitation or regret after seeing him hit his wife.
The day after that, Cassie and I watch one of Lily’s soccer games. We go to my hotel’s restaurant afterward. Cassie and Lily enjoy hearing about the celebrities that have stayed at the hotel and their antics.
The day after that, we have her infamous grilled cheese, followed by sex in the kitchen. Every time we’ve slept together, it’s better than the last, and this time is no different. I’d normally get bored of a woman after the third or fourth time, but every time I touch her, it’s an addictive high.
Now, it’s been six days since I showed her the Bratva’s secrets and nothing is tedious or trivial anymore. I thought I’d be bored with monogamy and resent coming home to the same woman, but I’m always anxious to see her again and when I do, everything else becomes negligible.
I sit in the hotel basement. Yury and Ivan are still recovering, though highly irritable after nearly a week of spending every waking moment next to each other in hospital beds.
“Boss,” Yury says. “The doctor made a mistake keeping me here. I don’t need to be here.”
“Ay!” Ivan scratches at the inside of his elbow, where the IV needle is taped down. “The boss would have broken us out by now if he thought we should leave. Don’t be insubordinate.”
“I ain’t, you shithead,” Yury growls. “Shut the fuck up for once in your goddamn life. I’m talking to Mr. Akimov.”
“The doctor still wants to keep you for another day. It’s a precaution. You can leave tomorrow night,” I say.
Ivan sneers at Yury.
“Change your face before I change it for you,” Yury snarls.
I shouldn’t have come—it’s too much of a liability for me to be this close to two gunshot victims in my own hotel—but after losing so many of my men, it’s good to see the ones who were saved.
My phone rings. I pull it out.
It’s Gianluigi’s number.
I leave the two men to argue, stepping out of the hotel basement as I answer the call. “Good afternoon, Gianluigi,” I say. “Do you have the contracts ready?”
“Yes,” Gianluigi says, sounding like a sulking child. “They’re prepared. Where are we meeting?”
“In the conference room at the Akimov Suites in an hour. Just go to the front desk, tell them you’re meeting me, and they’ll direct you to the right room.”
“And you’ll bring Cassandra and her daughter? I can’t be certain that you won’t end up killing them, regardless of our deal, unless they’re in my custody.”
I clench my jaw. I bring up the memory of Cassie’s laugh and slowly relax. “That wasn’t part of our agreement,” I say.
“You told me you were holding them captive,” he says. “And you’d kill Cassandra if I didn’t hand over everything. Why would I agree to this deal if you didn’t hand over both of them?”
I crush an ant underneath my shoe. “I’ll set them free. There’s no reason for me to bring them to the hotel.”
“I won’t sign anything without seeing them there.”
“Fine,” I say. “Be at the hotel in an hour.”
I hang up. When it comes to Cassie, I have a blind spot. I hate to admit it, but I’d rather see my weakness than ignore it. I should have considered that Gianluigi would want to see Cassie and Lily as proof that they’re alive. It’s a problem. Not only will Cassie know I’ve turned her into a bargaining chip, but the idea of putting her within arm’s length of her father is sickening. She may not accept that she’s carried around trauma he left imprinted in her, but I’ve heard enough and seen her face enough during her recollections to know it’s true.
If I take her and Lily to the hotel, I will lose them. It will mean that I managed to win the war while losing the most significant battle.
I dial Cassie’s number. She doesn’t pick up. She must be in the middle of researching or writing.
I head toward my truck. I could convince her we’re at the hotel for a completely different reason, but she’d figure out the truth quickly enough.
I can still win this war. I can take everything from Gianluigi and lose nothing at the same time. It’s just a matter of knowing how to twist the knife without getting cut.
In my home office, I find the contracts I had our lawyers write up. It’s a power play, a precaution, a final jab. I don’t trust Gianluigi to write up the contracts, but it will be good to see his face when he realizes I wasted his time and made him think he has some tiny fraction of power when he’s powerless. It’s one more thing to take from him.
The door swings open. I lurch for the top right desk drawer, where my Smith & Wesson hides. A wave of relief comes over me as I see it’s Cassie, but as I take in her face, I see the cracks of distress and sorrow sinking deeper into her skin.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, moving around the desk to come closer to her. She takes a quick step back, her arm rising to come between us. I stop.
“I was on the call,” she says.
“On call?” I ask in confusion, thinking about doctors. I take a step toward her, but as soon as I do, she takes a step back again, halfway out the door now.
“No,” she says emphatically. “I was on the phone. My father had it on a conference call.”
