by Nicole Fox
I dig my nails into his shoulder blades. This is his retaliation for me trying to control him. I don’t even mind as his body collides right against my clit and his cock rams into something even more sensitive inside me.
My right foot is barely touching the shower floor. When he picks up my right thigh, there’s an added unsteadiness to his thrusting as he balances both of us, but he remains merciless, driving into me so hard that my hips would be aching if the high wasn’t consuming me.
He looks at me, his rhythm remaining brutal, but his eyes aren’t cruel or callous. There’s something inside his irises that seems impossibly soft in a man like Maksim and in a body that’s intent on severity. I touch his cheek, his stubble raspy against my hand.
He growls as if the intimacy is an affront. His hands gripping my hips and my hands on his shoulders, he grinds up against me, his body slowly rotating to rub against my clit in a way that causes my heart to beat twice as fast and heat to flood my body.
The orgasm detonates without warning, erupting in wave after wave of spastic euphoria. I cry out, my body going stiff as I give into it. As my orgasm squeezes Maksim’s cock, he lets out a slow groan as his hot seed surges into me. I feel him beginning to slip, but he lowers me enough that it barely hurts as we slide to the bottom of the shower.
I keep my eyes closed, trying to catch my breath. After several minutes have passed, I open my eyes. Maksim reaches up, turning the water off. My body stays warm, though I know outside of this shower, everything is freezing cold.
Maksim stands up unsteadily. He steps out of the shower.
By the time I manage to get onto my feet, he’s wrapped a towel around his waist. He runs his hand through his hair, slicking it back.
“I’ve got to go,” he murmurs without looking at me. “I need to take care of some things.”
He walks out of the bathroom, moving so quickly, I’d wonder if everything that happened was a fantasy except that I can feel the incoming bruises on my thighs.
I grab a clean towel from his shelf and wrap it around myself, then make my way through the dark hall to my room, closing the door and locking it once I’m inside. He can probably unlock it any time he wants, but the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place is a tiny bit of comfort that I’m desperate for right now, even if it ultimately won’t do anything to help me.
I’m shivering as I ditch the towel and slide under the comforter. At least, for this one moment, it’s warm and dark and safe and nobody is in this room trying to hurt me. The fact that that’s a foreign feeling just goes to show how messed up my lot in life has been.
I get my phone out from under the bedside table and continue my research into Maksim.
As I look into the death of his parents and his ownership of the Akimov Suites, the low-key buzzing of the aftermath of sex gives way to an uneasy tension in my chest. One day, Maksim will read the article I’m going to write about him. I wonder if he already has a counter-plan in place. He probably does; he’s no fool. But, at the very least, it will lead the police in an investigation that will likely last for years. The FBI and the NYPD won’t want the public to think they’re letting a billionaire get away with unspeakable crimes under their watch. Everything he’s built will burn around him and he will know I’m the one that lit the match. I know he deserves it, but it doesn’t change the pain inside me.
I tuck my arm under my head, my wet hair drenching my skin. I keep staring at the photo of Maksim in front of the Akimov Suites until my eyes won’t stay open anymore.
I keep my eyes closed, hoping sleep will come. My bones are heavier than lead and my brain is disintegrating into gray pulp, but my thoughts keep rippling under the thick layer of anxiety. Maksim is right under the surface, the memory of his cock sliding against my tongue and his body pinning mine against the shower wall.
Every sensation, every ache between my legs, every shot of warmth that spreads under my skin at the recollection is a criminal act that I should feel significantly more guilty about.
I change my mental channel to something less conflicting— the Fifth Avenue Journal, the investigation into Mafias, the Akimov Bratva, the Balducci Mafia, my father.
I trace through my memories. I still have no idea if my father survived the shooting. A good daughter would have spent a lot more time ensuring he was fine. A good daughter would have at least looked over her shoulder while the leader of an enemy family was dragging her away, checking if the man who brought her into this world had been shot or not.
I unlock my phone and tap the keypad, then hold my phone up to my ear. With every trill of the cell phone ringing, my heartbeat speeds up.
Underneath the fear that an EMT or police officer will answer, telling me that my father is dead, there’s a deeper fear that no one will answer and I’ll have to wait for news reporters to tell me the identity of the deceased bodies.
