by Nicole Fox
I send an encrypted message to Ilya, telling him to cancel all gun deliveries for the next two weeks.
I glance out the window. It’s still dark outside. All I want to do is crawl back into bed with Ally, but the police are a molehill and the Colosimos are turning into a mountain. Instead, I open up my laptop. There are sixteen emails in my Mariya’s Revenge account and they must all be important because my people know not to contact me unless it’s urgent.
I answer them one by one. Ilya calls to tell me Rodion’s wife is flipping out, refusing to do anything the Bratva says. Her husband was new to the family. I don’t blame her for being distraught, but at the same time, she has to be brought under control. I tell him I’ll call her around 7:00.
It’s like the world is full of children and I have to save them all from setting themselves on fire.
At 7:00, I call Rodion’s wife.
“They could come back to torture and kill me,” she says. “I should tell the police everything. Maybe they’ll protect me.”
“The police aren’t going to do shit for you,” I say. “You know that. We have people watching your house, but it’s unnecessary. They don’t want you.”
“It’s not enough. You should set me up in that new hotel—the five-star one with the gold lion statues. Or I could stay with you. You have a lot of extra rooms, yeah?”
I stifle a sigh, disappointed in Rodion’s choice of a wife. Like so many other Bratva women, she’s mixed disloyalty with moral bankruptcy, which is a venomous cocktail.
“No. You’re going to stay in your house,” I say.
There’s a soft knock on the door. I walk over to it. Ally is standing on the other side, holding a mug and wearing one of my button-up shirts. It drapes over her thighs and only the button near the center of her chest is fastened. I indicate for her to step in before closing the door again. She sits down on the couch.
“If you’re not going to help me, I’ll go to the police and tell them everything. I’ll tell them about you and—”
“You do that,” I say lazily. I watch Ally set her mug down on the end table and rest her head on the armrest of the couch. My cock stirs. I’ll never be able to look at another couch without thinking about our session last night. “I’d tell you I’ll see you in court, but you know I won’t. It’s in your best interest that, when the police ask later why I called, you tell them I called to give my condolences. It’s up to you whether the condolences are for you or your loved ones.”
I hang up, setting the phone down. I walk back over to Ally and crouch down beside her. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she echoes. “What happens if the police were listening to that phone call?”
I run my hand down her arm, her skin soft and cool. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You just threatened that woman.”
I smirk. “Did I? I don’t recall anything I said that sounded like a threat.”
She nearly rolls her eyes. I give her a quick kiss and she smiles.
“I wasn’t sure where you went,” she mumbles. “I looked around. I thought you’d be in the den.”
“Where did you think I’d go?”
Her shoulder barely lifts and drops. “I don’t know. We were drunk last night. Nothing you said has to mean anything.”
“Everything I say means something,” I say. “I said I’m going to keep you and that means I’m going to keep you.”
She smiles. I kiss her again.
“How long have you been awake?” I ask.
“Um, maybe forty minutes,” she says. “After I looked for you in the den, I went into the kitchen to find something to eat, but your kitchen is nearly empty except for alcohol and the ingredients for the cinnamon chai tea.”
“Mmm. Yes, I don’t keep much around here. Irina isn’t supposed to work today, but I could get her to grab some things if you want to write a grocery list.”
“Nah, I don’t want to inconvenience her.” She sleepily rubs her cheek. “I’ll just go back to my apartment while you work.”
I take her hand in mine, intertwining her fingers in mine. “What if I don’t want you to leave? Do you want to write me a list and I’ll go get it?”
She opens one eye. “Could we both go to the store?”
It hadn’t occurred to me. But the look in her eyes is hopeful, for some reason. I wonder what this means to her—two normal people doing normal-people things in a normal-people place.
“Yes,” I say. “I just need to make a couple of more calls and we’ll go.”
She smiles again, closing both eyes again. “Thank you.”
I raise our clasped hands, kissing her wrist before letting her go. My phone is already vibrating, but I let it go to voice mail. I sit down at my desk, watching her snooze for a few seconds before turning my attention back to work.
In the grocery store, Ally has a slight limp while she walks. After I put some tomato sauce into the cart, I let my hands slide under her shirt, her soft skin tempting me in the worst way. I almost completely lost control last night. I’m not surprised she isn’t quite walking straight.
I glance around us a few times, my natural vigilance taking over, but it’s easy to forget about Bratva life while I’m with Ally. I could imagine a life where I have some average job, she became my fiancée in a normal way, and we’re just an enamored couple. No different from a thousand others strolling through the city right now.
A few times, she peeks at her phone.
“Do you think I should call my parents?” she asks.
“No. They’ll come around on their own.”
“Maybe,” she says. “But the right thing to do would be to reach out first.”
“Your father insulted you. Repeatedly.”
She takes a can of corn off the shelf and sets it in the cart. “He was angry.”
“He was an asshole.”
She tries to shove me. I let myself sway before we continue walking down the aisle.
“He’s still my father,” she says. “He was a good father. He is a good father.”
“You should never let anyone talk down to you,” I say. “It allows them to think they can walk all over you.”
