Black Skies Riviera: An Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance

by Catherine Wiltcher

  “It wasn’t my fault!”

  “But it’s both of our problems now, thanks to you and your golden snatch.” His scornful gaze drips hot wax on my body. “Knight was all about the money and power before you came along. He never even screwed the same woman twice.”

  “Stop,” I whisper. “I’m just trying to get close to Zaccaria and his secrets. I’m working undercover, too—”

  “Don’t you dare compare yourself to trained agents, like me. You’re nothing but a spoiled mafia princess who’s had to interrupt her spray tan schedule to spread her legs for the greater cause.”

  “Don’t presume you know anything about me, Felix, or whatever the hell your name is,” I rasp, jabbing back with a weak punch of my own. “I’m living my own lie here. I’m drowning in it so deep, the path up to the surface is a trail of dissolving air bubbles.”

  “Spare me the pity party,” he snarls. “Go tell it to your diary.” I open my mouth to argue again, but he shuts me down with his next words: “I don’t give a damn what British Intelligence offered you and Lebedev… I have no interest in blowing apart some top-secret, lick-arse society that Zaccaria claims to be a member of. That’s their gig. Their problem. My target is Knight. My target has always been Knight. Two billion has passed through his casino and come out squeaky clean, and that’s a big deal for me and the people I work for.”

  My mind starts reeling.

  I think of Aiden’s reaction when I asked if he might be arrested earlier. I think of the ravens at The Tower of London—the ones with clipped wings to stop them flying away. They were denied their freedom. They never had a choice but to stay.

  The Cristo.

  Fourteen years.

  Aiden’s been stuck working for Zaccaria for fourteen years.

  Why?

  Felix starts pacing the small space, so I back myself into the far wall. The smell of his sweat and frustration is permeating the air and making my stomach turn.

  “My objective is linking Knight to your father and Zaccaria, which means it’s imperative to have them all in the same room together. Nothing can deviate us from that.”

  “There’s no way you can bring down those three men all by yourself,” I blurt out. “I can't speak for my father, but you know who and what protects Zaccaria.”

  “Then you better work harder, ‘princess’,” he sneers. “My success is dependent on yours, so I want to see blisters on those knees, and a goddamn spring in Knight’s step for the next day or so. If it all goes to plan, he’ll be facing life imprisonment by the end of the week. With a bit of luck, La Società Villefort will be crumbling from the inside out, as well.”

  Is it possible to hate anything more than I do this twisted fate?

  “Tell me what else I need to do,” I say dully.

  “Make Knight believe that you’ve forgiven your father for what he did to you. Keep him sweet. Keep them both sweet. They’re having a drink together tomorrow night at Dubov’s request, and I don’t want any nasty surprises. If you speak to Lebedev, tell him I want him working just as hard from his end to keep the peace.”

  Do I tell him about Aiden’s cell phone in the car? He could tap into the data and bug it in no time, but he’s stripped me of my dignity along with my good will with this horrible ambush, so I’m thinking he can go straight to hell.

  “Focus, Ielena. On Thursday I want to be lighting up the Monaco skies with more red and blue than a French laser show.”

  “Fine,” I mutter, staring straight past his shoulders at the door. “Can I go now?”

  “Just so long as you realize what’s at stake...” As I draw level, he jabs his finger into the wound on my chest and I cry out in pain. “Don't fail me, bitch,” he hisses, lording his threat over my doubled-up body. “I have a special hotline to British Intelligence, too. One call and the nurses in your sister’s hospital ward might accidently be attaching the wrong drip at two a.m. in the morning.”

  “No!” I gasp out.

  “You can build up a lot of animosity for a person in two years, and that’s all I feel for that bastard husband of yours. His past is murky. His sins are an ever-growing list. Did you know he used to ‘fix’ for Zaccaria for ten years before he arrived here to terrorize the Cote d'Azur? He made all of his boss’s little problems go away. He’s not a businessman, he’s a thug and a killer, and you’re just an extension of him now.”