And far under that fear is the terror of talking to him again. It was easier to talk to him while he was drunk and Maksim was there to intervene. Now, it would just be the two of us on the line, with the history between us haunting the call like a ghost.
The ringing abruptly cuts off. I take in a sharp breath.
“Cassie?” my father’s voice answers. “Hello? Cassie?”
“Dad.” I sit up. “Are you okay? Did you—are you safe?”
“I’m fine,” he says. “Where did you go? Did you get hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
“Those Akimovs are fucking cowardly motherfuckers,” he snarls. “Only thugs act like that.”
I run my tongue between my teeth, almost biting down on the tip. I’m fairly certain Maksim was telling the truth when he told me he hadn’t planned the shooting—it seemed like the desperate actions of a desperate man, which isn’t Maksim. The fact that my father has spent decades blowing up his enemies with car bombs lingers at the edge of my mind as well. What’s more cowardly than being far away from your victims when you kill them?
But I suppress all that. Now is not the time.
“Where did you go?” he asks again. “I looked for you. I wasn’t sure if you were okay.”
“I’m safe,” I say, thinking to myself that if he cared so much, he could’ve tried calling me. “Dad—you need to know something. I—I came in with Maksim Akimov.”
“What? You came in with Akimov?” he asks. I listen to his breathing, slightly ragged from years of bad decisions. “Why would you … why would you do that? Did he threaten you?”
I take a deep breath. “Kind of. Not exactly. He knows about my daughter. He found her.”
I expect my father to come up with a dozen solutions. It’s the only reason he’s managed to keep power for so long—he’s a strategist that doesn’t mind a target on his back.
“Ah. I see,” he says. “How did he manage that?”
“I have no idea,” I admit. “How would I? I didn’t even know where she was.”
Ten years of resentment melt into several seconds of silence. I wait for his answers. I wait for him to fix things like a father would.
“How closely are you sticking around him?” my father asks.
“What?”
“If he took you to the club, he must be keeping you close by. Did you have to steal your phone back?”
“No,” I say slowly. “He lets me have my phone. He knows I won’t go anywhere, not as long as my daughter is still out there somewhere. If you could tell me where she is, maybe—”
“I can’t tell you that,” he cuts in. “I don’t know where she is. Where are you right now?”
He’s lying. “You must know something,” I say. “Maksim managed to track her down, but he won’t tell me anything about her. He didn’t pull the fact that she existed out of thin air. Someone connected to our family knows something. Who did you give her to?”
“Forget about her. Where are you right now?” he asks again.
“I’m not going to forget about her, Papa.”
“Cassie.” He sighs. “We’ll deal
with all of this later. It’s not important right now. What’s important is that I know where you are. Are you being kept at one of their hotels?”
“I’m at his house,” I say. I stare at the door, trying to ignore the tornado picking up speed inside my chest. I may need my father’s help if everything goes south—it’s not a time to make enemies with him. “I’ve been staying here.”
“Is he tracking your cell phone? You wouldn’t call me if you thought there was a chance he could be listening to our call, would you?” His voice is nearly frantic. “I raised you better than that.”
“He’s not tracking it.”
“You’re certain? Is someone guarding you?”
He’s asking a thousand questions, but they’re all the wrong ones. What about questions like, Are you okay? Are you safe? Has he hurt you? Those are the kinds of questions that a father should ask his daughter in a situation like this. But Gianluigi isn’t exactly a role-model parent. Not unless you consider full-blown narcissism and a propensity for violence to be admirable parental attributes.
“No,” I say. “I don’t think. Not exactly.”
“So, you’re in his house without being monitored?”
“Yes.” I pull the phone away from my face, checking the screen—checking that I’m talking to my father.
“That’s perfect,” he mutters as I bring the phone back up to my ear. “That son of a bitch believes he has something over me. We can turn this around and use it against him.”
“Are you saying I’m not ‘something’?” I ask. It’s a weak attempt at dry humor. I know damn well where I stand in terms of strategic importance in my father’s eyes—low.
“No, of course not,” he says. “I’m saying that you can spy on him. If you convince him that everything is good between the two of you, you could get information out of him. He’s willing to keep information from you and you can take information from him. It’s a perfect setup.”