She crosses the aisle to check the various cans of green beans. I glance at the canned carrots, but it all just reminds me of living in poverty.
As I turn back toward Ally, a man walking down the aisle stumbles into her. He grabs her shoulder, pulling himself back up. Instinctively, I step toward her, my hand tightening into a fist.
“I’m so sorry,” he mumbles, sounding intoxicated, before walking on. I follow his movements until he bumps into somebody’s cart.
“Are you okay?” I ask Ally, resting my hand on her shoulder. She nearly jumps.
“Oh yeah, fine,” she says. She has a can of green beans in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.
She didn’t have a grocery list before.
“What is that?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. She sets the can down on the shelf. She unfolds the note. It has one word, handwritten, scrawled on it.
L’osservatore.
“What does this mean?” she asks me. She must see something in my face because I see the concern flood her eyes. “Is this Russian?”
I shake my head. “It’s Italian.”
“Tell me what it means.”
I turn, taking several quick steps to the end of the aisle. The man is gone. I glance back at Ally. I could find the man quickly, but with Ally, I’d need to ensure we were both protected, which would make me too slow. I’ll have to let him go.
I return to her, putting my arm around her waist. I pull her away from the cart. She tries to reach out toward it, but I stop her.
“Forget the cart,” I say. “We need to go.”
“Tell me what that word means,” she says. She tries to drag her feet, which isn’t very successful but is incredibly annoying.
“It means ‘the watcher,’” I tell her. I direct her to the end of the corner
, check east and west, and proceed around the corner. The doors are within sight.
“And?” she prompts.
“It’s an old custom. It means that a target is under surveillance. In the old days, it was an honor tradition—forewarn your enemy, so they have a chance to defend themselves. Over time, especially with the Colosimos, it turned into a threat.”
“A threat?” she echoes.
“Marco Colosimo is telling me that he can come after you or me even though I have full knowledge of the fact that he’s watching us. He’s telling me I can’t do anything about it.”
“But he didn’t just kill me.”
“He’s playing mind games. I’m certain he came up with that whole scenario. He’s telling me that he can get that close to you—close enough to stab you—and there’s nothing I can do. Son of a fucking bitch.”
I guide her back to the car and put her in the passenger side before checking around me. I know it was likely only a threat—a taunt—but Marco is smarter than I originally thought. And it would be incredibly clever to give me less than five minutes to prepare for an attack.
He knows it would haunt me to have Ally so close and lose her.
Worthless Mafia fuck.
I get into the driver’s side, locking the doors. The drive is silent as we return to the mansion.
“So, the Colosimos know about us.”
“After the gala, everyone likely knows.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t consider them a threat when this started. His father is dead. Marco shouldn’t have ascended this quickly. The Mafia shouldn’t have trusted him enough for him to make all these brash decisions. They must have already been preparing for him to take over.”
“And he’ll hurt me?” she asks.
I take a deep breath. It would be a huge risk for Marco to go after the chief’s daughter, but then again, it was a huge risk for him to go after the Bratva, and yet here he is. Threatening me. Threatening my woman.
Before I can answer, she slides over the center console. She sits on my lap, her legs on either side of my legs. Even in mortal danger, my cock is pleasantly surprised.
“I don’t think so,” she says to me. She bounces twice on my lap. “I know you. I know you wouldn’t let that to happen.”
I know she’s trying to distract me, for both our sakes. I know there are at least four calls I need to make to ensure the Colosimos don’t leave my life in ruins. But as her lips press against mine, all of the sirens in my mind quiet. All I sense is the sound of her shirt buttons hitting against the center console, her breath in my ear, and desperation concealed like a gun.
Ready to fire.
Sex while sober isn’t something I do.
It isn’t alcoholism, or some vague notion that sex is something I need to suffer through. Alcohol just makes the storm in my head manageable and makes me hate whoever is underneath me a little less.
But Ally on top of me is like taking MDMA and Coke while driving a Mustang down an open road with no speed limit.
Reckless. Wild. Fucking irresistible.
She rests her head against my chest as she wiggles out of her silk underwear. Her pussy bumps against my erection as she squirms above me, and I grip onto her arms to help her lift each of her legs and kick off the underwear.
She fumbles with my belt. As I raise myself up, she pulls my pants and boxer briefs down, rocking herself back and forth as she tries to slide them past her legs and down to my knees.
When she continues to try to get my pants lower, I pull the seat lever. The backrest of the seat jerks backward and she falls onto me. She lifts herself up onto her hands, looking down at me with a smirk. I grab her wrists. With the weight of her upper body in my grasp, I slowly lower her arms above my head. Her body presses up against mine, her lips nearly pressing against my lips.
I close the distance between us. The kisses act like liquor shots, each one getting more reckless. As our kissing becomes more frantic, my hands move to the back of her thighs, right under her ass. I pull her forward, so the tip of my cock is pressing against her entrance.
She reaches down, her small hands guiding my cock into her. Even with how wet she is, there’s resistance. I’ve taken her quickly both times before, but with her on top, she eases her way down with a pace I’d never tolerate with anyone else.
It’s slow, painstaking, damn near agonizing.