We stare at each other, the pain cracking and spreading inside me. Of course. Gianluigi is a snake in the grass. “Cassie, it’s not—” I start.
“No,” she cuts me off, her arm swinging down between us like she’s cutting me off at the knees. “I … I’ve been waiting for you to come back, so I can ask you why you threatened to kill me and Lily, and why you made a deal to trade me to my father like I’m some … like I’m a trafficking victim or some face cream for you to hide cocaine in. Like my worth is only equal to whatever my father will trade you for me.”
I tighten my fist, setting it down on the edge of the desk. “I didn’t threaten to kill Lily. Your father was manipulating what I said.”
“I heard what you said,” she says. “Are you also denying that you threatened to kill me?”
I bite the inside of my lip, grinding the skin between my teeth. “Y
ou told me that you didn’t talk to your father.”
“I don’t,” she says. “Is that all you care about?”
“You’re the one attacking me,” I say, irritation starting to turn my vision red. I was so fucking close. “But it sounds like you fucking lied to me. Maybe everything you told me about him was a lie, too.”
She shakes her head at me, her arms folding over her abdomen. I know she didn’t lie about the things her father did, but when she has so much ammunition against me, I need to knock her down before she can tear me to pieces. I need to hate her before she hates me.
“I didn’t talk to my father,” she says. “But he kept calling. I answered to tell him to stop, but he told me that he was going to call both of us and prove that you’ve been using me—that you said that I was your hostage and you were going to give me up in exchange for the Balducci territory. I didn’t believe him. I stayed on that call, so I could laugh in his face when he tried to control me again with his deceit. But you were completely willing to do it. You had the balls to not only threaten my life but use an innocent child as a bargaining chip.”
Her voice has become shaky and tears have gathered in her eyes. She is about to shatter all over my office. It’s a nightmare. The pain my chest is getting wider and deeper. I can’t take it much longer. I need distance.
“You knew what this was from the beginning,” I force myself to say. My voice begins a bit unsteady, but it recovers quickly. “You know what our deal was. You agreed to it. You can’t put all of the blame on me when you were the one who walked into my house and told me that you wanted to partake in the arrangement.”
When she looks at me, it’s almost the same way she looked at me when we first met—the unease, the coldness, the bitterness—but underneath that, there is an immeasurable pain that she barely manages to hide as she wipes away the tears before they come down.
“I sent my story to Tom to publish,” she says. “I sent it right before I came in here. I just thought you should know.”
With a small nod as a goodbye, she walks out of my office. I let her go.
Words are weapons and every word in Cassie’s article is a bullet, gunning down my empire ruthlessly.
The businesses directly mentioned in the article—the Akimov Suites, the shipping dock, the nightclubs, Dunlop’s Bookstore, and a couple of others—are shut down by the NYPD as they investigate Cassie’s claims. I’m fairly certain that I managed to scrub them clean of any evidence before the article reached the public, but the uncertainty nips at my heels. I shut down my other businesses and halt all our operations. It’s necessary, but it deprives the Bratva of any means of bolstering our defenses against our enemies, who have smelled blood and are circling around us. The NYPD is breathing so heavily down my neck, I can feel the condensation on my skin.
Gianluigi, of course, reneges on our deal and his Mafia starts committing more and more emboldened attacks. He knows that I’ll only risk retaliating if it’s absolutely necessary and he knows how to toe that line.
The Bratva is hemorrhaging. Our finances, our morale, our power—all massive losses. It’s a new low, but through it all, I find myself standing in front of my bed, staring at Cassie’s side and recalling the way she slept with her knees tucked up toward her stomach. I remember the way her hand felt on my arm, a subconscious habit while she was sleeping. We made something here, but it wasn’t tangible, so now I have nothing. I lost it all and somehow, a woman is the direst loss.
If I messed up my one shot at true happiness, the bullets aren’t her words—they’re my words.
I leave the bedroom. I keep going downstairs. I pass through the basement, going to a metal door and unlocking it with a key card. When I step in, various screens flash on. Three security cameras are pointing at my front yard, another three pointing at the backyard, several of them showing images of my closed businesses, and one camera I had installed in Cassie’s apartment without her knowledge shows me her kitchen and living room—the blessings of a small apartment.
It was before everything unfolded between us—I placed it there at the same time I put the rose on her kitchen counter. I only checked it a few times. I should have been more wary of what she could do on her own.
She’s there now, working at her laptop. She’s irritatingly relaxed. Her eyes scan the screen. Her arm moves every few seconds to move the mouse or click on something. She picks up her cup of instant soup, blowing on a spoonful before taking a bite. Even when I want to hate her for destroying everything and for the guilt roiling inside me, I’m enraptured by her. Her dark hair flows over her shoulder as she leans forward, her face scrunching up in concentration. When she gets lost in thought, she lets the spoon linger in her mouth for a second before tapping it against her bottom lip.
