I freeze, my cheeks flushing with humiliation.
“This is what real power looks like, signora,” he taunts. “Not drugs, clubs, or tricks, just violating the daughter and wife of your business partners. Knowing they cannot do a fucking thing about it because they need my connections too badly.”
Just then, Kirill looks over and sees Mario next to me. I watch his face go still, and then he’s pushing the blonde away from him and rising to his feet. As she tumbles to the floor with a shocked cry, he steps over her like she’s nothing more than roadkill.
Now, he’s talking to O’Sullivan, and they’re both looking over in our direction, which has Mario smirking in amusement. Kirill is hiding his anger behind a wall of indifference, but that tell-tale red flush of rage is creeping up O’Sullivan’s neck.
Mario’s crossing a line.
Neither man gives a damn about me, but to them I’m property, and property needs their permission to be entered and defiled.
“Do you think they can see what I’m doing to you under the table yet?” Mario chuckles darkly as his nails dig painful crescents into my upper thigh. “Take your panties off and give them a real show.”
“No,” I whisper.
“Spread your legs, bitch.”
“Fuck you!”
But he forces them apart anyway. “Who knows, you might enjoy it, signora. Semenov says you are frigid, but I refuse to believe it until I feel your dry pussy for myself.”
Frankie, help me. Please help me.
His cold fingers are burrowing into my underwear, hooking and clawing and pulling at the material as he fights with the thin barrier to get at me.
I close my eyes, willing myself away to a warm room inside my head where there’s a man waiting who tells me he loves me despite all my cracks and flaws. He’s reaching out to pull me into his arms, when there’s a loud shout from somewhere to my left…
A beat later, I’m being jerked back to the club as a bucket of cold water is thrown in my face and a piercing fire alarm erupts overhead, rattling my senses and bruising my eardrums.
Not a bucket I think hazily, as screams and shouts echo all around me. Blurred movement frames my vision as people run for cover in all directions.
It’s the fire sprinkler system.
Someone’s triggered the fire sprinkler system in the club.
With a roar of anger, Mario scrambles out of the booth as two of his men rush over with their jackets held aloft to shield their capo from the pelting water. I can hear him cursing and shouting in Italian as they make a beeline for the club’s exit.
My eyes flutter shut again to savour my reprieve.
Was this you, Frankie? Did you hear my silent cries?
Tipping my head back, I let the water slide over my skin, washing me clean of Mario’s dirty touch. All the chaos and noise fades into the background, and then it’s disappearing altogether. No one is grabbing at my arm and forcing me to leave. Everyone is too busy saving their expensive suits.
Peace.
Ada.
I sense him. The same way I sensed him last night. Heating me up with his gaze until I have no choice but to open my eyes.
That’s when I see him clearly for the first time in fourteen years—not in the darkness, but in the light. He’s standing over by the far wall behind the stage, distorted by a million droplets of water, but savagely beautiful enough to burn through them all.
I see the contours of his face, the same ones I felt with my fingertips last night, from the high slanted cheekbones to that unforgiving jawline. Taller. Broader. Fiercer. His skin is a rich golden colour, and his dark hair is shorter than I remembered. It’s a man’s haircut now, not a boy’s.
Tattoos cover his knuckles and forearms: swirling shapes and blades, and two words in a heavy script that match the ones carved into my heart. His chest is filling out his black T-shirt, the water moulding the material to all the hard planes of his abdomen…
I want his edges.
I want his everything.
“Ada!” Kirill storms back into the club, swiping at his eyes. “Fucking blyad. Think we would forget about you, eh? Where is Adrik? Getting his brains fucked out by some whore upstairs?” Grabbing my wrist, he hauls me out after him, cursing my slowness as I limp to keep up.
Before he drags me up the stairs, I glance back at the stage, hoping for one last glimpse, and holding my breath that Kirill won’t notice…
But Frankie’s already gone.
CHAPTER 28
FRANKIE
Bambi’s watching me from the passenger seat, wide-eyed and curious, as I pound my fist into the SUVs bonnet, only stopping when my knuckles are bloody and raw.
I’m too far gone to set a good example. Too blinded by pain for her to see me as anything other than the violent, desperate bastard I am.
Reeling backwards, I scrape my hand through my soaking wet hair as the busy neon streets of Soho look on with disapproval.
Fuck them.
Fuck them all.
I just added Mario Zaccaria to my kill list for touching what’s mine.
When Silas called me earlier to say that Semenov had sent a car for Ada, I was out of Encore’s front door, telling Viper some bullshit excuse about going for pizza without realising Bambi had snuck into my backseat.
As punishment, I made her hack into the club cameras.
I saw everything unfold from a parked car in the next street, until Bambi worked her tech voodoo and set off every alarm in the place.
I found Ada sitting all alone in a booth, her head tilted back, water sluicing off her flawless skin.
This time, she saw me in the light.
She saw the scars, the tattoos, the man I’d become, and she didn’t flinch away.
My phone vibrates. It’s Silas again:
I’ll have more info on your son tomorrow.
I type out a quick reply.
Get me pictures.
“Do you want me to turn the alarms off now?” Bambi’s giving me that shrewd, all-men-are-batshit-crazy look as I swing into the driver’s seat.
“No. Disable their systems. Make sure you close that fucking club down for a week.”
She grins, pops another tab of bubble gum in her mouth and sets to work.
Swiping my hand across my jaw, I try to get a handle on my anger. “Do you always bring your gear with you when you go for pizza?”
“Yep. I bring it everywhere. Viper’s rules. Always be prepared.”
She sounds weary as she says it, though. Too weary. Like a kid who wants to swing from her roots for once, instead of moving with the breeze.
“Stolen anything today?”
“Nope. Killed anyone today?”
“Didn’t have the chance to.” I watch her flick through various black and white screens of codes. “How come you can do this, but not trigonometry?”
She shrugs. “My brain’s wired wrong.”
“Your brain is wired fine.” I glance at my watch. “Call Viper when you’re done. We’ve been gone for over an hour. He’ll be getting antsy.”
“Hey,” I hear her say, a couple of minutes later. “So, the pizza place looked like a mice-infested sh-crap hole, so I made Frankie take me somewhere else…Yeah, I snuck into his car…Uh-huh. That restaurant I told you about.” What restaurant? “You will?” She perks up. “That’s awesome. We’ll see you in thirty minutes.”