by Sophia Gray
I blinked at her in confusion. “Do what? Press my cock against your ass or let my hands fondle your body? Because you’ve let me do both before.”
She flushed and again I thought I was winning her over. But she shook her head quickly and took another step back. “Yeah, well, that was then.”
My eyebrows rose high onto my forehead. Could she be serious? What could have possibly changed in only a day? “What is with you? You’ve never seemed hesitant for my touch before. In fact, you’ve always seemed hungry for it. Desperate even.” My eyes flashed as I drug my eyes across her form again, willing her body to respond with passion and fire as it always did. “I can tell by the whimpering and moaning. The begging. You don’t beg when you don’t want it.”
She sucked in a quick breath and I knew that regardless of what she was trying to say, she did want me. Still. It didn’t explain her behavior today.
She took a moment to collect herself, then leveled me with a cold stare that threw me a little off balance. In a flat voice, she answered, “I know you’re trying to kill my brother. I know, so don’t even try to lie to me.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment, just stood there considering her. She was right, of course. I was trying to kill her brother, though I was also fairly certain the piece of shit deserved it. The stealing maybe didn’t outright warrant a death sentence, but the rest of it did. I’d dealt with a thousand people just like Logan and I knew that a one-time gig like this wasn’t an option. He’d killed someone, and that changed a man. Whoever she thought her brother was, he wasn’t. It was unfortunate that she knew, as that would likely complicate our relationship—if what we had between us you could call a relationship. I felt a spark of anger at the realization that Logan had to have told her – it was the only way she could have known.
Which meant he’d been here. My eyes surreptitiously scanned the studio apartment, but I already knew he wasn’t here. The curtains that cordoned off her bedroom were only half drawn and not moving, the bathroom door was unhinged, so there was nothing there either. There really wasn’t anywhere else for the asshole to hide. I returned my focus to Madeline.
“And if that’s true?” I prompted, not committing to anything just yet. I wanted to know where I stood with things.
After a moment, she told me, soft and terribly quiet, “It doesn’t matter what my brother’s done, Nikolai. There’s no reason for him to be murdered.”
I couldn’t help it when the corner of my mouth kicked up in a small smile. “Murdered?” I repeated, sounding almost amused, though I knew that wasn’t the right approach just then. But I couldn’t help it. It was rather ridiculous. “I’m not trying to murder him.”
She frowned and I saw a spark of hope in her eyes. I almost felt bad for putting it there, but she needed to understand what was really going on. “Really? But I thought—”
I didn’t let her finish. “I’m trying to execute him.”
Instantly, she paled. The hope died and I felt a twinge of guilt attack me. “How is that any different?” she demanded angrily, throwing her arms down beside her, her hands clenching into tight fists.
“It’s different because murder suggests senselessness. That there is no purpose behind it save violence. But an execution has a reason. I have a reason.”
She scoffed at me. “What? Money?”
“No, that was your brother’s reason,” I said pointedly, even angrily. Yes, I killed people for a living. And, yes, it was about the money. And, yes, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about Logan or his buddy or whether or not they were homegrown farm boys. Mickey gave me a job, I accepted it. Period. But she was under some delusion that her brother was this poor young man, innocent and wrongly accused. That his head was on the chopping block for some mistake, something that wasn’t his fault. Like we were the villains. And maybe we were, but even villains like us had a code, and I didn’t go around murdering people for shits and giggles.
Madeline stared at me with wide, confused eyes. There was a flicker in them that I thought might be understanding, but she shoved it away determinedly. She didn’t want to know that her brother was responsible. Well, it was too late for that.
“That’s right. Money. Your brother pissed off the wrong people by stealing a lot of money that he had no right to.” She opened her mouth to interject something, but I wasn’t finished. “And maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe you could even say that someone had a right to walk away from that, couldn’t you? No, it’s not the moral thing to do, it doesn’t make him the good guy, does it? But it’s not like he killed someone, right?”
I looked at Madeline pointedly, watched as realization tried to flicker in her expression even as she fought to shove it back down. She was fighting hard to hold on to this idea of what her brother was supposed to be while painting me as the bad guy, but it was getting harder I could tell. She sensed that something was wrong, maybe always had.
“Except that he did kill someone, Madeline,” I continued, eyes flashing in anger. “Not in self-defense. Not to save someone else. In cold blooded murder. That’s what your brother is now, Madeline. A murderer.”
Chapter 17
Madeline
How was I supposed to stand there and listen to this?
Every part of my being was telling me he was wrong. Nikolai couldn’t be right about Logan. But even as I thought that, I couldn’t one hundred percent deny his claim. Logan and I had been close as kids, but as we grew older he became…unruly. And not just in the way that children often were, testing their limits and boundaries. He had grown almost cruel. It was in reaction to our mother’s death and I had always felt that he took it so hard because they’d been very close. But even so, I never believed it was a permanent thing.
