“Take her up to her room,” I say, sliding her key card in his pocket.
“Bennett,” she slurs, making a grab for me. “I love you so much. Why are you so cruel to me?”
Someone is definitely testing me tonight. “Get her out of here with the minimal amount of attention,” I tell Alessandro, “and I might forgive your earlier transgressions.” He nods. “Ask Sierra’s father to get one of his men to keep an eye on her,” I add, “but don’t take long. Hurry back.”
I stalk off, heading toward Accardi. “What’s up?”
“We have a situation we need to handle,” he says. “Follow me.”
We exit the ballroom, taking a left down a long winding corridor, passing the male and female restrooms and a few other smaller convention rooms, until we reach a dead end. One of Accardi’s soldiers stands guard at a door on the right, and he steps aside to let us enter. I follow Gino down a flight of stairs into a dark basement room. The other three bosses are there, circling two men tied to chairs. One of the men is bleeding from the nose and has a split lip, and the second can barely see out of his swollen left eye.
“Bratva,” I supply, noting the distinct markings on their necks.
“We found them sniffing around outside,” DiPietro says, kicking the legs of one of the chairs. The man with the swollen eye takes a tumble to the cold hard ground with a thud.
“They are saying jack shit, but we’ve doubled the perimeter guards,” Maltese confirms as I pull my knife from the sheath on my calf.
Pressing my knife against the second man’s throat, I yank his head back. “Who sent you and why?”
He spits in my face, saying something that sounds like “mudak.” I punch him in the face, and his nose gushes more blood. I land a few well-placed blows to his gut, and he grunts in pain as his head drops.
“We don’t have time for this,” DiPietro says, his usual impatience coming to the fore. “Just kill them.”
“No.” I wipe the spittle off my face with my handkerchief. “I want to interrogate them. Ask Gifoli for a place to transport them to, and assign a couple of our men to watch them.” I don’t like the idea of Russians hanging around Chicago. I doubt these two are here alone. “I’ll make my excuses shortly and head there to handle it myself.”
I stuff the soiled handkerchief in the man’s mouth before lifting his shirt. I slice a deep line across his gut, just under his navel, careful not to get any blood on my Prada tuxedo. His screams are muffled by the handkerchief, but tears leak involuntarily from his eyes, and pain is etched upon his face. “That wound will slowly bleed out, and it will eventually kill you if not treated. Perhaps it will incentivize you to talk. Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll let you live,” I lie.
The others nod, and we leave the basement in the care of a few of our best men. Noticing a few blood spatters on my hands, I stop by the men’s restroom to wash up.
When I emerge, I find a blonde waiting for me. But it’s not the blonde who occupies my every waking thought.
“Hello, Ben,” Saskia says, pushing off the wall and sauntering toward me. Her green silk dress leaves little to the imagination, and while it’s clearly expensive and she has spared no effort with her appearance tonight, she looks cheap and tacky in comparison to the vision that is Sierra.
Sierra trumps Saskia in every regard.
“I’ve been looking for an opportunity to get you alone all night,” she purrs, pressing herself up against me. I spotted her looking in my direction a few times, but for the most part, she didn’t look my way. Saskia is smart enough to not draw attention while her husband and her father are in the vicinity. But I knew she would attempt an ambush at some point. Whiskey fumes fan over my face as she leans in close, and I realize she’s quite inebriated. Her eyes are a little bloodshot, her skin flushed.
I step sideways, removing her hands from my body. “I don’t understand why.”
She bats her eyelashes, sidling up to me again. “Don’t be coy. I know you still want me the way I still want you.”
She’s persistent.
I’ll give her that.
But she’s about as appealing as a deadly rattlesnake.
“I have no interest in you, Saskia,” I truthfully admit. I haven’t forgotten she called the mother of my child a slut and my son a bastard. I also haven’t forgotten how mean she was to Sierra when she was a kid.
She titters like I’ve said something amusing. “You don’t have to worry about being seen or heard. Felix is with Alfredo and my father, and they are discussing some important business with your friends.” Her hand slides down the gap between our bodies, aiming for my crotch.
I grip her wrist before her fingers touch my cock. “You appear to be hard of hearing, so I’ll make this easy for you. I didn’t want to fuck you when we were dating, and I don’t want to fuck you now. Is that blunt enough for you?”
She tilts her head to the side, smiling up at me, and I wonder if she has more than just alcohol pumping through her veins. “I know what you’re up to. You want to make me beg, but I don’t beg any man, Ben. Not even you.”
Wow. She is truly a piece of work.
Before I can push her away, she slams me against the wall and slants her mouth against mine. A sharp gasp claims my attention, and I lock eyes with Sierra over Saskia’s shoulder. Tears roll silently down her face before she turns around and takes off, heading in the direction of the lobby.
28
SIERRA
I race through the entrance doors and down the stairs with no clue where I am going. All I know is I need to get out of here. I can’t erase the image of Ben kissing Saskia from my brain, and the pain spearing my chest is almost unbearable. I’m thirteen years old again, hiding in the shadows, watching my older sister kiss the guy I’m in love with, and my heart is aching for him, screaming at him to notice me, yet he still doesn’t see me.
Ben is stomping all over my heart except this time it’s worse because he is purposely choosing her over me.
I shouldn’t care.
He’s a monster, and I know I can do better. I’ve seen what he is capable of, and I should want nothing to do with him.
But I can’t lie to myself anymore.
I’m still in love with him.
I think I probably always have been, and I’m slowly accepting that loving a man like Ben means loving all parts of him.
I’m no better than I was as a kid. I’m still pining after a guy who will never be mine. The difference is, I’m a grown-up now. I’m a mother. I know better than to waste my time loving someone who will never love me back.
Sobs wrack my chest as my feet hit the sidewalk, and I dash along the side of the imperial gray stone building, my dress floating around me as I run with no direction. Piercing pain pokes holes in my chest as tears roll down my face, and I can hardly breathe over the intense internal agony ripping me apart on the inside.
It hurts. God, it hurts. So fucking badly.
“Sierra!” Ben shouts after me, his deep voice piercing the air.
I don’t stop, running aimlessly, needing to get away from him. I don’t want him to see me like this. He can’t see how pitiful and stupidly naïve I am, so I push my legs faster, fleeing from him. But my voluminous dress restricts my movements, and he has longer legs, so it doesn’t take him long to catch me.