If I want to inflict the maximum amount of pain on the man who inflicted the maximum amount of pain on me…? It needs to be something extra special to satisfy the darkness in my soul.
Flicking through my iPhone, I select the song as soon as it appears, and then I set it to repeat. I won’t be done in three minutes. Not when I’m planning to take all night over this.
As the first riffs of Beastie Boys’ Sabotage kick in, I inhale every savage note, nodding my head in time as I approach the man tied to the chair in front of me; feeling the beats seeping down into my skin to silence my humanity.
He made me like this.
Today, I’m going to unmake him because of it.
O’Sullivan’s eyes grow wide when he sees the serrated knife in my hand, but he can’t say a word with the gag in his mouth. Leaning down to bring us face-to-face, I give him a smile as dead as the way I feel inside. This won’t bring me the kiss of absolution or the warm embrace of closure, but it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun while it lasts.
Using the tip of my knife, I carve the letter ‘V’ into his forehead, but this is just the beginning…
I made Frankie a promise he’d die screaming, and I have no intention of letting him down.
EPILOGUE
ADA
Frankie slams me up against the wall so hard the picture frame next to us rattles violently. Dragging the hem of my black dress up past my hips, he rips down my lace thong and silences my protests with one of those hungry kisses that shuts the whole world out…
Except for gravity.
Seeing movement out of the corner of my eye, I dart sideways, still caged in his arms, trying to catch the frame as it slithers to the ground, but I’m not quick enough. I’m too drunk on lust and love, and there’s a loud crash as it hits the floor.
“Shit, that was an original,” I gasp out, as Frankie’s fingers continue to trail hot and insistent up the inside of my thigh. Never faltering, always claiming, forever fixing, despite the broken glass that’s now littered all around out feet. “Issa’s going to kill us.”
“I couldn’t give a fuck,” he growls into my hair, before dragging his stubble across my cheek, giving me pain with the sweetest of pleasures as he seeks out my mouth again. “And neither will she. Not with twins and Aiden as a husband. He’s the most demanding baby of all.”
My laughter turns to moans as he reaches the apex of my thighs and slides two fingers inside me. At the same time, his thumb lightly brushes over my swollen clit, and a jolt of pleasure zips through my core.
“So wet for me, baby,” he murmurs against my lips, his words heating up every part of me. “So fucking wet… I could write my name across your skin.” As if to prove the point, his fingers slip out of me, and I feel him trace seven letters into my stomach. “And do you know what the best part of it is?” he adds huskily, sinking to his knees. “You taste just as good.”
“Frankie, the glass!”
“Can’t feel it.” He smirks up at me as he hooks my leg over his shoulder and spreads my lips apart with his hands. “There’s nothing broken down here anymore.”
There’s nothing broken up here, either.
Wrapping his mouth around my clit, he drives his fingers back inside me. Three of them this time. And he’s not being gentle about it like he was before. He knows I need him to be rough and reckless with my body now, the same way he needs my fingernails to mark his skin. We leave each other with beautiful new scars every time we fuck because it helps to cancel out the old ones.
I need to feel him inside me constantly, even when we’re apart.
He’s stretching me open. Sucking, biting, circling—sliding me closer and closer to that other place I call home…
“I have to leave after this.”
His words slowly filter into my Frankie-intoxicated brain.
“Did you find him?” I burrow my fingers into his black hair as another wave starts to build.
“Lebedev did. He was hiding in a bedsit in Camden.”
Adrik Fedorov.
My old Bratva bodyguard.
He’s been on the run from us for six months, ever since I killed his pakhan.
But not anymore.
“Do it,” I whisper. “Let me be a part of it.”
“Knife or gun?”
“Knife.”
Make him suffer, for all the years he made me suffer. For all the insults and beatings, cruelty and derision.
Tipping my head back, I close my eyes and open myself up even wider for him. A beat later, I feel the cool handle of his knife slip between my lips and push against my entrance. I’m so wet, it slides in easily, and he quickly finds a rhythm that satisfies the dark in both our hearts.
He keeps it shallow, but I feel it deeply in other ways, clamping my walls down and gripping the black leather, so that later, when Frankie takes Adrik’s life with it, I’ll be right there with him.
“Fuck, Ada…”
No other man will touch me again. Frankie would kill the world before that happened, but this is different. This is us fucking the past together.
“Now,” I rasp.
The knife slides from my pussy. Rising to his feet, he pushes me back against the wall and rips at the front of his jeans. I wrap my legs around his waist, and he drives his cock all the way inside me, not stopping until every part of me is wrapped around every inch of him.
We come together, spilling words into each other’s mouths that are so much more than declarations of love. It’s obsession. It’s the promise of a future. It’s all the things that were there at the beginning, come to fruition in this room.
It’s us.
Beautiful, messed-up, once-in-a-lifetime us.
Pressing his forehead against mine, we wait for our breathing to slow.
“Free,” he mutters.
“Yours,” I say with a contented sigh.
“Interrupted,” he finishes with a growl, as Viper and Bambi’s voices enter the kitchen next door.
Pulling out of me, he lowers me back down to the floor and pulls me in for one last, lingering kiss.
He leaves my study first, under the pretence that it will raise less suspicion from our ever-inquisitive teenage daughter. But my darling husband is deluding himself. You can’t fool a fourteen-year-old. They’re programmed to detect parental bullshit.
Rearranging my dress, I glance at the bookcase in front of me, which includes all the copies of The Count of Monte Cristo he sent me. One hundred and sixty-eight. One for every month. Too many months. Still, I’m starting to see that when you fill your life with blinding light, the shadows in your past don’t seem so frightening anymore.
Five minutes later, I’m joining my family in the kitchen of our penthouse on the Chelsea Waterfront. Frankie’s leaning against the counter, finishing up a call. Bambi’s sitting crossed legged on top of the island in her new school uniform, eating a cheese sandwich and telling Viper all about a visitor to her class today, who, ironically, came to talk to them about snakes.
“Did you know they smell with their tongues?”
“So do I,” he drawls. “I can tell you every brand of whiskey just from drinking it.”
“Hi, Mum,” she says breezily, without looking over. “Did you know your zip’s done up wrong? What were you and Dad doing in the library anyway?”