by Stacy Gail
YEAR OF THE SCORPIO
Part Two
Stacy Gail
***TRIGGER WARNING: This is a MAFIA romance. In addition to several scenes with strong sexual content, there are also scenes involving violence, death, gun play, mention of sexual abuse, and adult language. Due to the nature of this book, it is intended for 18+ audiences only***
My name is Dash.
The Vitaliev Bratva had always been a part of my life, but I was never a part of it. My father built it from the ground up, and while he never hid what the family business was, he never wanted my life to be tainted by it.
But my father forgot one thing.
I’m also a Vitaliev.
Everything I hold dear has been targeted since my father’s death—my business, my friends, and the peaceful world I’ve built for myself. But it wasn’t until the love of my life, Polo Scorpeone, was struck down by a sniper’s bullet that I realized being a Vitaliev isn’t a curse. It’s a strength.
I will face my hidden enemy with the Vitaliev fire of old, and I’ll do it with the most powerful lethal weapon Chicago’s underworld has ever known by my side.
Come to find out, the legendary Scorpio is hard to kill.
108,000 words
Author’s Note: This is the second half of a two-part story arc. YEAR OF THE SCORPIO: PART TWO takes place immediately after the end of YEAR OF THE SCORPIO: PART ONE. If you haven’t read YEAR OF THE SCORPIO: PART ONE, you’re literally getting only half the story. You have been warned.
Discover Other Titles by Stacy Gail
Bitterthorn, Texas Series:
Ugly Ducklings Finish First
Starting From Scratch (novella)
One Hot Second
Where There’s A Will
Earth Angels Series:
Nobody’s Angel (novella)
Savage Angel
Wounded Angel
Dangerous Angel
House Of Payne Series:
House of Payne: Payne
House of Payne: Scout
House of Payne: Twist
House of Payne: Rude
House of Payne: Steele
Scorpio Series:
Year of the Scorpio: Part One
Year of the Scorpio: Part Two
Novellas:
Crime Wave In A Corset (Part of the steampunk holiday anthology, A Clockwork Christmas)
How The Glitch Saved Christmas (Part of the sci-fi holiday anthology, A Galactic Holiday)
Zero Factor (Part of the cyberpunk anthology, Cybershock)
Best Man, Worst Man
Connect with Stacy Gail:
Amazon page: http://amzn.to/2czcCuX
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/RmNxH
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1rU3qmY
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Stacy_Gail_
Instagram: https://instagram.com/stacygailsworld/
Copyright
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. Characters and names of real persons who appear in the book are used fictitiously.
Copyright ©2017 by Stacy Gail
Cover image ©2016 ostill, Shutterstock Image ID: 131258963. NAS CREATIVES, Shutterstock Image ID: 157488839
Acknowledgments
To Jillian Mootz, who made me realize that every now and again, a little help on pronunciation goes a long way!
To Kristi Alford-Metcalf, for loving John Wick (and his beard!) as much as I do.
And to everyone who embraces the idea that “bad guys” make the most kick-ass heroes.
Pronunciation Key
Borysko—Bor-REES-ko
Vitaliev—Vih-TAL-yev
Nizhy—NEE-zhee (The “zh” sounds like the soft “J” in the French word “joie”)
Nozhi—NO-zhee (The “zh” sounds like the soft “J” in the French word “joie”)
Grigor—GREE-gor
Schott—Shot
Pavel—PAH-vul
Alexei –Ah-LEC-say
Rodin—Ro-DEEN
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
First Chapter from HOUSE OF PAYNE: RUDE
Note from Stacy Gail
About the Author
Connect with Stacy Gail
Prologue
No, no, no, no…
In my mind, disjointed images merged into a nightmarish kaleidoscope. The worst image of all was the one of the man I loved, Polo Scorpeone, as he flew back from where I stood on a rooftop terrace. Then the confusing madness came, jumbling everything together into a messy ball of chaos. Polo’s chief of security, Yuri Rodin, had tackled me to the ground at some point. Another member of Polo’s security team, Cap Fogelmann, had rushed to Polo as he lay, unmoving. My brother, Knives, screamed for Polo. Cap’s hands had come away from Polo’s chest drenched in blood. There had been blood everywhere.
So much blood.
Polo’s blood.
I was Dasha Vitaliev, daughter of the late Borysko Vitaliev, the man who’d built the Vitaliev Bratva from the ground up. Most people wouldn’t think my life was normal, but it was normal for me. Violence, brutality, death…these were natural facets of life.
That didn’t mean they were any easier to deal with.