  I force my body to unfurl. This man doesn’t deserve to see my pain.

  “Disappointed men aren’t known for their rationality, Mrs. Knight,” he continues.

  “Neither are disappointed women.” I summon all the energy I have left to shove him away. “Why don’t you slither back undercover and fetch me another juice like a good employee?”

  His pale face turns magenta. He raises his fist to strike me and I hate myself for cringing away. “I’m warning you—”

  “Fuck you!” I’m getting used to saying those words. They slip so much easier from my mouth that they used to. “I could take you down, too, Felix. If my sister dies before the authorities catch up with Aiden, I’ll make sure you’re finished. I’ll blow your cover and your whole operation. And don’t bother intimidating me with more retaliation. Without my sister, I’d be dead inside anyway.”

  It’s not true. My heart beats for more than just Karina these days, but I’m learning to play this game by all its twisted rules.

  He glares at me—weighing options, making judgements—and then he’s dropping his hand to his pocket. “Say ‘hi’ to the British for me.” He slams a new burner cell down on the top of the bureau. “Eight a.m. tomorrow morning. I suggest you answer it… They’re not as tolerant as I am.”

  I quickly shove it in a nearby drawer, despising him not so much for his insults and threats as for his acid truths about Aiden.

  “Try not to choke on all that conflict inside you, Felix,” I say, glaring at him.

  “Likewise,” he replies with a bitter laugh. “I’m betting you choke first, though.”

  I spend the rest of the evening looking for a soft place to fall, but all I find are sharp edges and empty staterooms. My lungs are like lead again, my footsteps slow and deliberate. It’s not easy drawing breath when your soul is this battered and compromised.

  I’m craving Maxim’s solid reassurance. I need him to tell me that everything’s going to be okay, but he’s a million miles away wrestling with his own demons—namely my father, a man whom I know he despises even more than Felix does Aiden. I shut my eyes and I see a white hospital room with blue disposable curtains. I see a team of blond and black haired surgeons. I see a bright red box, packed with ice, and the burgundy-colored organ that’s going to save her life.

  After tomorrow, that life is going to be peaceful and unpolluted, and far, far away from my father and his cruel decisions. Aleksandr Dubov is the bad guy from every fairy tale. He thrives on misery and he despises happily ever afters, most of all his own daughters’.

  Preoccupied, I wander past my cabin, past the sky lounge, past the saloon into a different part of The Cristo. Somewhere along the way, I lose my bearings. I frown at strange doors. I double-back down unfamiliar passages. I’m as lost and found on Aiden’s yacht as I am in Aiden’s arms.

  The next door I try greets me with a familiar scent so strong I have no choice but to slip inside. It’s another cabin, twice the size of mine, with a huge king size and a long black desk with a silver laptop that’s dead when I open it up.

  In the en suite, I run my fingers over the uncapped shampoos and cologne bottles on the counter, picturing him washing and grooming. He always looks so perfect with his carefully tousled, black bed hair. It's an appearance that I know belies the storm inside.

  Returning to the cabin, I climb into his king size and wrap myself up in his granite-gray sheets.

  Has the raven consumed his little bird yet?

  If the message is referring to me, the answer is unequivocal. The ache between my legs is just the physical evidence. More substan
tial proof lies in my current state of restlessness. It’s like he’s awoken a part of me that will never sleep again.

  I glance at the digital clock on his nightstand. Ten p.m. Is that all? Some nights pass in the flutter of soft kisses and sweet dreams. Others march on and on in lonely, wide-eyed, solitude.

  This is one of those.

  Awake.

  Alone.

