Kiss Me (Kiss of Death Book 2)

by LP Lovell

  His words make me want to shred that jacket from his shoulders, but instead I snort and roll my eyes. Distance. I need distance from him. “Romantic.”

  “Your idea of romance is a knife fight.”

  I shrug one shoulder. “I don’t see any knives.”

  “Ah, that reminds me…” He takes his wallet out of his pocket and opens it. He pulls something from inside the coin pouch and holds it up in front of my face.

  “My blade.” I take the tiny silver blade from between his fingers, inspecting it.

  “I pulled it from some guy’s neck in the foyer after your little bloodbath.”

  I smile and slide it back into the cuff at my wrist. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll be back in a few hours.” He eyes me meaningfully—in other words, don’t do anything stupid.

  “Try not to kill anyone,” I say. “I’d hate to think of you having fun without me,” I say.

  He smirks, placing one hand on my hip as he leans in and brushes his lips over mine. “Power isn’t bought with mercy, Morte.” I bite my bottom lip.

  “No, it’s paid for in blood.” I push onto my tiptoes and press my mouth to his, swiping my tongue over his lip. His fingers flinch into my hip as he groans into my mouth.

  “A few hours,” he mumbles, and then slips away from me, turning his back and walking out the door.

  I press my fingers to my tingling lips and squeeze my eyes shut. Now or never. I grab the bag that’s under the bed and check through it. I’m limited to only a change of clothes and about a thousand dollars in cash that I found tucked into one of the kitchen drawers yesterday. I move quickly around the room, searching the bedside drawers, the bathroom, the closet. Finally, I drop to my knees beside the bed and bingo. There’s a .40 Cal strapped to the bedframe. I pull it away and check the clip before tucking it into the back of my jeans.

  The second I step out of the room, Nero’s bus boys are in my face. I swipe the legs out from under the big one and pull my gun, pistol-whipping the second. The first moves to get up, but my gun in his face before he can clamor to his feet.

  “I can shoot you or knock you out.” I arch a brow at him and he holds his hands up in surrender. I crouch down and punch him in the temple. His eyes roll back before he’s out cold. I shake out my fist, relishing my aching knuckles. It’s been so long since I trained, so long since I felt the stinging limbs of a real fight. I miss it.

  I make my way through the house, and it’s fairly quiet. Suspiciously so. I open Nero’s office door and slip inside, closing the door behind me. George hops up, wagging his little stump at me. Zeus studiously ignores me as usual. I rifle through the desk drawers until I find what I’m looking for: a set of keys. Either he seriously believes I won’t try to leave, or he thinks I’ll go on foot. Granted, taking one of his cars will mean he can track me until I can dump it, but, it has its benefits.

  I stand up and George pricks his ears, trying to follow me. I drop to a crouch in front of him and kiss the top of his head. “I can’t take you with me. I’m sorry.” He tilts his head to the side and I scratch behind his ear before standing. I make my way to the garage at the back of the house, ducking into doorways and disused rooms as I avoid Nero’s men. Eventually, I’m standing in the garage. I press the button on the key. One of the five cars beeps at me. A Maserati sports car. That sucks, considering what I’m about to do to it.

  I get in and throw my bag on the passenger seat before revving the powerful engine. It purrs and snarls, making me smile. I press the fob on the dashboard and the garage door starts to rise revealing two guards standing on the other side. They frown into the garage, confusion marring their expressions until they make out who is sat at the wheel of the flashy car. They pull guns and point them at me, but I simply smile and slam my foot on the accelerator. The simple fact is, they won’t shoot Nero’s pregnant…whatever I am. The car lurches forward and they leap out of the way as tire smoke and gravel kick up in my wake.

