by Snow, Nicole
The whole damned cosmos wanted to keep us apart. It was a travesty, a fucking atrocity, when we were so fucking good together. No, I wasn't just talking about being balls deep inside her, throttling her perfect pussy 'til she shook from head to toe. We worked because we were one and the goddamned same, two lost worlds who'd been fucked over by their own blood too many times to count.
No, dammit. If this was what had her all knotted up, I'd untie everything, every dark rope keeping us apart. I turned around, ready to reach up to the ceiling and salute the entire universe with both my middle fingers.
“My old man fucked up. He told me it was the worst mistake of his life, running that poor woman down. He had bad intel – same shit I did when I tried to blow your uncle to kingdom come with all his degenerate buddies. Your mother wasn't the fucking target.” Volcanic air pumped through my lungs. I stepped closer, grabbing for her hands, forcing her to set the small shot glass between her knees.
“Christ, babe. Don't tell me you believe that motherfucker if he told you my old man ran down your ma on purpose?” Shit. One look at her eyes said that was exactly what she believed. “Fuck. You gotta be kidding me! He had no reason for targeting your mother – none. It's not the way we do shit, and we never will. We go after the bastards who fuck us over, the demons who deserve to die. Nobody else.”
“Why should I believe you!?” She cracked. She tried to rip her hands away from me, but I held on like an ogre, unwilling to let her go 'til I took a wrecking ball to the bastard's lies. “God damn it! Every time I hear something from one side, the other's always got another version. I wanted to believe you, Anton. I trusted you. Then my Uncle took out the bug you left in my fucking purse, and I couldn't.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck...
The confession went through my eardrum and blew my brain apart. If it wasn't for seeing hate and confusion flashing in her eyes right in front of me, I would've marched out, tracked down my damned brothers, and finished the ass kicking we'd started earlier in the great hall.
“It wasn't my idea, babe. I fought the fucking thing tooth and nail. Daniel and Lev...they wouldn't let you leave without having some way to see what was going on. D told me it'd only help keep tabs on you in case something bad happened. Well, we both know it didn't do shit – and now I know why!”
Fuck. This time, my brother's wise ideas had screwed us hard. They'd fucked over the trust I'd built with this girl, stained this crazy thing we had with blood and venom.
“You're not even sorry,” she said, lowering her eyes. Why the hell wouldn't she stop looking at that fucking drink?
“You're dead wrong. There's a lot of shit I regret because without it sticking to me, everything would be ten times easier for everybody. I regret being hitched to this family, son of a bastard just like me. He killed for cred and money and – yeah – he made mistakes. I regret coming along years later and using you to get to the last Italian motherfucker we've got to take down in the windy city. Fuck, you can believe me or not, but I really regret compromising with my asshole brothers and letting them slip that shit into your luggage. If it was up to me, it never would've fucking happened. I'm sorry.”
Her eyes flitted up, distrusting and dark. I didn't give a shit right then if she hated my ass worse than her dickhead uncle. I wasn't gonna let her.
I'd spun her around and made her fall for me before, and I could do it again. I'd never been the kinda bastard to talk about love in words. All the red hot fucking we'd squeezed into those days did the talking for me before, but now I had to make my damned tongue work, make her realize I wasn't a total dipshit.
I knew how bad I'd fucked up by going along with my brothers' plan. It wrecked what we'd built as well as taking Gioulio down.
“My old man died with regrets too. I already told you, he never stopped beating himself bloody over that night. I remember it then. I was just getting deeper into the biz. He stumbled through the door all fucked up on pills and drink, screaming about the woman who wasn't supposed to be there.
“It was supposed to be some bitch named Mercedes. This French whore with a love for good shoes and riding your uncle's dick back before he needed the blue shit to get it up. She was his partner for awhile before she fucked off back to Paris. Built one helluva gun trade on our turf, and my old man was ready to break the truce to tear her down.
“She was supposed to be there. Bitch was a creature of habit. She'd have her drinks and hit the outlets, harder with Christmas coming. Guess your uncle introduced her to the good old American holiday frenzy, and my old man was determined to make it a fatal weakness.
