“I doubt my new father-in-law wants to apologize in person for missing his daughter’s wedding.”
“You want eyes on it?”
“Damn right I do. In every corner… I’m considering calling him out on his lax parenting skills.”
“You sure that’s wise?” says Frankie, chewing thoughtfully. “If you stir up shit with Dubov, you’re in danger of killing the Riviera deal with Zaccaria. If that happens, he won’t be so inclined to deliver on that second name. We could end up chasing our tails, not the truth, for another fourteen…” He shuts up suddenly as Ielena steps out of the saloon doors.
She’s dressed in the same high-neck, white shift dress she was wearing the first day we met, but it doesn't look half as dull and uninteresting on her now.
I slide my gaze back to Frankie. His steady grays are already feeling me out for decisions so I give him the briefest of nods, even though it aches to do it. I can’t divert a fourteen-year road trip because of a white rabbit in the road. I’ll mitigate as much of the fallout as I can, when it comes, but on this occasion my pain takes precedence.
“Nothing’s changed,” I tell him in an undertone. “We finish the job and then go after Rossi.” Turning back to Ielena, I clear my throat and gesture to her outfit. “You regressing on me, sweetheart?”
She blushes. Fuck, I love that blush. It’s a streak-free window into her emotions. “I start at Eloise’s shop in an hour. I’ll change into something else when I get there.”
I’d forgotten about the job. The doctor’s not due on-board for another thirty minutes. She’ll just have to be late.
I watch her give Frankie a shy smile and my chest feels like a belt got winched up a notch. As she folds into the chair next to me, we both catch the hiss of pain. When her blush starts to fade, she’s as pale as a ghost underneath her light make-up.
Damn. The infection is setting in already.
“Up,” I order, rising to my feet as Felix glides into the background with a tray of fresh juice. I send him away again with a look.
“I’d like some breakfast first.” Her defiance is weaker today, but it’s still there.
“You’re sick. You can have it in bed.”
“I am not sick, and I don’t want to go back to bed.” Her brow creases in confusion, and then a dawning outrage. “No, Aiden,” she cries. “You said I could have this job for a week. You promised me!”
“Our ‘wants’ are polar opposites when you’re sick and you look like shit.”
“Back to the insults so soon?” she says angrily. “I knew last night was too good to be true.”
“Last night was a mistake.”
Her head jerks up. “But nothing happ—”
“Frankie, leave us,” I snarl, cutting her off.
“Temper, temper.” Shooting me an amused look, he picks up my highball, drains it in one, and then crashes the glass back down on the table in his own personal ‘fuck you’. I watch him take his sulky arse indoors before dealing with a pair of dark eyes that are glittering with betrayal. She doesn’t even know the half of it yet.
She breaks first, dropping her gaze to her lap. “You weren’t in bed when I woke up this morning.”
“You make it sound like an accusation.”
“I thought—”
“You thought what?” I shake my head at her, showering her in condescension. “I got drunk, I passed out, and I woke at five a.m. with a hangover from hell. Let’s not romanticize it, princess,” I say, shoving her back into a box named ‘irritant’ again. Even so, I can’t seem to shut the lid.
“That’s not what I… Oh, forget it.” With a roll of her eyes she neatly places me back in another, named ‘fickle bastard’. “I’m starting that job today, Aiden. I’m going to get my things together now.” But as she stands, she starts to sway like the black and white tassels on the parasols.
“Jesus. Sit down before you fall down.”
“No, I—”
I move like lightning, and for the second time in two days I catch her in my arms.
Chapter Fourteen
Issa
I’m staring up at that ring of gold again.
I blink and it becomes three.
I’m not in my cabin. I’m in the main saloon, stretched out on one of the soft blue couches with a gray check blanket thrown over me. Someone’s undressed me. I’m wearing a man’s black shirt that smells strongly of sandalwood and musk—Aiden—and nothing else except my underwear.
