by Katee Robert
“Missed you, too,” she murmured. Their normal greeting. No matter how many stolen hours they managed, it was never enough. Rose searched his handsome features, looking for the man beneath. His facade was flawless. No one would fault her for being fooled…no one but herself. Even knowing the truth, it felt far too good to have his arms around her.
She stepped back. “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“It’s noon.”
“It’s five o’clock somewhere.” She made herself laugh, hated how carefree it sounded. “Come on, bartender. I know you have something up your sleeve.”
“For you? Always.” He released her and headed to the kitchen.
She slipped her hand into her purse the moment his back was turned. He moved easily, grabbing three bottles and a glass. How had she never thought to question that he kept top-shelf liquor? Rose had just considered it a quirk of his trade, that he’d developed good taste from working behind the bar. She should have questioned it. She should have questioned a lot of things.
“You having a rough day?”
She pulled the gun from her purse and thumbed the safety off. She’d already screwed the silencer on before arriving. Not that the people in this neighborhood would think too hard about strange sounds, but she didn’t need someone getting nosy. Enough had already gone wrong. The cherry on top would be some cops deciding to sniff around. “Something like that.”
He picked up the shaker and gave it a good shake. The move had the muscles lining his back standing out. Another thing she hadn’t questioned: how a bartender who worked full time and spent the rest of his free hours with her had a body like that. And then there were the scars, courtesy of an adventurous childhood, he’d claimed.
She was a fool.
“Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?” She didn’t mean to speak, but the words were out before she could call them back. Closure. She just needed some fucking closure. Then she could finish this.
“What are you talking about, babe?”
“I think you know, Jackson.” She sucked in a breath, her finger caressing the trigger. Now was the time to pull it, to end this, but she wanted to see his face, to have him admit what he’d done. “Or should I say Dante?”
She expected him to tense. To deny. Something.
All he did was turn around and lean against the counter, the shaker still in his hands. She stared into his face, so she saw the exact moment the mask fell away. The happy look in his dark eyes bled away, leaving only an empty coldness that had her fighting back a shiver. “So.” Even his voice changed, the easy cadence disappearing, replaced by yet more emptiness. “You figured it out.”
“Dante Verducci.” The name felt strange on her tongue. Wrong. “I don’t know what you were trying to accomplish, but it ends now.”
His gaze flicked to the gun in her hands. “You really think you’re going to shoot me? You were coming around my cock twenty-four hours ago.”
Fury nearly made her black out. Maybe she wouldn’t regret this after all. He was so fucking sure of her, of this situation, as if the gun in her hand didn’t mean a single damn thing. She’d prove him wrong. Rose steadied her stance, reaching for the one thing she could that would hurt him a fraction of as much as he’d hurt her. “I faked it.”
She pulled the trigger.
Dante moved at last moment, and the bullet took him in the shoulder instead of the middle of the chest. She cursed and spun, following his movement, and pulling the trigger again. Another circle of red blossomed on his gray T-shirt, but then he crashed through the front door and disappeared into the fall.
“Fuck!”
Rose kept her gun up in case he came back, and she fished her phone out of her purse. “Vasily! He’s on the run!”
They didn’t give her shit for fucking this up, too. They just cursed. “I’m on it.”
“I’m following—”
“Nyet. Put the gun away, collect anything from the apartment that would incriminate you, and leave the same way you came in. Take the subway a few stops and call a pickup. We’ll handle this.”
She wanted to argue, but they were right. She couldn’t chase down a bleeding man with a gun in her hands. It would do more than raise eyebrows, and they had enough trouble already. “Okay.”
“Watch your back, Rose.” They hung up.
She cursed and took a second to smooth back her hair and get her game face on. Two minutes later, she had a small bag full of any evidence of her existence at his place. Rose calmly stepped over the blood trail and through the door, pausing to shut it behind her. The blood led to the right, heading toward the emergency exit, but she made herself go left and leave the way she’d come.
Damn it, she’d fucked this up, and badly. What was it about this man that had her missing a step for the first time in her life? She should have shot him in the back, instead she let him get under her skin, and then she missed twice. Oh, not a full miss, but if he could run, she hadn’t done her job properly.
She barely registered her phone buzzing in her hand and answered without looking. “Da?”
“This isn’t over.”
She stopped short. Dante. The gall of him to call her while on the run for his life. She might be impressed if she could breathe through her fury. If the sound of his voice didn’t make her ache with the loss of a relationship that was never real to begin with. “You’re right. It’s not over until you’re dead. Come down to the street, and we’ll talk about it.”
His laugh was raspy and strange. “Rain check. I’ve got a pair of Russians on my tail.”
“I don’t know what you’re running for. They just want to talk, baby. You love to talk.” She should hang up. Nothing good came from this phone call, and Vasily was too good to let Dante get away. This would be over shortly.
I’m just distracting him.
“It’s not over,” he repeated.
Frustration bloomed and she picked up her pace. “Wrong. This was fun while it lasted, but in a few months, you’re going to be rotting in some unmarked grave, and I’ll be walking down the aisle to say ‘I do’ to Romeo Capparelli. It’s over.”