After a while, he’d gotten better. He didn’t torture people like he did in high school, teasing and taunting at every opportunity. Moving to the city had been really good for him, and though he was constantly screwing up perfectly good opportunities, he at least was trying and making his way in the world.
That was all any of us were trying to do, right?
But as Nikolai stood there and told me about everything my brother had supposedly done, I held my breath, trying to pretend it wasn’t easy to imagine him doing those things.
“He was hired to do a job, a construction job for a very powerful organization,” Nikolai continued, oblivious to the way I was struggling to take all of this in. Or maybe he knew and just didn’t care. I was pretty sure that this “very powerful organization” meant some sort of mafia, so there was every chance that he really didn’t give a shit.
Oh god, I had sex with someone connected to the mafia! Worse than that, though, I’d given my virginity to Nikolai, gotten pregnant by him, and not only was he connected to the mafia, but he was a contract killer for them!
The father of my baby—I couldn’t finish the thought. My only relief was that I hadn’t mentioned the baby to him. I had decided that I would, though I had been terrified to do so. In fact, before Logan showed up in my apartment, I’d been hoping to see Nikolai again so I could tell him. Now, I was incredibly grateful that I hadn’t shared that information with him yet.
What would I do then if he wanted to be a part of the baby’s life? He was a hit man, for Christ’s sake! I couldn’t let him have anything to do with the baby or me. No matter how much my body continued to call out for his strong arms or his muscled chest or other things. It didn’t matter if I wanted the length of his manhood buried in me or not, Nikolai just simply couldn’t be a part of my life now.
“It all would have been fine, except Logan found out they were housing money there. He decided it would be a better way to make money to steal it than to earn it. But he didn’t stop there. When he discovered that there was a guard watching the money, he beat that guard to death. The man was barely recognizable when they found him. Quite the mess.”
I paled. I wished Nikolai would stop speaking, that he would just leave. Walk out that door and back out of my life—how had I
let myself get into this mess? I was having difficulty breathing, imagining the brutality that my brother had done to that other man. I even felt a little dizzy, though I tried to stay strong while Nikolai was here. I didn’t need him seeing any weakness from me. What would he do if he did?
At this point, Nikolai had turned away from me, running his large hands through his thick, silky hair. He’d begun to pace anxiously, or maybe angrily, throwing glances my way every so often. For the first time, I considered how truly menacing he was.
He was much taller than I was, towering over me. His face was full of sharp, hard lines that I’d once thought of only as strong and even devilishly charming. Well, I’d gotten the devilish part right, hadn’t I? His eyes were striking, entrancing even, but now I noticed that they easily flashed with anger and might even be considered cold where once I had only thought of them as warm and inviting. His shoulders were broad and now I couldn’t help but picture a body being thrown over them, not a naked woman—me, for instance—writhing in passion or begging, but rather a dead body. My brother, even. How many times had he carried his victims like that, throwing them over his shoulder before dumping them in a ditch or a shallow grave somewhere?
Did he even bother with graves?
I shuddered.
The large muscles of his arms flexed, reminding me how much stronger he was. How easily he’d pinned me to the floor, both of my arms held tightly above my head with only one of his. He’d done that without even breaking a sweat, I thought, and there was no denying that I’d been completely unable to break free of that grasp. Sure, at the time I’d been consumed by passion and need, but what if I’d been struggling? What if I’d wanted to get free? I wouldn’t have been able to.
It was a terrifying thought.
Everything about Nikolai suddenly seemed menacing, though I was trying to reconcile the image of him as a killer with the image I knew of him as a passionate, aggressive, but dedicated lover.
I didn’t know what to think anymore and it was getting harder for me to breathe, not to mention stand up straight.
“You…you need to go,” I managed to get out. My voice was timid, shaky even, but at least I managed to get the words out. That alone seemed pretty impressive given who he was and what he was clearly capable of.
This caused Nikolai to stop. He whipped his head around in my direction, a look that I couldn’t quite read sliding across his features. Then he seemed to freeze. I thought his gaze was fixed on me, but then I realized his eyes were actually stuck on something just past me, sitting behind me. I waited for him to respond, but when he just continued to stare at whatever it was that had so surely caught his attention, I finally risked turning. I hadn’t wanted to look away from him, for fear that he might do something crazy, but I was too curious to know what it was that had caused him to freeze.
When I looked behind me, at first I didn’t see anything. It was the kitchen, mostly clean except for a mug of tea—I was trying to wean myself off of coffee for the sake of the baby—and a half-eaten bagel that had actually been Logan’s, not mine. I hadn’t been able to make myself eat that morning at all, partially because of the terrible morning sickness that happened pretty much every morning now, and partially because the thought of Logan nearly dying was too terrible to think of. And the idea that Nikolai was the one to kill him? Well, it was all just too much for me anymore.