  The driveway is about two hundred yards long, and as I floor it towards the gate, I see men frantically running around. Guns are raised and bullets ping off the bonnet. I press my foot harder over the accelerator, ducking behind the wheel as I gun it at the metal gate. I meet it with a jarring impact, the screeching of metal on metal and the squealing of tires. The car comes to a halt against the bank opposite the gate, and then the ping, ping, ping of bullets sound. I look behind me and slam the car in reverse before shoving it into drive and forcing the ruined vehicle as fast as possible down the road. My heart is pounding as I glance in the rear view mirror, but no one follows me. I need to get off this road, stick to the back roads and then ditch the car. The second I round the corner though, my heart sinks. Two SUVs are pulled across the road, blocking it. In front of them stand Gio and Nero and a whole host of other guys. My foot lifts off the accelerator for a second as I assess my options. The SUVs are blocking the road, but there’s a gap between them, probably just big enough to squeeze through…the gap that Nero and Gio are standing in front of. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and slam my foot back down on the gas. Gio raises his gun and I flinch when he fires at the windshield. The glass shatters, but I keep my gaze firmly fixed on Nero. He’s barely a hundred yards away from me now. He lifts a rifle and my eyes widen. I trust none of his men to shoot me, but him? Would he rather kill me than let me go? I don’t hear the bang, but I feel the hard thud and stabbing pain of something hitting my chest. I grit my teeth and glance down for a second. A dart is sticking out of my chest, and my head starts to spin. I slam my foot on the break and yank the steering wheel to the side. The car skids sideways. The sound of screeching tires fill my ears, swiftly followed by the deafening bang of metal meeting metal. I blink slowly and blinding pain rips across my skull. Fumbling with the door, I throw it open and fall out of the car. My hands and knees meet the tarmac and glass bites into my skin as I try to crawl away. But it’s no use. My head is swimming, the fog clinging to the edges of my mind, mocking and taunting me with my own freedom. I pitch sideways, clutching at my stomach as everything goes black.

  12

  Nero

  “Fuck. Fuck!” I roar.

  I knew she’d try something, but a car? I didn’t expect to have to tranq her behind the wheel of a fucking car. Her head falls back against the tarmac and her arms go limp, falling to her sides. The way she was clutching her stomach scares the shit out of me.

  “Get the fucking doctor. Now!” Blood coats her face, pouring from the wound at her hairline. Her white-blonde hair is streaked in red, and shards of glass cling to the strands.

  I pick her up and climb into the back of the SUV, cradling her against my chest as Gio drives back to the house. I knew she’d try something, so I deliberately left late. Low and behold, I’m barely a couple of miles down the road when I get the call. We pull up to the house. The gate and half my Maserati is all over the road. They’ve cleared enough of a path to allow us through and Gio pulls right up to the front door.

  I climb out and walk through the house to my office where I lay her on one of the sofas. Gio follows a minute later and holds out a wad of bandages and dressings to me. I press them against her forehead, trying to stem the bleeding. There’s nothing else I can do.

  “She’s crazy,” Gio grumbles, dragging his hand through his hair in agitation.

  “Not like I really expected her to do what she’s fucking told.”

  “Nero, she’s pregnant with your kid! You can’t give her free reign. She’s too unstable.” He shakes his head. “She has no sense of self-preservation. She’ll kill that baby.”

  “Enough!” I shout. I clench and release my fist before pressing it to my forehead. He doesn’t understand Una. I don’t agree with her. I can’t let her do it, but I see why she honestly believes she’s doing the right thing. I get it. I get that she’s trying to be selfless.

  Gio nods and walks out of the room without another word. Gio just sees things differently. He thinks that women should be protec
ted, that their sole job is to breed children. Una confounds all of that. I brush her hair away from her face, staring at her for a moment before my gaze drifts to her stomach. I slide my hand beneath the material of her shirt and press my palm to her bare skin. Is he or she okay in there? Are they hurt? I don’t know what I expect, a sign or something. I feel nothing. The doctor said the sedative wouldn’t hurt the baby, but the car crash…There’s a knock at the door, and Gio comes back in followed by the doctor. He takes my place and removes the dressing, inspecting her head, “This will need stitches,” he says.

  “You need to check the baby first,” I say. He looks up at me, his eyebrows raised.