Dante was silent except for his rasping breathing. She’d hurt him, and badly. Nearly as badly as he’d hurt her. “You’ll marry him over my dead fucking body.”
“That’s the plan.”
“We’re not done, Rose Romanov. I’ll be seeing you. Soon.” He hung up before she recovered from her shock.
She still hadn’t recovered after taking the subway and calling for a pickup. The audacity of that motherfucker to say they weren’t done. She shot him. Any normal person would take that as a clear sign that things were over. If he—
She shook her head hard. No. She would not do this to herself. Everything from the last few months between them was a lie, and she would not allow him to worm around inside her head just because her heart was too foolish to know better.
Rose’s phone vibrated in her hand, and she most certainly didn’t feel a beat of disappointment when she saw it was Vasily calling. “Da?”
“We lost him.”
Chapter 3
Three months later
* * *
Rose Romanov looked good in white.
Dante studied the pictures in front of him, his hand going to touch the new scar on his shoulder from where she shot him. In the photos, she stood on a short platform in the middle of a shop, dressed in a fancy-ass wedding gown. Her long dark hair fell around her shoulders in waves, and her lips were painted a fuck-me red that made his cock twitch, but the real showstopper was the dress itself. It hugged her body, showing off her perfect tits, wide hips, and bitable ass. She looked like a pinup girl getting ready to walk down the aisle.
She hadn’t been bluffing.
She really did plan to marry that bastard Romeo Capparelli.
Romeo was a savvy fucker, and he’d seen an opportunity to press his agenda. An opportunity Dante provided. He’d been sent to New York for recon and to figure ou
t whether or not there was a Romanov-Capparelli alliance on the horizon…with the secondary aim to disrupt it. He’d spent a month watching the Romanov family before deciding Rose was his in. If he could get close to her, he could potentially influence her against the Capparellis. But he couldn’t do it as himself.
So, Jackson Smith was born.
“Dante.”
He bit back a sigh. His uncle was still furious he’d managed to fuck this up, but the old man would get over it eventually. Dante wasn’t finished in New York. “I’m not coming home yet.”
“It’s over,” he snapped. “You made your play, and you fucked it up to the point where the Romanov bitch is marrying the Capparelli heir. Great fucking job with that. You’ve also managed to stir up Kirill and his people here. It’s your mess, and you need to come back and deal with it.”
Did Lorenzo realize how weak he sounded? What kind of leader couldn’t deal with a little skirmish on his own? Yeah, he was getting up there in age, but with each year that passed, he seemed to become more unstable. More cowardly. He wanted his big, bad attack dog back home to deal with the scary Russians.
Every time the power balance waffled, he sent in Dante to make an example of some poor fuck and scare their enemies back to their own territory. He’d gotten predictable, and it bored Dante.
He wasn’t coming home until he had what he wanted. Or, more accurately, who he wanted. “I’ll be home once I wrap up a few things here,” he finally said. “Have Matteo deal with things until I return. He’s your heir.”
“And you’re my strong left hand. It’s your job to keep these fuckers in line.”
It wasn’t anything he didn’t know. He’d been the strong left hand from the moment he turned sixteen and Lorenzo handed him a gun and told him to take care of the kneeling man at their feet. A traitor, though Dante couldn’t remember what he’d specifically done. Maybe his first kill should have meant something, but he’d felt nothing at all. It turned out he was good at it, which suited his uncle perfectly.
His gaze tracked to the photos of Rose. “If you and Matteo can’t handle a little dustup with Kirill, then my cousin won’t be holding the territory long after your death.” Matteo didn’t have a problem with cowardice, but saying as much would just give his cousin more trouble. Lorenzo lashed out when he got pissed, and Dante wasn’t close enough to direct his fury.
Lorenzo sputtered, and then his voice went low and deadly. “Listen to me, you little shit. I pulled you out of the gutter after your whore mother offed herself. I gave you our family name and raised you like my own son. You will obey me and get on the next fucking plane home.”
Dante welcomed the wash of red over his vision. His mother had died when he was fourteen, an accidental overdose. It had taken another year before Lorenzo appeared and hauled him in. None of it would have happened if Lorenzo himself didn’t throw her out when she got knocked up and ruined his plans to marry her off to secure some alliance, but he liked to keep that little bit to himself when he went on these guilt trips.
They never worked. The old man might have taught Dante plenty, but Dante had more than paid any debt, and he’d never forget where the cycle of suffering started. He hated Lorenzo, but offing the old man wasn’t his play to make.
“Lorenzo.” He didn’t bother to warm up his tone. “I’m not some naive sixteen-year-old anymore. You talk to me like that again, you bring up my mother again, and I’ll kill you myself. I said I’ll be home when I’m ready, and I will. Deal with your shit on your own for once.” He hung up.
His family’s petty feuds were understandable, if predictable. His grandfather and Romeo Capparelli—the current Romeo’s grandfather; the Capparellis liked to name their firstborn sons Romeo—used to be friends. Or so the story went. It reeked of fairy tale by this point. Each family had their own version of events, about how Romeo married off his little sister to Dante’s grandfather and she died a within the first year. Verduccis claimed accident. Capparellis claimed murder. The truth didn’t matter. The Capparellis drove Dante’s grandfather out of New York, drove them off the East Coast entirely. He went back to Italy, married another mob scion’s daughter, and took over a section of LA.