I try to sit up and feel a strange tugging sensation across my chest. Glancing down, I see the white corner of a hospital-grade gauze bandage peeking out from underneath the neckline of the shirt.
“It was infected. You’ve been out for two days.”
My head jerks up. Aiden is sitting on the couch opposite, with a stack of papers on his lap and that ubiquitous whiskey in his hand. He takes a long swig before continuing. “The doctor cleaned it and dressed it, and gave you a shot of antibiotics and pain killers. We caught the worst of it just in time.”
My stomach drops. “You saw it?”
“Yes, I saw it… I saw all of them.” His eyes gleam, hard and blue. “We counted eleven bruises in total. That’s eleven punches I’ll be returning the favor on. I may even add a couple more for the inconvenience.” He takes another vicious swig of his whiskey, his gaze never leaving my face. “If there’s anything important you’d like to say to your father, I’d do it quickly if I were you. I’ll be severing the family ties for good, sometime in the next forty-eight hours.”
“What makes you think it was—”
“Don’t.” His anger reverbs off the walls, shocking me into silence again. “I know what the Semion insignia is, Ielena, and I know why he did it.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“He wants me to reject you. That way he keeps the deal and gets one over on the Italians,” he adds grimly. “I was the consolation prize, the retaliation for your sister’s bad deed… I’m not even a made man, sweetheart. I’m a fixer. I’m an associate to opportunity. I get tipsy on the potential, and then high on the challenge. I’m the bastard who’s prepared to do what it takes, the man who puts down his roots in the hardest of soils, and the one who gets what he wants by any means necessary… I was chosen because it shames your family to be married to me, instead of one of Zaccaria’s bastards. Your daddy got pissed about it and bought himself a branding iron. He ruined you to send his own message back to La Famiglia.”
“You think I’m ruined?” I say quietly.
“No. I think you’re free.”
Free? The air comes whooshing out at my mouth. I’m stuck on a yacht. I’m trapped in a marriage. I’m bound to a lie. And he thinks I’m free?
“Free of your father,” he corrects tersely, seeing my expression. “It was all about keeping the deal alive between the Semion and the Cosa Nostra while not losing face. That’s the only thing he cares about. Are you stinging from the truth yet?”
God, he’s relentless. He’s goading and pushing us across county lines into a place that neither of us wants to be.
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this?”
“You showed me one of your secrets. I’m repaying you with one of my own.”
My hand drifts toward my bandage again. “You stole my secret from me while I was unconscious.”
“So I’m offering mine freely in return,” he counters with a crooked grin. “Take it. Exploit it. It’s rarer than you know.”
“I don’t care about the reasons why we’re married.” I glance down to find I’m twirling the ends of the cashmere throw around my fingers and making pits in the yarn with my thumb. “I don’t care if you’re not a Zaccaria. We can’t divorce otherwise the deal falls through and you don’t get your ‘world’.” My gaze finds the empty deck outside. “Whatever happens, I’m never going back to Paris.”
“Good, because I lost the fucking receipt on you the moment you grew a pair.”
Don’t you do it, Aide
n Knight. Don’t you undo my resolve with your throwaway respect.
“Did they hurt your sister, too?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Karina ran long before they had a chance to…” I trail off as my wound starts to ache
“Do you know where she it?”
I think of a beach. I think of waves crashing against a wooden breaker that’s green with algae and age.
“No.”
The lie comes easily enough. After everything I’ve done to protect it so far, it has an unbreakable wax seal.
He nods slowly, accepting this.
I smooth the throw over my bare legs. “My father ordered his men to do this to me, and my mother is a drunk.” I fix him with a challenging look. “Go ahead, Aiden. Call me a poor little rich girl. I know you’re dying to.”
He finishes up his drink and loses the glass to the coffee table in front of him. “Poor little rich girls whine about the color of their ponies. You’ve been concealing third-degree burns from me for the last few days.”
“Dapple gray… I always wanted a bay.”