But when I’m buried in her, she looks at me. There’s the softest vulnerability in her face.
I love it—because it’s mine.
And I hate it, because—like all things I’ve ever loved—it will one day break.
Her hands pressed against my shoulders, she slowly lifts herself up and down an inch, acquainting herself with my size. The soft patter of her fingertips keeps moving across my shoulders and the front of my chest. Her lips are slightly curved in an uncertain smile.
In someone else, the nervousness would be a sign of weak character, but with Ally, I’d let her self-consciously lead me through a battlefield if it’s what she wanted. I’d let her take me anywhere. No questions asked.
She’s the patron saint of bad ideas. She’s Pandora’s box, which I’d open over and over.
I slip my hand under her shirt, tracing her spine. As she settles over me again, my fingertips dig into the flesh of her hips, keeping her down.
“Lean forward,” I tell her. She obeys, our lips close enough that I steal a quick kiss. I rock my hips against her. Her eyes melt, like black rum in her irises. “Sway your hips.”
At first, her hips move slowly, rocking against me, but as her breath quickens, she grinds against me with determined enthusiasm. My hands settle on her thighs, feeling her muscles rippling under my palms. I slow my breathing, trying to concentrate on the ceiling of my car and not the hitches in her breath or the delicate moans that sometimes follow.
But, God, it’s like trying to pay attention to the candlesticks instead of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.
I grab her left hip and her right ass cheek. I slam her up and down my cock, her body bouncing high enough that she has to steady herself with her hands on my chest and her hair still sways like it’s caught in a storm.
As I drive back into her, I grab the back of her neck to pull her down to me. When we kiss, her lips frantically crash against mine. She nips at my lower lip, her hips gyrating against my hips, getting her clit to rub against my abdomen.
When I start bouncing her again, she leans forward to meet my movements and her cheeks are flushed. It almost makes me angry again because I know I can never completely own her. She will always belong to other people, because of her devotion to improving the world, whereas I need her to be fully mine.
Her hands grip onto my shirt, her eyes squeeze shut, and she starts bobbing with my movements. Her pussy is pulsating around my cock. As her thighs tighten against my legs, I drive into her harder.
Her climax is unrelenting. Her fingernails dig into my chest as her pussy repeatedly clenches my cock, squeezing me until I can’t hold onto the edge anymore. Euphoria blinds my vision as I erupt, my seed surging into her.
She collapses onto my chest.
We’re both heaving for breath. I close my eyes, trying to steady my thoughts, waiting for that post-sex regret to sink in, but all I can think about is how much I’d rather be here than anywhere else.
I sink my fingers into her hair, follow the strands down her back, and let my fingers trace her shoulder blades through her shirt. She plants a kiss under my jaw.
“It looks like I did all right,” she says. “Not bad for my first time on top.”
“Oh, you were flawless,” I say. “But if you want more practice, we can arrange daily sessions.”
She smirks, rocking her hips against me. I grab her, kissing her hard. She lays her head on the side of the headrest next to me.
“You said I shouldn’t be living in fear,” she says. “And I don’t want to. But you’re much better at being in control.”
“Don’t unde
restimate yourself,” I say, my voice sounding harsher than I mean to be.
“You also …” she starts. She kisses my cheek, nervous again. “You also mentioned that your parents lived in fear of each other.”
She doesn’t ask anything. The statement joins the steam on the windows, slowly evaporating as the seconds pass by. I could let it go. I don’t need to answer anything when she never asked a question.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s complex. My parents had a good relationship for several years. They were happy. But my father began to rise in power and their relationship became more and more strained. When he became the Bratva boss, something changed. It could partly be that my mother simply didn’t like that he had so much power, but it was mostly my father’s ego. He became violent. I didn’t intervene—he was my father and he was the Bratva boss, so he had power over me in nearly all aspects of my life. I left the house when I was sixteen. Within the Bratva, I heard rumors that my mother had been seen with an FBI agent. I thought my father would beat her and she’d fall back in line.”
I take a deep breath. Ally’s thumb rubs over one of my shirt buttons as she listens carefully.
“The police report … she was found beaten to death. Everyone knew it was my father, but in the Bratva, what happens in the house has no effect on anything else. It’s a man’s domain and he gets to decide how punishments are dealt. That’s especially true for the Bratva boss. I wish I could say I tried to let it go or that I thought of going to the police, but as soon as I heard, I knew I was going to kill him.”
She stops fidgeting with my buttons. Her fingers are slightly curled above my shirt, her wrist still resting on it.
“It was simple enough. I told him to come to his nightclub, Original Menace, because a Colosimo tried to put poison in the vodka. I said I had captured the man. Like the Colosimos, he took pleasure in torture, so I knew he wouldn’t give up the chance to torture someone before killing them. He came. And I killed him.”
Ally raises her head. Her eyes search mine, looking for guilt or regret.
“The way I act isn’t armor or an act to intimidate people, Ally,” I say. “I killed my father because I wanted to kill him. My mother’s name was Mariya. I named my vodka Mariya’s Revenge because I feel no shame over what I did. I can look at those words every day, remember I killed my father, and I wouldn’t ever take it back.”