I lost track of when time ceased to have meaning for me. I knew the basic order of events after Polo was shot. My brother and I were hustled into the hotel restaurant where a fundraiser for my charity, Chicago’s Future, was being held. An army of private security flooded in from nowhere, moving quickly to load an unresponsive Polo into an ambulance. My brother Knives and I were held back by people I didn’t know, with both of us fighting to get to Polo. And Rudy Panuzzi, Polo’s friend and part of his security team, telling me…telling me…
My Polo, the man I loved, was dead.
That was when my life stopped, too.
Only it didn’t actually stop. That would have been too merciful, and life was never merciful to a Vitaliev. But that was the last time I was capable of feeling…anything. The horror that stabbed through me, the devastated denial, the unending loss that was so soul-crushing that it made death preferable…all of it had been so excruciating it froze me in place. My system overloaded and shut off as a matter of self-preservation. My screams, my tears, my emotions…they all locked down, and locked me down with them.
I stayed locked down as time marched on and one day bled into the next. I could still feel those emotions, buried way down deep like lava surging beneath a hard, dark crust. But they couldn’t touch me.
I was dead.
Dead, like my Polo.
I had experienced this eerie numbness once before in my life as a kidnapped little girl and I’d had to kill in order to survive. I remembered how icy calm my mind had gone, and what a relief it had been to no longer be crippled by a fear that had been so sharp it had actually hurt.
This time, however, I didn’t feel relief from my internal anguish.
I didn’t feel anything.
No, that wasn’t completely accurate. I did feel something.
Rage.
Sleep was an impossibility for me now. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Polo reach for me, only to fly backward as the sniper’s bullet struck him square in the chest. Eating was also impossible; whatever few bites I got into me came right back up.
There would be no more sleeping for me. No more eating. Eating and sleeping were what living people did. My life had ended with Polo’s. This was just my body’s way of trying to make it official.
I had first become aware of the rage a couple days after Polo had been killed, when Yuri and Alex Rodin, Polo’s closest associates, had taken care of Polo’s funeral arrangements. I should have been grateful. Making those arrangements had been beyond me; to even think of putting Polo in the ground meant that he was truly gone. Facing that reality—and forever turning the page on the source of my greatest joy—was something I could never do.
But then the emails and texts from Alex started coming in. They were very nice, very solicitous, but they’d made my blood boil. He’d wanted to know what my preferences were for flowers to cover Polo’s casket. Then he’d asked what sentiment should be written on his headstone. Then he’d wanted to know who I wanted to have there with me for the private ceremony.
Goddamn him. Goddamn that man to hell for asking me such unforgivable things. My Polo was gone, and he thought I’d be concerned about fucking flowers?
If we’d been in the same room together, I swear I would have shot him.
But deep down, I knew I wasn’t really mad at Alex. The only person who had earned my fury was the one who was responsible for taking Polo from me. That meant they had taken my heart. My soul. My life.
Someone would pay.
That was when I began to burn with the need to find who had done this to Polo. To me. Obsessively I went over it, hour after hour, ignoring every phone call and summons from the doorman downstairs as I mentally catalogued the attacks I’d endured over the past several weeks. My brother Knives believed the Scorpeone mafia family was behind everything that went bump in the night, but I wasn’t sold on that. Sure, they made an easy target for all the fury boiling inside of me, but I wasn’t about to lash out at someone who might be innocent.
When I did lash out, I had to be certain I was hitting the right target.
The question was, who?
I love you, Dasha Vitaliev.
My eyes squeezed shut as I heard Polo, as clearly as if he were sitting right next to me on the couch. A fissure of crippling agony shot through the hard crust that had blocked off my emotions, and I whimpered out loud as the black poison of grief flooded through me. Polo had loved me. He never would have voluntarily left me alone in the world, because he’d loved me. At least I had the meager comfort of knowing that, and of having the memory of his last words to me—I love you, Dasha Vitaliev.
At the time they had felt strangely like good-bye. Little did I know that those words really would be his final good-bye.
I should have felt lucky that I had been given that much.
I should have.
But I didn’t.
Polo, how am I supposed to get through this?
A sudden knock on my door didn’t seem real. Mutely I stared at it, not moving. I had to be hallucinating, because a knock on my door didn’t make any sense. I was in an apartment with excellent security, and no one had buzzed from downstairs to let me know of any visitors. Not that I would have answered. I had ignored every single person who’d tried to see me, along with all the text messages and phone calls that had flooded in. I hadn’t spoken to or seen another soul in I didn’t know how many days.