It’s me that’s clawing for our unexpected lightness now. His revelations don’t lessen my burden—the path back to Karina is still overgrown with thorns—but I’m craving some of his sweet relief.
“Don’t go reinforcing those stereotypes, Ielena,” he says mildly. “You know I’ll give you hell for it.”
“You know I’ll give you hell back.”
His slow grin turns into a laugh. It’s one of his looser sounds, letting all of the tension drain away from us. “Your father’s coming into my casino tomorrow night.” He cocks his head to gauge my reaction. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s come to gloat.”
“Do you have business with him?”
“I did, but after the last twenty-four hours it’s under serious review.”
“I don’t want you to start a war.”
“I’m at the epicenter of so many damn wars, they’re thinking of naming an atomic bomb after me.” He comes over and sits down on the couch. So close. Too close. “I called the weird cat-dress lady earlier. You can start tomorrow, but only if you’re feeling up to it.”
“You called Eloise?” I’m shocked.
“There are five hundred people working for me on the Riviera. I know how employer/employee relations work. I figured you’d want her to know about your double-day absence. You owe her money, after all.” He props his elbow on the top of the couch and rests the side of his head on the heel of his hand. It’s one of those casually masculine gestures of this that does wild things to my core.
“Did you tell her why?”
“She didn’t ask questions. I presume she saw the evidence when she was warning you all about me in that dressing room for half an hour.”
“You heard that?” I whisper.
He laughs. “I hear everything.”
“Please don’t hurt her.”
“I will if she does it again,” he counters silkily.
“I told her I fell from a horse.”
“And got trampled by eagle shaped hooves?”
I search my mind frantically for a change of subject.
“I liked Senator Sanders…”
His smirk vanishes. “You shouldn’t. That man’s a savage.”
“All the best women seem to be married to one.”
He cocks one eyebrow at me, but doesn’t comment. “If you fancy a nightmare sometime, I’ll share his life story. Does it hurt?” He gestures to my chest.
“It’s…better,” I say, feeling shy suddenly. “The pain is more of a dull, throbbing ache.” I catch my hand drifting toward the burn again.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn't want to be mocked for it,” I say, slapping him with the truth. “You would have used it. Abused it. Admit it, Aiden... One person’s wound is just another thing for you to jab your thumb into.”
“I have zero interest in being in this marriage,” he states, slapping me back with a force even harder than mine. “I make no secret about it. But I was offered something I’ve wanted for a very long time, and you happened to be the deal. It doesn’t mean I want to see you beaten or branded because of it.”
The times when he doesn’t know he’s being cruel are so much worse than the times he does.
“What did Zaccaria offer you?” I say, keeping my voice even.
“The greatest thing on earth.” He reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out an old Zippo lighter. Scuffed black on one side. Stainless steel on the other. When he scratches the flint, I recognize the sound from last night.
“What’s that?”
“Reasons.”
“The greatest thing on earth is ‘reasons’?”
“No, the lighter is.”
I wonder if he cultivates his air of mystery on purpose, or if he’s just one, big unsolvable riddle. I suspect the latter. His truth is as twisted up for him as is it for me.
“Thanks for calling the doctor…” I trail off when I catch sight of the Steinway piano over his shoulder.
Heat.
Sin.
Wanted.
Reaching out, I run my finger over the lid of the Zippo. He doesn’t move away, even when our fingers connect. I can see the tattoo of a black raven on his inside wrist. “You’re like a two-speed dryer, Aiden,” I say jokily. “You only blow hot and cold—”
“As far as I’m aware, no one’s blowing anyone around here.”
“You treat me with contempt, and then you act like the husband I’d hoped you’d be. Maybe one of these wars you speak of is a war with yourself?”
“Enough.” He moves fast then, curling a large hand around my neck and pitching me forward until our foreheads are pressed up tight against each other. I can feel his whiskey breath on my face. Everywhere I look is glorious, dangerous him. “Godammit, Ielena. You are not what I expected. You are so much worse and so much better. You are a universe gone haywire.”