“Thing is, the sly bitch must've seen it coming. She was still in the bar after my old man did the dirty deed. He fucking saw her smiling at him through the window, right before he sped off and rolled over the woman he'd just crushed into the ground. He panicked. He fucked up bad.”
Sabrina swallowed. Hard. Neither of us were there, but I could only imagine how bad it hurt to imagine her mother's bones cracking underneath the tires.
“Don't,” she whispered, harsh, holding back tears.
“I'm done talking about that night. We never found the French bitch. She set your ma up, and my old man died with a stinking suspicion Gioulio knew about it too. They had some kinda fallout not long after that sent her scurrying overseas like a fucking rat in flight.
“I'm telling you the truth, Sabrina. I know, you've got all the reason in the world to wonder whether or not I'm feeding you more bullshit. I could offer to trot out more files. Whatever the fuck your uncle showed you, we got our records too. I'm not gonna bother because I need you to hear me out. I need you to listen, babe.”
“What do you think I'm doing?” She sassed. Her cheeks were red, flush with shame and anger.
She was still talking, responding to me. That was something.
I hit the floor and kneeled. I didn't even feel my balls tighten up and try to crawl up my guts. This girl was the first one who'd put me on my knees, and I didn't feel bad about it because she was worth it.
Had to have her. Had to.
Letting her spit in my face and walk away wasn't an option if I wanted to keep my sanity intact, regardless of whatever the hell happened with finishing her uncle. Shit, I'd let her slam those long nails into my fucking eyeballs and rip them outta my sockets if it would make this better. I'd bleed for her, bleed myself dry.
I was obsessed. A totally whacked out junkie for her voice, her laugh, her touch. A frothing, craven jackal for claiming her, mounting her, fucking her. Hearing how she screamed with my tongue between her legs, or clenching around my dick was like rock and roll blasting from the heavens.
I couldn't live without that music. Couldn't live without her.
Growling, I grabbed her by the knees, sloshing out a little bit of that shot she was holding. She quickly snatched it up, held it higher on her lap, just looking and looking, waiting for me to convince her.
Fuck. Okay.
“Just keep your mouth shut and listen to me for a fucking minute. I gotta say this. I already told you about all the shit I regret, all the things my old man died with hanging onto his black heart. All the danger, all the killing, all the assholes I've broken apart with my own bare hands...”
I sucked in a deep breath, remembering fifty different fuckers I'd killed one way or another over the years, including the twenty bastards who'd died in the blast at Club Duce. Their blood was sacrificial. It brought me here, step by ugly step, straight towards the greatest beauty of my life. My missing piece.
“They're all worth it 'cause they led me to the one thing I've ever crashed into that I'll never regret. It's right here in front of me. It's you, babe. You, you, only you.”
I grabbed her legs and squeezed them tight. Fuck, I wanted to hold on forever, cling to what was mine and always would be.
Love or hate, heaven or hell, sin or sweetness.
I had to look up. Had to find out right fucking now if ripping out my heart and offering it up was enough, o
r if her bastard uncle had truly poisoned her against me forever.
Her eyes were softer. There was love there, heat bouncing through a sadness I couldn't understand. Maybe she was overwhelmed.
I stood up, pulling her with me. My brain analyzed every little syllable and cadence when she spoke.
“Anton, please...”
“Please what? Kiss and make up the way we should've the second you got here?” I pressed my lips to hers, testing and urgent, craving her to kiss me back and really want it.
She did. Fuck, she melted, twining her tongue with mine, and it was absolutely beautiful. My hands ran up and down the mangled fabric wrapped around her, a relic of the dirty secret that almost cost us this forever.
“Babe, come on. I love you, and that's enough. You shouldn't be wearing this thing.” I pulled.
She absentmindedly passed the liquor carefully back and forth in her hands, turning while I gently drew the coat off around her. There was that hot fucking body again. My dick saw red and wanted to nest right against the crack of her sweet ass, rubbing 'til her pants came off, but I checked his greedy shit.