  Lying discarded next to the clock is the old lighter he was toying with yesterday. I reach out and turn it over in my hand. There are two, faded letters stamped into the scuffed brushed steel that I didn’t notice before:

  J. K.

  On the flip side is the faint outline of a bird. Is that a raven? I looked up the reference on my iPhone yesterday. It’s from an old Edgar Allen Poe poem. If what Eloise alluded about him is correct, he’s holding onto something from his past so tightly it’s staining every aspect of his present.

  Next, I think about what Felix said—about all the awful things he’s supposed to have done in the name of Tommaso Zaccaria. Am I supposed to be repulsed by it? Horrified? The world isn’t as cut and dry to me as it was six months ago. People do bad things for a variety of reasons. Desperate reasons. Look at me. Look at Maxim.

  I can’t condemn him until I learn his true motives.

  Not everyone with dark feathers and black hearts deserve their freedom, but I can sense there’s more to him than a dangerous smirk and a killer reputation.

  I can't let Interpol take him down, but I can’t let my sister die, either.

  At some point I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I know, it’s pitch black outside and the mattress is dipping with heat beside me. Insistent fingers start circling my hipbone. Sweet and sour whiskey breath is lacing the nape of my neck. A beat later, I’m being yanked backward into his open-armed den of safety.

  I don’t care that it’s weaved with loose lies and deception. I don't care much about anything when he’s wrapped around me like this.

  “You’re home.”

  “Home,” he murmurs, and we both take a moment to decipher a word that’s complicated and unfamiliar to us. His hand seeks out the lighter, and he plucks it from my fingers. “Where did you find this?”

  “Nightstand… J. K… Is that—?

  “My father,” he answers gruffly, closing his fist around it.

  There’s a pause. “What happened to him?”

  “Dead.” He tosses it onto the bedsheet beside me and his fingers start wandering again, this time up to my breast to tease my nipple through the thin fabric of my dress until it’s stiff and tender.

  “Is that long dead, or recent dead?” I wriggle my ass up against him, feeling his erection, needing him…

  “Fourteen years dead.”

  I freeze. “Is this a Zaccaria-linked death or—”

  He hisses under his breath. “Stop fire dancing again, sweetheart. It’s been a hell of a night.”

  Fire dancing? I refrain from arguing that it was him who started this breadcrumb trail in the first place.

  “What are you doing in my cabin anyway?”

  “I got lost.” Lost for you. The minute you sat down uninvited in a bar in Cannes, and mocked your way into my life.

  “Do you need me to draw you a map?”

  “Of your yacht, or of your body?” I tease, striving for our lightness once more. “We could call it the next lesson.”

  He growls out a laugh. “You shouldn’t say such inflammatory things.” His fingers trail downward again. “It’s been a long time since I let a woman stay over in my cabin, if ever... Are you a bed invader as well, Issa?”

  My pulse rate spikes. Issa. He called me Issa.

  The first time he said my nickname it was drenched in contempt. Tonight, it’s bathed in deference.

  He’s bending, learning...

  Conceding.

  “As well as what?” I rasp back, pressing into his warmth again, but I never get my answer with words.

  Instead, for the next two hours, he lets his lust do all the talking for him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Issa

  I wake to brilliant sunshine streaming in through the cabin’s windows and gently warming my face. My mother used to say that a circadian rhythm is best broken at sunrise, but how she knew that is a mystery to me. For as long as I can remember, she only left her bed for her pre-lunch aperitifs.

  My limbs are heavy with sleep as I yawn and stretch, and familiarize myself with my surroundings. It feels too natural to be waking up in his bed. It’s that soft place to fall I was searching for all of last night. Whatever happens between us, there’s a part of me that will always yearn to be back in the comfort of this moment.

  A rustle of sheets has my stomach dipping in anticipation. I turn and find myself face-to-face with my newest life conundrum: how a napping Aiden is equally as desirable to me as a wide-awake one, albeit a less liable to quip, ridicule or fuck me to avoid the questions one might...