Maybe the feud should have ended there, but his people loved nothing more than to hold grudges and nurse them like they were children. It wasn’t long before the Verduccis were feuding with the LA Romanovs, too.
Dante, frankly, didn’t give a fuck.
The entire Verducci clan could rot, for all he cared, with one notable exception. His cousin, Matteo. It was Matteo who effectively held his leash, not Lorenzo. And Matteo was playing a deeper game than anyone. Eventually he’d get tired of his father wasting valuable resources and put a bullet between his eyes. Not a day too soon, from where Dante stood.
He picked up the photo of Rose again. She looked different than she had the entire time they dated. They’d both been playing their respective roles, and he’d enjoyed the fuck out of mining the truth from fiction when she shared things with him. She was so fucking clever, and her mundane persona was nearly as good as his was. She might not have realized the depths of the game they played, but she was no wide-eyed naive innocent.
Now the veil had been torn away and there was only the truth between them. Going forward there would only ever be the truth between them.
Anticipation curled through him. It had been a very long time since he’d felt anything but apathy. Things followed their planned course, and he did what was expected of him, going through the movements. He liked his life just fine. He bought what he wanted, had his pick of people to fuck, and killed anyone who got in his way. No one surprised him. Not when people were so damned predictable.
Rose surprised him when she shot him. Oh, he’d known she was capable of it. She wouldn’t have maintained her position as Romanov heir if she wasn’t willing to get her hands dirty.
But she shot him.
He’d seen her mask fall away in that moment, the regret and fury and something unknowable in her hazel eyes. Even with that regret, she hadn’t hesitated to pull the trigger. She hadn’t let her emotions dictate her actions. She’d used cold, ruthless logic and done what needed to be done.
Dante respected the fuck out of that.
He couldn’t enjoy the revelation, though. Not when she immediately turned around and put Romeo Capparelli’s engagement ring on her finger. The second she signed the contract and kissed him in a church full of their people, she was beyond Dante’s reach.
Yeah, no, that wasn’t going to happen. She was the first romantic partner to surprise him, to challenge him, and he wasn’t ready to let her go, engagement to another man or no.
He picked up his phone and typed out a text.
Get the jet ready. I’ll be coming in hot.
Dante studied the church. He didn’t get why they’d decided to hold the wedding outside of the city, but he had to admit the little building on the hill in the country looked like something out of a picture. It didn’t make sense. This was the kind of place the girl Rose had been pretending to be would want to get married in. Not the furious woman who looked him in the face when she pulled the trigger.
In the three months since she shot him, his girl had been busy wedding planning. Dante didn’t have much experience with weddings beyond showing up for the party, but it seemed like it should have taken longer. From his vantage point, he counted a dozen enforcers around the perimeter of the church, all obvious in their ill-fitting suits and tense stances. Three families of importance would be here today. Four, technically, though it had been a long time since people talked about the Sheridans in Boston without attaching the O’Malleys to their name.
There were so fucking many of them. Rose had six O’Malley aunts and uncles, and most of them had wed and bred. The Capparellis were just as bad, and the Romanovs even worse.
Ivan from Texas was here, still big and healthy-looking despite the fact he had to be in his seventies. Kirill was here with his family, too, so Dante didn�
��t know what his uncle had been bitching about. Even Sasha from Seattle had shown up, and he never left his territory.
Dante’s hand hovered over the gun holstered at his hip. It was a long shot, but he’d made longer. Removing Kirill Romanov would be satisfying in the extreme. Dante didn’t have the same fervor for family the way most people in this life did, but even he would sleep better with that man six feet under. Kirill was smart and brutal, and Lorenzo was rapidly losing ground to him. The old man just wasn’t good enough. That would change when Matteo took over, but if Dante could take care of the problem for his cousin…
No.
The time wasn’t right.
He had other priorities today.
Dante dropped down from the branch he’d perched on and cut through the copse of trees to the north. There weren’t enough to qualify this as a forest, but it was more than enough to provide cover. The security guards were sticking close to the buildings themselves, especially as night fell.
From the information he’d gathered, Rose would be getting ready in the little cottage-looking thing next to the church. It was like something out of another life with its charming white wooden walls and stained-glass windows. There was even a gravel drive that circled it, the easier to make a quick getaway. The whole thing was a security risk, but apparently tradition superseded security for this event. Good. He typed out a quick text to his man waiting in the car.
Be ready.
Dante switched his phone over to the surveillance device he’d planted in the bridal suite last night. It had taken some time to dodge security, but ultimately he’d done it inside an hour. Pathetic. If he’d wanted to hide in a fucking closet at that point, he could have massacred the entire bridal party this morning in one fell swoop.
Really, he expected better of both Romanov and Capparelli.
His phone gave static for a moment, but it cleared almost immediately into a flurry of women’s voices. He knew the names, knew the faces, but he had only met Rose, so could only guess at the identities of the other speakers.