This was our moment to right wrongs and put the bloody, evil shit behind us. There'd be plenty of time for fucking her brains out soon, and when we did it was gonna be dynamite.
“Take it off,” I said. We both paused and listened as it fell to the ground in a heavy lump. “Your uncle's gonna pay for what he fucking did to you. He killed your old man and your ma, and he tried to make you kill me too, didn't he?”
She shuddered when I said the last part, almost like it was true. What the fuck? She hadn't really come here to put a dagger in my throat, had she?
I turned her around. She was melting again, her face cracking and breaking. With one arm, I slammed her against my chest, pulling her arms around me.
“It's gonna be okay. Soon as the motherfucker who caused this shit's dealt with, we're gonna give that thing a proper burial. Frame it or make something outta it. A reminder that all the death and hell that's come between us is over, babe. It's past. It's done because I say it is. I'm gonna fill that hole in your heart the same fucking way I love filling up your body.”
She kissed me, smiling as our lips pressed.
Finally. There she was. The Sabrina I'd been looking for all along, the dark haired babe I missed who lit my blood on fire and turned my dick to steel.
Oh, fuck. She tasted so soft, so wet, so warm. So irrevocably mine.
I couldn't hold the lust storm off forever. Soon as she was breathing regularly again and drying those eyes, I'd throw her down on the bed just a few feet away and fuck her seven ways to Sunday. And then seven more after that.
Shit, we'd go seven hundred fucking ways 'til the end of time with all the ways I needed her body hitched to mine.
A happy growl tore my throat like thunder. I broke away, sweeping one hand low to her ass, rubbing my stubble over her snowy neck.
“God damn, you're hot. I'm gonna blow the fuck up if I don't get something in me to cool off.” I reached for the little shot still dangling in her fingers.
Had the fucking thing pressed to my lips before she let out an earsplitting scream. Both her hands clawed at my arm, trying to force it down.
“Stop it, Anton! No, no, no, no, no...you can't drink, you can't drink that stuff!”
Was this some kinda fucked up game? Smiling, I fought her, wheeling her around. We crashed down on the bed in chaos, and I was laughing as she tried to fight that shitty alcohol outta my hand. By some miracle, I hadn't spilled the damned thing.
Now, Sabrina was right on top of me. Right where I fucking wanted her, except with a lot less clothing.
I fought her and she went at me like a mad dog. The whole thing only lasted ten seconds before I had the cool glass pressed to my lips.
“Anton!” She screamed my name, twisted in my arms, and then rammed her little face against mine.
Fuck!
The shot broke away from my lips and I saw it go spiraling to the bed with Sabrina over my shoulder, face first. She was wide eyed and wiping furiously at her lips a second later.
That was when I realized this wasn't just a stupid game.
My girl's chest jerked unnaturally. She couldn't breathe. Her throat was closing.
I pulled her up in my arms roaring, thumping on her back, holding her close 'til I smelled that nasty vinegar shit on her lips.
Shit, shit, shit! The shot glass lay right next to where her face had hit. She must've downed half of whatever hadn't soaked into the sheets.
I went ape, jumped off the bed, and dragged her to the bathroom. She was coughing and struggling against me like mad, but now it was because she really couldn't breathe. I had one arm around her and my other on the phone, howling into it as fast as I could when Grigor answered.
“Get the fuck up here right now! Call a doctor – I don't care how fuckin' much you've got to pay the shit to keep his quack mouth shut. Move your ass!” The phone snapped shut and I hurled it into the tub.
Oh, fuck. This was bad. Her gem-like eyes were bugging and starting to get glassed. I didn't have a fucking clue what that shit really was, or how fast it worked. There was nothing I could do about the unknown poison right now except try to get it outta her system this second.
“Hang on, babe! This won't be pretty. Just remember I'm trying to save your ass!” I didn't know if she could hear me.
She looked panicked, half-blastd outta her mind. I held her over the toilet and reached into her mouth, jamming my fingers against her throat, anything to make her heave that shit up.