She finishes the soup, taking the cup over to her trash can and throwing it out. When she sits down in front of her laptop again, she and I notice the grilled cheese near her elbow at the same time. She must have made it, but she looks at it like it’s perplexing and undesirable.
She abruptly stands up, picking up the plate, and she throws it against her kitchen counter. I can’t hear anything, but the sight of the dish shattering is enough for me to hear it in my head. She sits back down, closing the laptop, and stares at the mess she made for several seconds. She rests her head against the top of the laptop. As her shoulders start to shake, I know she’s crying.
It’s hard to watch, but I keep my eyes on the screen until my own vision starts to blur and I have to leave.
18
Cassandra
“I’ve never been to this place,” Lily says, picking up the menu. I wasn’t sure if Lily was too young to go to a more sophisticated restaurant or too old to go to one of those diners with the thick plastic covering the tables to deal with the consistent spills and the tears of toddlers’ parents. I compromised with a bakery café that served paninis. When I don’t say anything, she looks up at me over the menu. It’s so eerie seeing someone who looks so much like me, yet so much more beautiful and innocent. “Why doesn’t your husband come with you anymore? You guys always used to come together.”
It’s been over a month since she’s seen him. I almost thought I’d lucked out and she’d forgotten about him. As I observe her face, I realize she’s been holding onto this question.
I glance over her head, where a hanging flat-screen TV is showing the news. They’re covering another murder, which is the new normal, along with reports about an increase in gang wars, rapes, assaults, the destruction of various stores and houses, and a spike in dirty heroin deaths.
“He’s been busy,” I say, the lie and the truth of it colliding in my head.
“He was fun,” she says, picking up her ham and cheese panini. “Remember when we ate at his restaurant after my soccer game? I loved that cake.”
Maksim had the pastry chef make a mini fudge cake with frosting that made it look like a soccer ball caught in the soccer net. Lily was over the moon about it, hesitating several times before sticking her fork in it to take a bite because she didn’t want to ruin it. Maksim assured her that he could have more baked for her.
Now, that’s never going to happen.
“I remember,” I say, tearing at the edges of my panini. “He’s just super busy right now though. Maybe we can find out who the pastry chef was. Lily … have you seen the news at all in the last month?”
She shakes her head. “Mrs. Neal likes to watch that talk show, Wyatt & Richardson, and those shows where people fix up their house. Mr. Neal watches football and shows about Alaska. They might watch the news after we all go to bed. Has Mr. Maksim been on the news?”
I’ve been wary of Maksim retaliating against Lily since I can’t constantly keep an eye on her, but somewhere deep in my bones, I know he wouldn’t hurt her. I know he was being honest when he said he wouldn’t hurt her, that he doesn’t hurt innocent people. But I can’t shake the fact that he was willing to sell Lily and me out for territory that he only wanted bec
ause he knew it would hurt my father. If he was willing to do all of this to get at my father, how could I trust him with my daughter? What would happen if he decided that my daughter was what my father cared about more than anything?
Nothing. He wouldn’t hurt her. But I need to believe there’s a risk, so I won’t keep remembering how good it felt to be intertwined with him and how he knows me better than anyone else ever will.
“Not exactly,” I tell Lily. “Just his businesses are in some trouble. That’s why he’s been so busy.”
She frowns, focusing on her panini. I look away from her, desperate to avoid this conversation. The TV catches my attention again as a newscaster stands in front of one of the apartment complexes near the Akimov Suites.
The newscaster nervously glances over her shoulder. “Several residents of Jones’ apartment complex are talking about leaving, despite their lease agreements. After the double murder from three days ago, this arson and murder have them on edge. In the Murray murders, the police suspect that it was related to an attempt to extort Cameron Murray, who owned Cameron Murray Boutique, but no one has been arrested. This second murder of Michelle Knapp is under investigation, but many residents are losing confidence in the police’s ability to quell the violence and they’re looking into other living arrangements.”
Michelle Knapp. The employee at the Akimov Suites that Maksim introduced me to. The one who Maksim said wasn’t involved in the ugly underbelly of the city.
An innocent.
I cover my mouth with my hand, shock shivering down my spine.
“Mrs. Cassie?” Lily asks. “What’s wrong?”
I swallow, looking down at her. “I—I just think it’s sad that … I’m sad about what happened to one of the women on the news.”
