Prologue
The thing they never tell you about rekindling lost love is that heartbreak hurts just as bad the second time around.
Worse, even. Because you’ve been down this road before. You know where it leads.
Ten years ago, I walked down this road—the same one I’m on right now. In so many ways, it’s like we’re the kids we once were. Two teenagers with eyes and hearts for no one but each other.
I’m looking at Tommy and he’s looking back at me.
But in the biggest ways, the most important ways… the kids we once were are dead. Long gone. Dust in the wind.
There’s stubble on his face where there wasn’t before. Scars where there was once tanned, beautiful skin. A distance, a violence, a darkness in his eyes that consumes me every time I look at it.
He’s changed. Hardened.
But when he touches me…
I lose control. Just like I always have.
He grabs the back of my neck and yanks me towards him. Our lips meet in a hot, clashing kiss. Hips grinding. His length hardening against my thigh. Our hands scrabble against each other. Desperate. Hungry.
He rips my clothes off. Buttons go flying.
I gasp. “I liked that shirt!”
“Shut up,” he growls.
It’s as rough and primal as it always has been. But it feels right somehow. This is our language—two bodies colliding. Sweat. Moans. Lust in its purest form.
I want to tell him I’m frightened. I want to tell him that this is so right and so wrong at the same time.
But I don’t know how to form those words, and I don’t have time anyways, before he’s grabbing me and flipping me onto my back on the desk and plunging into me. My body knows his. It craves his. As he fucks into me, it still wants more, more, more.
Tonight, we’re the people we were once upon a time. We’re two lonely, passionate souls who want each other so bad that words won’t do it justice. Only our bodies can. The world is on the outside tonight. The way it used to be. There’s nothing that matters except for the next kiss, the next touch, the next groaning, shuddering orgasm.
“Fuck me, Tommy,” I beg.
He gives me what I need—for tonight.
But I know that, when the dawn comes… the things I’ve spent ten years hiding will be revealed in the morning light.
1
Tomas
Something about night surveillance makes me feel alive.
All my senses are on high alert. The smell of the city fading into the odor of the dock. The streetlights erasing shadows along the edge of the water. Knowing that at any minute, it can all break down, and life and death becomes a choice only I can make.
Next to me, the click of Aleksey sliding bullets into the gun clip is like music. It’s much better than the tune he’s whistling—something that reminds me of the county fairs and Ferris wheels of my youth. Days I’d rather forget.
“Jesus, Alek, shut the fuck up.”
He doesn’t blink or miss a single note, because he’s Aleksey Romanov, my friend and brother-in-arms since the day I found my father. When the clip he’s loading is full, he just moves on to another, and I have no choice but to tune out the shrill, upbeat tune of his song.
Smug bastard.
Outside the car, two men emerge from behind the storage bin way off to my left. One moves under his own power. The other lands with a thud on his chest, head bouncing off the concrete. Dead as a fucking doornail.
The killer steps out after the man and fires an extremely unnecessary shot into the poor bastard’s back. Then he turns to see if anyone else is watching. It’s just enough that his face catches a distant streetlight and I can finally see him clearly.
Tall, gaunt, pale, face tattooed with a trail of tears. His cheap gold necklace reflects the moonlight.
Albanian for sure.
Alek sits up straighter to get a good look, then, after a moment, falls back against the seat. “Not our guy.”
I nod in agreement. We’re looking for Italians, but this guy is too pale, too sneaky. This is low-level gang shit spilling into our turf. Tonight, that’s not our concern.
We stay put as the Albanian tucks his gun into the back of his sweatpants and disappears into the shadows.
The man he killed is growing colder by the second, blood pooling underneath him. The back of his jacket says Port Authority. I curse under my breath at the sight of it and hope like hell that none of the man’s coworkers raise the alarm. The last thing I need at the moment is cops or the Coast Guard breaking up my private little party.
Part of me wants to go and drag the corpse out of sight. But I also can’t give up my position.
So I stay in the car. Waiting. Always fucking waiting.
We’re out here because, next Wednesday, this end of the dock is scheduled to receive five million dollars’ worth of uncut diamonds. Before that can happen safely and discretely, the area needs to be cleared of the Italian Mafia who’ve been stupid enough lately to set up shop here.
Morons.
The Dubrovsky Bratva—my family—works this section. We own the dock here. So tonight, I’m reminding the Italians to get back where they belong.
It’s going to be a bloody reminder, too. Because I am Tomas Dubrovsky and that is just how I fucking operate.
Even though I know the Italians will be here shortly—they’re punctual, which is about the nicest thing you can possibly say about them—I don’t know exactly which direction they’ll be coming from. That’s why I’m sitting in the car in the shadows with Aleksey on lookout. And, unfortunately for me, it’s why my best friend thinks we have time to chitchat like schoolgirls.
“I saw the rock on Katerina’s finger.” He mentions it casually while staring out the window, but there’s nothing relaxed or easy about it and the undertone is there.
The Dubrovsky and Kuznetsov Bratvas uniting is hard for any member of either organization to get behind because, until the family hierarchy is reestablished and everyone knows their place in the pyramid once more, no one is safe. Plus, too much change upsets Alek. He doesn’t want me to marry Katerina any more than I want to marry her.
“It’s family business.” I shrug. My marriage to Katerina is arranged. Expected. Planned. Something my family needs so we can leverage the combined might of both families to get rid of the Italians for good and resume business as usual.
“She isn’t your type.”
He’s not wrong about that. But in Katerina’s defense, she’s classier than the silicone-implanted strippers I tend to lure off the pole whenever the mood strikes.
Whether she is “my type” is also debatable. Katerina Kuznetsov, daughter of the boss of the Kuznetsov Bratva, is not bad-looking by any means. She has green eyes, blonde hair, DD tits, and a pussy. And I’m not so picky about the hair and eyes.
So in that sense, she’s “my type” as much as any other woman is. Fuckable is my primary pre-requisite. Alek knows me well enough to know that. The fact that she’s a mob princess is her own problem. It doesn’t really change anything.
“Does that mean she’s your type, Alek?”
He doesn’t answer. He knows damn well when I’m fucking with him. He says, “All I’m thinking is that, just because you’re getting married and will have the Kuznetsov Bratva backing you, doesn’t mean that Italian fuck Roberto Totti is going to go away.”