  His sin isn’t so full frontal this morning. There’s a softness in his expression, even though his graze of dark stubble is hinting at a less than perfect soul. With his eyes closed, those wicked blues aren’t glinting at me like treasure at the bottom of the ocean, but he’s all about the colors in other ways: golden skin. Gray sheets. Black hair. Faded pink stains on his forearms…

  The events of last night come rushing back. There’s a phone call to take in a couple of hours from MI6. There are lives to save, and lives to ruin.

  The weight of a traitor's responsibility entices me to shut my eyes and return to oblivion, but I force my legs out of bed regardless. That’s when a strong arm hooks around my waist and pulls me back into his safety nook again.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he rumbles, his deep cadence thickened with sleep.

  “I have a new job,” I say, smiling into the pillow, filling my voice with that same emotion before I have a chance to conceal it. “And the doctor is returning first thing to change my dressing.”

  Yawning, he lets go of me and rolls onto his back. “Does it still hurt?”

  I brush my hand across the white bandage. “It’s much better, thank you.”

  “Such a polite little halfway, except when she’s on her knees—”

  “I think we get the picture,” I interject hastily.

  “But I had it in glorious Technicolor.”

  I watch him doze himself awake for a minute or two. The wound in my chest may be healing, but resentment is still bleeding from it. Every time I look in the mirror, every time I lay with him, that eagle insignia will be there to chase the light away.

  “Give it a couple of months and you can tattoo over it,” he says, as if reading my mind.

  “With what? A skull and crossbones?” I wrap the sheet around my chest with a sigh.

  “It’s a blip, nothing more. The rest of your body is fucking perfect, so one minor flaw is acceptable.”

  I cluck at him reprovingly. “It’s too early in the morning for you to be handing out compliments.”

  “You're right. Mornings are good for one thing, and one thing only.” At this, he rolls onto his front to blast me with the glorious temptation of his thick web of back muscles.

  “Which is…?” I run my fingers lightly up his spine. I can’t seem to stop touching him.

  “More sleep,” comes the muffled reply.

  “Are we going to talk about last night?”

  “The fun part or the not-so-fun part?”

  “The dead man in the front of your casino part.”

  “It’s business.” He turns his head to glare me into submission, but I’m not so easily dissuaded.

  “You always say that when you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Maybe you should take the hint.”

  “Maybe you should stop being so dismissive, and then I might.”

  “Fuck, I love it when you talk dirty.” He strikes like a snake, flipping me onto my back and pinning my hips with his weight. “Next you’ll be
telling me you’d miss me.” He swallows up my shocked gasp with a kiss.

  “Can a marriage get annulled in the first year or is it still a divorce?” I say, ripping my mouth away.

  “Oh baby, you couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.” He nuzzles into my hair, making my head spin from his heavy blanket of maleness. Our banter is turning him on, judging from the twitching hardness against my thigh. It's our foreplay. Our very own back and forth. He dishes it out, and I’m learning to take it and return it. “Get up.” He removes his leg and kicks the remainder of the gray sheet away. “You’re having a shower with me.”

  Right away, panic clouds up my insides. “I don’t want to have a shower with you.”

  “Tough. It’s non-negotiable. I want to scrub us clean before I go and sully my reputation with my business again.”

  I watch him rise from the bed like a golden Adonis. “Seriously Aiden, I don’t want one. Not here. I’ll go back to my own cabin.”

  But he sees right through my paper-thin excuse. “Is this about the water thing?” he says irritably.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “What happened? Did Papa Bratva drop you in the swimming pool as a kid?”

  “Please leave it.” I scrabble off the bed, refusing to give him any more reasons to hate my father.

  He grabs hold of my hand, but I flinch away. “I want to know, Issa. I have my suspicions, but I want to hear the words from your mouth.”

  “If you know, then you don’t need me to confirm it.”

  “Maybe I like to corroborate my sources.” He drags me closer to him, locking me into the force field of his body. We’re both naked and breathing hard with resentment. “Tell me.”