The bullet came from the pizda who’d first confronted me.
That asshole dodged my hail of shots as the sound of police sirens wailed across the air.
Crackling gunfire competed with the blare of sirens.
With a jerk of my head, I ordered everyone into the vehicles.
Time to get away before the cops showed up on the scene.
I might’ve had some influence over Boston’s finest given all of our bribes, but I didn’t want to get caught with a smoking gun, a handful of dead Italians, and vans full of black-market weapons.
We made tracks from Robbie O’Sullivan’s shithouse, one of the Irish brothers crowing loudly and blasting more bullets into the Sicilians who still weren’t mobilized.
The Irish did not understand stealth.
Neither did I, apparently. Not at that point. Not when I refused a deal because of Lucia Leone, knowing I recklessly let my stronger emotions take control.
There’d be a reckoning for the woman when I got home.
We hightailed it from the massacre-like scene, but I knew some lived.
Sabato lived.
My phone buzzed as I shifted down so I could drive at the goddamn speed limit instead of running through red lights.
Annoying pretending to be a regular civilian.
I picked up the phone.
It was Lucky.
Good, he was alive.
I answered while keeping one eye on the road ahead and another on the rearview mirror. “Da.”
“Dude. Are you sure you wanted to do that?”
“I made the only decision possible.”
“It’s a woman. I knew it!” That was either Kelly or Dex shouting from the Jeep.
“No comment as you Americans say,” I muttered.
“Yeah well, next time give us a little heads up before you decide to go all Terminator like that.” Lucky didn’t sound all that pissed off.
“Did you all get out in one piece?”
“Dex got shot in the crotch,” the oldest O’Sullivan said.
“Fuck you!” That had to be Dex I heard. “My dick has always and will always be fucking magical. Ain’t no Italian bastards gonna shoot my cock off.”
“We’re good.” Lucky chuckled. “Besides, that was the most fun I’ve had since the Yakuza. But you might just owe us for this one.”
The rush of killing, the push of adrenaline pounding through my system, made me impatient to get back to Lucia.
But I would not put a woman first. Especially not one like her. She had become a liability the moment I’d happened across her in that alleyway.
It was only after I made sure to safeguard the weapons at the Bratva compound that I drove home.
The only reason the woman still lived was because I’d intervened.
The only reason Lucia wasn’t going to be bartered away to an elderly corpse of a man was because I kept her in my custody.
Was she safe from me?
Nyet.
I’d busted up the deal deliberately.
I’d now put the Bratva in danger of retaliation.
I had acted impulsively because of the beauty waiting at my house.
Had not heard from Maksim, which I took to be a good sign that all had gone well. At least that was something considering the way I’d just blown up a potential revenue stream.
The only bonus was that I had the money and the machine guns.
Would deal with the consequences tomorrow.
As soon as I entered the house, Maksim met me in the entryway. “She was crying.”
“What?” I asked.
He stood there, a frown making deep marks in his brow. “I heard her crying.”
I wondered briefly if my brother had gone soft.
Brushing past him to the den, I said, “So? Women cry, don’t they?”
Stomping behind me, he made a grumbling noise, back to his typical non-talkative ways.
And despite my casual attitude, concern festered deep in my insides.
“Want me to go now?” Maksim stationed himself at one end of the den while I opened my safe.
The vault that didn’t hold Lucia’s gun.
“Just hang down here for a minute.” I popped open the briefcase on my desk and flicked through the stiff bills.
“Successful deal?”
As I stacked the money into bundles of ten thousand, I reached for a chilled bottle of vodka in the tiny refrigerator behind my desk.
I poured without looking, listening to the splash of cold alcohol and the fast flick of bills.
I poured for Maksim too. “Successful enough.”
After I drank two shots straight down, I banked the cash in my safe.
Impatience tightened in my gut even as the alcohol left a cool burning trail down my throat.
I needed to see Lucia.
What was it that possessed me about her?
I snorted to myself, pouring another pair of shots with Maksim looking on.
I already knew what drew me to Lucia.
The untapped sexuality.
The rare moments of vulnerability.
The goddess-like figure and her unflagging feistiness unless I could harness her.
Unless I could bend her.
Unless I could bring her to heel.
“I’m to wait?” Maksim looked less than convinced when I stalked past him and out of the room.
“Da.”
“I would rather be making sure Sashenka doesn’t get into any trouble.”
I halted. “Oh really?”
“She begins to talk about a man.” Drumming his fingers against the front of his thigh, he angled a scowl at the floor. “Also I think she texts with Lucky.”
Is Maksim showing signs of jealousy over the ward he can’t stand?
I knew better than to prod or push him. Sasha wasn’t the girl for him anyway. She had too much spirit.
He was too silent.
She’d ask for the world.
And he didn’t much care about any of that worldly nonsense.
Maksim had only been five years old when I became head of the Krasnov family. He was just a child when we’d been tossed out onto the ugly, harsh streets of Moscow care of negligent parents.
That did something to a kid so young. Hell, it had done something to me, and I’d been ten at the time.
Basic survival had made Maksim into a machine. He brooded silently, and his stoicism was a heavily fortified wall.
He was built like a machine. A man meant to be a killer but placed as babysitter instead.
“Yury should marry Sasha off.” I said the words that suddenly felt all wrong solely because of the woman, alone, upstairs.
And what her father planned for her.
Perhaps I should build a better wall around myself too.
Maksim gave a bark of a laugh. “She would eat any man alive.”
His chest expanded, and he shook his head. “Go. See to Lucia so I can get out of here.”
I did not need my youngest brother’s permission but, at his words, I hurried upstairs.
I unlocked the door, pushed it open.
I scanned my bedroom and found it empty.
Something strange congested my chest as I stomped forward, calling out, “Lucia?”
Unfamiliar worry pitted in my stomach and then I heard a faint yelp coming from the bathroom.
Swinging the door open, I was met by a scene I couldn’t fully comprehend.
Pristine white tiles streaked with crimson, and the tang of copper hit my nostrils.
Lucia hunkered down beside the shower, a broken mirror shard gripped in her hand with her legs splayed.