  He opens his mouth to argue but thinks better of it. He sets up a machine and squeezes some gel onto Una’s stomach, before rolling the hand held device over her skin. The little screen shows a black and white image, but that sound… the thwap, thwap, thwap of a heart beat fills my ears and I relax. “Everything looks fine,” he says.

  I release the breath I hadn’t realised I was holding. How can something that was never on my radar suddenly feel so crucial? How can this tiny thing I’ve never even met, seem like the most important thing in the world? Nothing scares me, but this terrifies me.

  I sit on the couch across from Una, my elbows propped on my spread thighs as I watch the doc stitch her up. She’s so still. Too still. Even in her sleep, Una is always restless, haunted by nightmares and expecting a strike at any time. The longer I watch her, the more hopeless this situation seems. How do you cage something like her? Wild, deadly, savage. How do you keep a butterfly in a jar without suffocating it?

  I want her and I want that baby, but she doesn’t want it, so where does that leave us? Will I be forced to choose? Will I have to let her go in order to keep my child? I drag my hand down my face and stand, pacing as the doctor tapes a dressing over her head and stands up. “Keep an eye on her. She should wake up in an hour or so. If she’s asleep much longer than that, call me.”

  13

  Una

  Oh, my god. My head. I groan as I blink my eyes open. My mind is foggy and disjointed. I panic, trying to pull my fragmented memories together. Nero shot me. I swipe my hand over my chest, trying to feel for a bullet whole, a bandage. Nothing. There’s nothing there. I sit up and the room spins in a whirl of colors.

  “Careful.” Nero’s deep voice comes from somewhere in the room. I squeeze my eyes shut and grip the back of the couch, waiting for my surroundings to calm and still.

  “You shot me,” I accuse.

  “You ran,” he replies.

  My head is throbbing and I reach up, touching my fingers to a dressing at my hairline. I drop my head into my hands and groan. “Why can’t you understand this, Nero?”

  “I understand. But I don’t agree.”

  “So, you’re going to imprison me here until I have no choice? You want me to have this baby, and then what? Just keep it here, next in line to the mafia throne?” I snort. “If it makes it that long, of course. We both know you and I have more enemies than bloody North Korea.”

  “I’ll protect you both.”

  I laugh bitterly and turn my gaze on him. He’s sitting with his thighs spread, his elbows braced on them. Dark eyes meet mine, determined, and I know I’ll never sway him. “This is the most selfish thing you will ever do, Verdi.”

  His eyes darken, his expression becoming volatile before he explodes off the couch and strides towards me. He leans over, grabbing my jaw in his hand and pulling me closer to him. “Do not fucking push me right now, Una,” he says through clenched teeth.

  “You don’t like the truth, Nero, but this is not one of your power games. This is not a job. This is a child.” My child. Our child.

  I can feel him shaking as his fingertips dig into my cheeks. “It is not a kindness to take a child from its parents, to leave it, never really knowing who they are. What would you have given to stay with your parents, Morte?” He spits the words venomously.

  I tear my face away from him and he straightens, turning his back on me. I’ve hit a nerve, but so has he. “My parents were good people!” I shout at his back. “And they died. How many families do you think we’ve torn apart between us, Nero? How many children have we deprived of parents? We are the monsters in this story. We don’t get happily ever afters.”

  He turns to face me. “Even monsters breed, my love,” he says mockingly, his eyes glinting with that feral edge.

  “I won’t let you do this just to fulfil your male ego.”

  “And I won’t let you leave just because a kid doesn’t fit into your plan,” he says. I grind my teeth together and tighten my fists. “If you want to leave after it’s born, I won’t stop you.” The muscles in his jaw flutter beneath his skin. Leave? Would I leave? If this were my only option…if him keeping this baby were the only option, then perhaps I would. Nicholai can never know that I had a child, because he will never stop wanting it. So you see, my options are limited. How did something that was supposed to be simple become so complicated?

  The best-case scenario is the baby be completely free of us, but if there were a second option…Nero has enemies, but he can protect himself. My enemies are infinitely more powerful.

  “I’ll have to,” I whisper.

  He shakes his head. “Does your job mean so much to you?”