I was just about to turn away and ask him what his problem was, or maybe just tell him to go, when I saw it. The thing that must have caught his attention.
The baby book.
I paled. At school that day, I’d gone to the bookstore on campus. They had all of the class books listed on the required reading material for the classes, but they also had other books, too. They had a lot of fiction books, ranging through all the subgenres there in—I admitted, I’d bought more than a few romance books over the years in attendance. Then there were the nonfiction books, which were mostly biographies or books about geographical locations. But there were a few other oddball books, including a whole section that was dedicated to the “expecting mother.” I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do or what I was looking for, I didn’t know what would happen with Nikolai, but I’d known it was time to start taking care of myself.
So, I’d bought a book. It was all about what to eat, how to deal with morning sickness—the tea was supposed to help, but I didn’t think it did in the slightest—what sort of prenatal vitamins to get, how to start preparing for the hormonal imbalances, and so on. Though I hadn’t gotten the chance to look through it much, it was still sitting there on the counter, taunting me.
I’d never even thought to put it up. I couldn’t believe how stupid I was.
When my eyes went back to Nikolai, I saw that he was focused on me now, too. His eyes flashed with something that I couldn’t decipher. Was it anger at finding out I was pregnant? Was it pride at knowing he’d spread his seed inside me and created something that would grow in my womb? Was it annoyance that I was yet again another complication?
The possibilities raced through my head, all of them becoming more and more terrible as they went on. What if he decided I was too much trouble now? Would he kill me—kill the baby? Oh, god, what if he did? He was certainly capable. He was a contract killer, for god’s sake!
“Why do you need a book for expecting mothers, Madeline?” he asked quietly, calmly, though I could see emotions raging in his eyes.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing could get out. My vision began to blur, the edges going black. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. I was already falling, fading out completely.
Chapter 18
Nikolai
As soon as I noticed her falling, I went to her. Madeline crumpled, pale and fragile, just as I swallowed her in my arms. She was dead weight, but I lifted her easily, carrying her as I might a bride in my arms. A fissure of panic sliced through my already pounding heart, calmed only by the realization that, though she was incredibly pale and looked so breakable in my arms, she was most definitely breathing.
She had only fainted.
I carried her to the little section of her studio apartment that was cordoned off. The section clearly acted as her bedroom with a curtain sectioning it away privately from the rest of the place. As a result, it was tiny and contained essentially only a bed and a bedside table with a tiny little light sitting on the top. There was a clock set there, too; otherwise, there was only a door I noticed as her closet and nothing else. Not that there was room for anything else. The bed took up so much space that I could barely fit around the edges of it. It reminded me again how much smaller she was than me.
Carefully, I laid her out on the bed, pulling back the covers slightly so I could tuck them around her fragile frame.
When I straightened, I took a long moment to just stare down at her.
That book…expecting mothers? Why would Madeline have something like that? But even as I thought about that, I knew the answer. We’d had a passionate night together a couple of months ago. A passionate night in which I’d claimed her as mine twice and twice released myself into her waiting, willing body. At the time, I hadn’t thought a single thing of it. Why would I? But I should have. After she told me that I’d been her first, her only, well, I should have considered that, perhaps, she wasn’t on any type of birth control. What would be the need if she’d never lain with a man before?
Part of me swelled with pride. I’d impregnated her. Was there any clearer claim than that? She was mine. Period.
Unfortunately, things weren’t one hundred percent that simple. I acknowledged that, perhaps, this was all a misunderstanding. She was in college; that book could have been for a class or a friend or maybe just for her own curiosity. But if she were pregnant, then there would be complications. I was a hit man for the Russian mob; her being pregnant didn’t change that and I wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. I was good at my job, even enjoyed it on occasion, and it paid better than any other
job I might find out there. And I had been doing this for so long now that I didn’t even have a résumé. My last job had been tossing pizzas in a restaurant down the road from Mickey’s, still owned by him, of course, and had lasted about five months before I’d started getting involved with the mob boss.
What sort of job could I even hope to find? Not one that could provide for a baby and its mother, that was for sure.
I frowned. Was I seriously considering keeping Madeline and this hypothetical baby?
On the one hand, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Hadn’t I already decided that I couldn’t stay away from Madeline? Whether it was the incredibly tempting pussy between her legs or the fact that she lingered in my mind regardless of what else was happening in my life, there was no denying that I wanted her. Hungrily, I wanted her.
On the other hand, hadn’t I come to the conclusion a long time ago that having a wife and a family wasn’t an option? In my line of work that was just an impossibility. No one wanted to spend their lives with a man who killed other men to pay the bills.