“You want to fuck me,” I state, stumbling over the word and despising my innocence.
“I want to fuck you,” he confirms.
“Do I really taste like black cherries?”
He groans, as if in pain. “Dark black cherries in the summertime. In the park with the broken swing on the council estate back home. You taste of possibilities and a future,” he adds huskily, strained even, as if he’s forcing the words from his mouth.
“You taste of color, Aiden Knight.”
Clashing color.
He’s a bad man, but there’s a deep reservoir of melancholy inside of him. I stood on the banks last night and caught the silver ripples of the tide in the moonlight.
The hand around my neck tightens. It’s a blunt reminder that he could kill me anytime he wanted. He opens his mouth to say something else, but his cell phone does all the talking for him.
“Shit.” The spell breaks. He lets go of me abruptly. By the time I’ve recovered he’s halfway across the room. “Yes?” I hear him say. “When? …Good. I’m on my way.” Hanging up, he returns to the couch to collect his jacket, avoid my scrutiny, and to resurrect a distance between us that’s far more than the present three feet. “Business,” he announces, as if the last ten minutes never happened.
“What sort of business?”
“My sort,” he says, striding toward the door. “Get some rest. Felix will bring you anything you need. I’ll be back later.”
It’s impossible to fall asleep once he’s gone. For every tick-tock of the clock above the bar, there’s another splinter of our conversation to digest. He’s just gone and given me the one thing I never expected from this marriage: honesty.
In the end, I kick the quilt off my legs and head back to my cabin for my sketchbook and pencil. For the first time in a week, I can move without razorblades slitting open my chest. Whatever the doctor gave me, I’m hoping he left Aiden a repeat script.
The cabin is quiet and empty. It’s exactly how I left it two days ago. The closet door is still ajar and
bright sunshine is bouncing off the make-up lids I left scattered across the dresser. My red and pink dress still drapes limply over an ivory stool.
I go to pick up my sketchbook from my nightstand when I notice a strange cell phone resting right on top of it. It’s an older model than my iPhone, the kind that my father and his men use. The illegal burner kind.
It starts ringing while I’m still staring at it.
No Caller ID.
“Hello?” I say hesitantly.
“Don’t say a word,” orders Maxim. “The whole place is bugged, but I’ve had the closet cleaned and sound-proofed. Hang up and go straight there. In the top drawer on the left you’ll find another cell. Shut the door, lock it, and then wait for me to call you. Tell me I’m a wrong number. Quickly, Issa!”
“Sorry, wrong number,” I say mechanically to a dead dial tone, before placing the cell back down on the nightstand and rushing into the closet as instructed.
The new cell starts ringing as I’m still pulling out the drawer.
“Maxim—?”
“Has he hurt you?” he demands “I heard the doctor was called on board two days ago.”
“No, it’s not like that.”
“Tell me, zvezda moya,” he urges. “Tell me you’re okay.”
“Paris. Last week,” I whisper, closing my eyes, choking down the nausea as I force myself to relive the memory. “He wanted to know where Karina was. When I wouldn’t say he-he…” The lie gets stuck in my throat.
“What did he do to you, Issa?”
“I can’t…”
“Tell me!”
When I don’t answer, he demands it again and again, until I’m drawing in a ragged breath and leaving raw clues in my reticence.
“No.” His voice is a rasp of shock. He knows what my father excels at. “Mu-dak! I’ll kill him. Issa—”
“There’s no way you could have stopped it. You were five hundred miles away in Cannes. Besides, I wouldn’t have let you. You can’t blow your cover, Maxim, any more than I can.”
A stream of guilt and apologies filter down the line.
“Stop,” I beg. “If you think for one moment that your love for my sister drove me into this, you’re wrong. I would have made the same sacrifice, with or without you.”
Black Skies Riviera: An Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance Page 13