  I lock eyes with him. Buried beneath the anger and the resentment is a trace of hurt that no one but me will ever see in him. But, then again, I’ve always been able to read Nero, the same way he can read me. Maybe this is what he needs to think—that I would choose a job over him. I know better than anyone that in the face of dangerous and overwhelming circumstances it’s easy to believe that there will be a fix, a way out. Nero isn’t used to losing, and, in his eyes, he’ll think he can defeat Nicholai. He can’t. I could explain it to him, effectively lay out the fact that he is making a choice between me or our child. But I don’t want to because I want him to choose this baby. It proves to me that he deserves to be a father. He will protect this legacy with his life, and Nero’s protection is fierce and absolute. Meanwhile, I can fall back into the fold of the Bratva and Nicholai will be content because he has me. He’ll never even know there was a baby. So, I say what he needs to hear. “I told you, I couldn’t bring myself to kill it, but I am what I am, Nero. I do not want to be a mother,” I tell him. It’s partly true. In another world, another time, perhaps I could have been a mother. But in this world, it simply isn’t possible. We walk the path in front of us and we can deviate to a degree. We can wish it were different, but eventually we must accept what is.

  Nero’s hard eyes bore into me. I can practically feel his disgust, his hatred. “Gio,” he calls. Gio appears in the room, his usual rigid stance in place. “Take Una to the basement. She is not to be released. If she makes any move to get out, you have my permission to sedate her.”

  Gio approaches me and reaches to take my arm. “Don’t.” I hold my hand up and he pauses. I push to my feet and my head spins, I guess from the sedatives in my blood still. My eyes lock with Nero’s once more before I turn and leave the office. This is for the best. I’ve broken his trust and rubbed salt in the wound. When the time comes, he’ll let me go to Nicholai without an argument.

  Patience is not my virtue. I’m going stir-crazy in this room, and I think it’s only been two days. I’m doing press-ups on the ground when the door opens. I ignore whoever just walked in…seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four.

  “Are you supposed to do that when you’re knocked up?”

  I glance up and watch Tommy take a seat on the edge of the bed, a wry smile on his lips. I carry on, and he waits patiently until I reach one hundred. I sit, bracing my back against the wall and stretching my legs out in front of me. My chest heaves, and my skin is slick with sweat. “I’m pregnant, Tommy, not disabled.”

  Chuckling, he drags a hand through his chestnut hair. He smirks and throws a paper bag at me. I look inside and find a sandwich, bought, of course.
“Thanks.” I take a bite out of it and catch the bottle of water that he chucks next. A scratching comes from the other side of the door. He rolls his eyes, standing up and opening the door a few inches. George slinks through the gap and bounds over to me, his whole body wiggling as he whines excitedly. “Oh, hey you.” I smile, patting him.

  “That dog’s obsessed with you.” His voice is tinged with just the hint of an Irish accent and it makes me smile. Tommy has always been the one that doesn’t fit in with the mafia, but Nero is attached to him, so he protects him where any other Italians would kill him simply for being a half-breed.

  “Nero’s mean to you. Isn’t he?” I kiss the side of Georges nose and he squints like an idiot, making me laugh. Zeus is the loyal one, the guard dog. And I wonder for a second whether in the same way, Nero would be disappointed in his child if it didn’t live up to his expectations. No, I can’t think about it. “So, what’s going on in the free world?” I ask, needing Tommy to just talk about something. Anything.

  “Not a lot,” he says. “I mean, it’s been two days, Una. Not like World War III has started.”

  I take a mouthful of my sandwich before breaking a piece off and giving it to George. “If you came in here to entertain me, you’re doing a shit job.”

  He lies back on the bed and folds his hands behind his head. “Actually, I’m just supposed to be guarding the door, but I feel bad for ya.”

  “You going soft on me, Irish?”

  He twists his head to face me. “Never, killer.” He grins.

  George pricks his ears and glances at the door a few seconds before it opens. Gio peers inside, his gaze shifting form me to Tommy to the dog before he rolls his eyes. “Boss wants to see you.”