It took a few tries to get her to retch. She coughed and let it all out, and I kept going, holding her while she spasmed and expelled what little was in her stomach. Of course, the deadly shit was indistinguishable from everything else.
There was no way to know if I'd gotten it. I held her, shaking like a fucking fool while she kicked and thrashed, one hand on her little belly going through its spasms.
She went limp. I barely jerked her away from the bowl in time before she dove in. Laying her out carefully on the floor, I pushed my hand against her chest, checking her breath.
Somebody was knocking at the door out in the bedroom, but fuck if I was getting up to answer it.
Her breathing was still choppy, shallow, and difficult. The bluish tinge in her lips told me she wasn't getting enough oxygen.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
I wiped her lips on my shirt and dove, pushing all the air from my lungs into hers, pounding on her chest to get her to suck it in.
Don't die on me, Sabrina. Don't you fucking die on me!
Breathe, baby, breathe.
Come. The. Fuck. On.
My brain was right off its rails by the time old Grigor came bursting in, belting loud Russian orders at the servants. Incomprehensible grief and desperation and terror turned me into a fucking maniac, but I wouldn't let myself do anything but breathe, pouring as much air as I could into her lungs.
“Master Anton, you need to let us through. We have steroids to help. Doctor is on his way.”
I pulled myself away from her just long enough to jabber a few words about poisons and fuck ups to Grigor. I think the old man got the message. He never let a damned line of emotion show in his face.
Exactly like he'd been trained. A last line of defense for reason when all the Ivankovs were flipping their shit.
I wouldn't fucking leave her. Lev and Daniel grabbed underneath my arms and carried me away, kicking and screaming. Last glimpse of her I had was Grigor and two of the maids with First Aid shit piling in around her.
“Brother, please! Calm your ass down before you tear the whole house apart!” Lev leaned down and screamed in my face when we were outside.
The second they let me go, I lunged for them, grabbing both their necks and throwing them to the ground with superhuman strength.
“This is your fucking fault! Bastards! Both of you!”
Daniel's nose cracked beneath my fist and I fel
t blood come running out. Lev sank his teeth into my arm, but damned if I didn't stop moving it, snarling like a lion on crack while I pounded his head into the floor.
“Fuck! Just tell us what happened, Anton. Anton!” Daniel's words gurgled with the blood pouring down his throat and my continued punches. “Gonna fucking kill us...”
Fuck. I had them both by the balls. If they were any other men, they'd already be dead, their skulls fractured and their nose bones driven up their brains.
Damn it.
My brothers deserved the ass kicking, but they didn't deserve to die. They were only partially responsible for my woman laid out on the cold floor, fighting for her fucking life.
The real culprit was the sonofabitch we all wanted dead. And if I let my emotions boil over into murdering my own kin, I'd never get Gioulio. Not when it'd take a small miracle to show my face in Chicago without getting picked up and thrown back behind bars by the first fat cop looking to play hero.
I let them go. They crawled, putting some distance between us. Daniel grunted, wiped his face with his sleeve. I'd bloodied his nose and busted his lip bad.
“You gotta learn to talk to us without using your fists,” Lev snarled. “What's this shit about poison? Did that bitch seriously try to kill you in our own house?”
It took everything I had to stay put instead of marching over and planting my fist in his broad fucking face again. “It was an accident. She was trying to take it back and prevent my dumbass from taking it. Change of heart. And none of it would've happened if I'd thrown the goddamned bug in the trash instead of planting it in her purse like Daniel said!”
D coughed, flashing me the angry eyes in his shattered face. “You fucking turncoat! We all agreed, and her pulling this shit just shows I was right all along. She stabbed you in the back, turned us on each other.”
“Wrong answer!” I beat my fists on the floor, all I could do to avoid breaking his nose, or else breaking it a second time if the fucking thing was already snapped. “She poisoned herself because she stopped trusting me! Asshole Gioulio found your stupid bug and used it to open up her head and pour his crap into it. She was already poisoned way before she got here, before she swallowed that shit he gave her to kill me.”
