“Blyad,” I swore viciously, glaring at Lucia before hustling her off the bed and situating her in a corner of the room well away from any windows.
I pulled out my gun, chest heaving as I stood over her.
She cringed into the corner.
Stomping to the door, I gave one last warning. “Don’t you fucking move, and don’t you dare hurt yourself again.”
I hurtled downstairs where Maksim stood with a rifle raised and ready.
When he saw all the blood staining my shirt, he bit out, “Are you hurt?”
“Nyet.”
“Is Lucia?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer as a blast of gunfire crackled against the brick face of my house.
Maksim and I bolted out through the front door, joining the three soldiers guarding the home.
Across the road, two distinct Ferraris revved.
Ducking down, I popped off several shots. The side window of one of the cars shattered, blood erupting from the head of the man sat just inside.
Only one man down, more bullets screamed past us.
Fucking Sicilians.
This was unmistakably Sabato’s crew coming for some retribution.
Another round of fire whistled from our side, and bullets rained like hail into the ostentatious vehicles.
A second later, the cars roared into action. Tires spinning wildly on pavement, the Italian bastards zoomed away.
I took one more shot, blasting out a rear window with a satisfying spray of glass.
Once they disappeared from sight, I checked to make sure all my men were safe.
No one had been harmed.
Maksim’s jaw set hard, and he stared at me.
I didn’t feel like explaining the entire fucked up situation, not when I still had Lucia to deal with amid the sheer madness of the last two nights while she practically sat in a pool of her own blood.
Holstering my gun, I returned my brother’s measured stare. “You need to get to the mansion and make sure all are locked down and safe for the night. The soldiers will stay here.”
“That’s it?”
“Da.”
“What about this?” He reached behind me and yanked something off the back of the door, which was still wide open.
He waved a piece of paper in front of my face, and I snatched it from him.
Someone had hastily scrawled: Sabato wants the guns, the girl, and the money.
Apparently they’d found out that Lucia had mysteriously disappeared from her father’s possession and all their lucrative deals lay in my hands.
Perhaps I’d visibly reacted during the aborted exchange upon figuring out Lucia was to be bartered off to the old don. Unlikely, but not impossible. She had already gotten in my head and under my skin.
“The gun drop didn’t go exactly as planned.” I folded the note and placed it in my pocket.
One of Maksim’s eyebrows hiked up. “What about the nightclub?”
“Grigor is on top of it.”
His second eyebrow shot up to match the first.
“I’m certain he will inform Kirill,” I replied to his non-question. “Probably already has.”
In true Maksim fashion, all he did was grunt.
The fast retaliation and new demand were nothing less than I expected although I thought the Italians might’ve waited until tomorrow.
Didn’t matter. They were not chasing me out of my own home.
And they were not getting the girl.
This was one fight I could face head on, with a vengeance.
And now I knew how to contend with Lucia too.
She didn’t think there was another way to tamp down the darkness inside of her. I would show her differently, whether she liked it or not.
9
Lucia
ARKADY HAD BURST IN on me so unexpectedly I’d had no chance to react and no time to think up a plausible excuse.
What explanation would a man like him even understand anyway?
Covered in blood, in the middle of cutting myself, I was humiliated to my core.
He’d caught me in the most disgraceful position, and I still wanted to crawl inside of myself so I could disappear altogether.
But he had no right to judge me.
He didn’t know what I’d survived.
Bas’s death wasn’t the first tipping point, and Arkady abducting me was only the latest in a long line of trespasses I’d been made to endure.
Despite how pitiful he might think me, he had cared enough to fling the mirror shard away from me. To ask me why. To gently tend to the cuts I’d made by my own hand even while the angles of his face sharpened into even harsher planes and his voice—his curt questions—struck deeper than any knife ever could.
All that consideration turned into stony outrage at the sound of cars squealing to a stop outside and his brother’s shout of alarm.
He left me just as quickly after hastily pushing me into a far corner of the room but not before he’d palmed his gun.
I thought he’d kill me on the spot.
But he wouldn’t. Of course not.
I was the leverage to keep his family and the Bratva safe from any reprisal for Bas’s murder.
I huddled there in my captor’s bedroom, hugging my knees to my chest, only dimly aware of the stinging cuts I’d sliced into my own skin.
The loud repeat of bullets whizzed outside, so close I wondered if this was the true end for me.
If so, perhaps I should just stop fighting. Stop trying to keep death at bay.
Yet the more fear subsumed me, the more I worried about Arkady.
Each burst of gunfire shook me.
For all that I was a mafia heiress, I hadn’t personally faced an enemy before.
Except for Arkady.
The bullets finally ceased. The blasts ended.
I wondered if I should lock myself in the bathroom in order to stay safe from whatever came next. I didn’t even know who had attacked or why.
No one knows where I am.
As the sound of heavy footsteps treaded up the stairs, heading in my direction, I kept my eyes wide open and trained on the door.
I would never hide in the face of death, whether my time came from Arkady’s hand or that of someone else.
My breath gusted out in a relieved rush when the man himself stormed into the room, the very visage of the reaper—so tall and darkly handsome and coldly magnetizing.
He came toward me purposefully, soundlessly, and no words passed his lips as he lifted me back onto the bed.
He seemed unharmed. I knew the blood streaking his shirt had come from me.
He appeared more concerned about me, and I imagined for a moment he probably suspected me of cutting myself again during his brief absence.
In the short time since I’d known him, I’d become adept at gaging his moods. This time he looked utterly pissed off. His fingers briefly quaked when he finished with the bandages over my upper thigh. The muscle in his jaw ticked. He didn’t speak at all, not to reassure me and not to deride me.
“What happened out there?” I managed to eke the words from a dry throat.
He grunted, clearly not in the mood to answer.
I tensed anew when he tightened the gauze wrap around my thigh.
His lips thinned, and his eyes looked like flash-frozen ice when he locked gazes with me.
I endured another long moment of tense silence before he pushed up from the bed and marched into the bathroom.
Standing at the sink, he remained completely visible. And he watched me through the mirror just as I’d watched him hours earlier when he’d brought me to the brink of orgasm by spanking me only to leave me unsatisfied and aching.