But I did know what day it was.
It was the day of Polo’s funeral.
The second-worst day of my life.
That impossible knock happened again, this time more insistently. Then I heard a familiar voice that pulled me out of the darkness.
“Dash, you open this door right now, or I swear I’ll kick the damn thing in myself. Don’t think I won’t.”
Shona.
For reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom, I found myself pushing off the couch. It would be for the best if I didn’t answer, I thought dully, looking through the peephole at my friend and office manager of Chicago’s Future. My life was too dangerous to have anyone it. I’d done my best to cut ties with Shona the last time we’d seen each other, but apparently that cutting hadn’t worked.
I needed to make her go away. It was for her own good.
With a strange kind of detachment, I watched my hand unlock the door and swing it open. It was with this same disconnected feeling I watched Shona’s expression change as she took me in, from one of grim determination to a kind of shattered, dismayed compassion.
“Oh, honey,” Shona whispered softly.
I didn’t know what that meant.
I also didn’t care what that meant.
“You need to leave.” I didn’t recognize my voice, but that might have been because the last time I had used it was when I was screaming for Polo to please be okay and to come back to me. I had no real use for it now. “You need to leave me alone.”
“What I need is to get some food into you, get you in the shower and get you dressed. I’m going to do your hair and makeup, so you don’t have to worry about a thing.” She pushed through the door, and for some reason my body wouldn’t respond when I tried to shut the door on her. I seemed to be moving in slow motion while the rest of the world flew by me.
I just wished it would keep on flying by, and leave me the hell alone.
“Now,” Shona began briskly, setting her bag down near the door and making a beeline for the kitchen. “What do you feel like eating? Some toast? A little scrambled egg? Whatever I make, you have to eat it because you now owe me. I had to bribe the doorman with a hundred bucks just to get in.”
“I can’t.”
Shona had been peering into the sad wasteland that was my refrigerator, but when I spoke she glanced back at me. “You don’t know what you can do until you try, sweet girl. Have you tried eating yet today?”
“I can’t.” There was so much truth packed into those two words that I was amazed she couldn’t understand what I was saying. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t go to Polo’s funeral and say good-bye. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t find it in me to face the rest of my life without the man I loved. I couldn’t, goddamn it.
I couldn’t.
Why wasn’t she hearing me?
But maybe she did, because instead of continuing to push the impossibility of food, Shona rounded the peninsula-style island separating the kitchen from the dining area, and wrapped her arms around me.
That was all it took to break me.
Terrible, shuddering sobs shattered whatever was holding me together, and my knees buckled. Shona went down with me, and there we sat on the floor of my apartment while I cried and cried. It was worse than anguish, worse than sorrow. It was a grief so deep it was an agony to bear, and instinctively my body tried to remove its poison in the form of tears.
It didn’t work. Nothing would ever heal the soul-altering wound that I’d been dealt. The only good thing about letting loose of that much misery was that I was now so exhausted I thought I might actually have a shot at sleeping someday.
“I know you think your life is over.” Shona’s voice came to me from far away as my sobs faded into broken whimpers. Her arms held me, rocked me, and for just a little while reminded me that I wasn’t alone in the world. “And I know life has been a bitch to you, tak
ing away all the things you thought you needed to be strong. But you’re still here, Dasha. You are still here. Today is as bad as it gets, I’m not going to lie to you about that. But you know what that means? Tomorrow, things will be better. Maybe not in any single way that you can measure at first, but it will be. You just need to get through today. I’m here to help you with that.”
“You shouldn’t.” My voice was a ghost of itself, raspy and without energy. Without hope. “Everyone dies around me. Everyone.”
“Well, if that’s the case, I’ll put my affairs in order, because for today, and tomorrow and the next day after that, I’m not leaving your side. Now let’s get you on your feet and cleaned up. We need to get you through today, so that you can start living for tomorrow.”
Chapter One
Two months later
The alarm went off at half past six, like it did every morning.
Like every morning, I wondered why I bothered to get up. Or shower. Or get dressed. Or all those other stupid things a person did to greet the day. I didn’t want to greet the day. I didn’t want to greet anything.
It was all so pointless.
It was pointless because a part of me had died with the man I loved, Polo Scorpeone. It was the part of me that had loved, the part of me that had enjoyed, the part of me that had lived. I was now an obsolete cog that the world’s engine had spat out before motoring on down the road without me, and there I existed—stationary, on the sidelines of the flow of time, waiting patiently to rust away until I no longer existed.
Too bad that was such a slow process.