“I’m not going to be your spy,” I say. A torrent of guilt sweeps through me—I’m already spying on Maksim; it’s just for my career instead of my family.
“Cassie, we need this,” my father pleads. “You just saw what happened. They want us dead. They’re willing to use you to get to me.”
“How is that any different from you using me?” I hiss.
“Because I’m your father. You should know that I’d do anything for you, my daughter, so you should be willing to do the same. It’s how a family works.”
“I would do the same—for my daughter,” I say. “But you took her from me. You weren’t willing to do anything for me then.”
“I did what needed to be done,” he says. “I thought by now you’d be mature enough to understand that.”
“I understand everything just fine,” I say, the words slipping out through gritted teeth. “My daughter and I were liabilities to you. We were just—”
“Shut the fuck up,” he snaps. “You damn well know that’s not why I did it. I did it to protect everyone. I did it so this kind of scenario didn’t happen. I did it—”
“Then why didn’t you give me a choice?” I demand.
“You would have chosen wrong. You were a silly teenager, desperate to rebel—”
“You could have left the Mafia,” I say. “You should have prioritized your family. That would have protected us.”
“The Mafia is my family. And you were part of that until you decided to abandon your own kin.”
“I was never part of any of that.” I’m gripping my phone so hard, I can imagine the plastic cracking under my fingers. “Your men never treated me as anything more than something pretty to look at.”
“Maybe you should have done something impressive then, instead of falling in love with the first one who fucked you. I’m not going to have you reading me the fucking riot act while I have men in surgery. If you want to continue being a whore for the Akimovs, then fantastic—at least you’ll be able to keep doing the one thing you’re good at.”
The line goes dead. I keep holding the phone up to my ear, waiting for the anger to fade, but it doesn’t go anywhere. I’m more tired than before, but I know sleep will be more elusive than ever.
I close my eyes, laying my head back down. There’s a cold breeze as the door opens and the bed sinks as Maksim sits down beside me. I roll over to face him.
“Were you listening that whole time?” I ask quietly. I don’t want to look at him.
“No,” he says. “Only at the very end. But I didn’t need to hear any of it.”
“You knew I was going to call him. You let me.”
He nods. “Anyone could predict that you’d call your father and find out if he survived. Your father would want to find out how you survived the shooting and you’d tell him some information about our deal. Gianluigi, being an opportunistic piece of shit, wanted you to be his undercover agent. You refused because you hate people controlling you and making decisions for you. It’s why you left the city in the first place.”
“You’re incredibly astute for such a selfish asshole,” I remark. He’s wearing a black button-up shirt with a grayish-blue suit jacket. I undo the first button on his shirt. It unveils a portion of one of his tattoos—the skeleton of a bird.
I hadn’t noticed them before. There was too much going on in the lead-up to the shower sex. Now, I run my hand over the skull of the bird and down the wing bone. There’s rough, raised skin for the bottom half of the wing bone. Another scar that he’s covered with ink. Another secret that he will take to the grave.
“My father didn’t ask me why you were doing all of this,” I say. I glance up at him, my hand leaving his chest. “But I’m asking. I want to know why.”
There’s the hint of a smirk on his face. It slowly slips away. He takes my hand, his fingers intertwining with mine.
“I was married once,” he says. “Her name was Natalie. It was…not a happy marriage. But she was murdered. By a car bomb.”
His last words pollute the room. He doesn’t need to tell me that my family was behind it.
I shouldn’t have come back to this city. This place is hell.
I start to sit up, but Maksim puts his hand on my shoulder, applying enough pressure that I lie back down. I expect to see restrained rage on his face, but he appears perfectly calm.
“How long ago was this?” I ask.
“About a year ago.”
I wince. “So, it worked out well for you that I came back this month.”
“It did seem like the devil was willing to help me out a little bit,” he says, his finger tracing down my collarbone. “But if you didn’t return soon, I would have found a way to lure you back.”
I focus on the bird skeleton tattoo again. So, in the end, this is my father’s fault in more ways than one. He took my daughter, he killed Maksim’s wife, and now he wants to act like the victim. He should have been worried about me after finding out Maksim had me, considering he killed Maksim’s wife, but he’s ignoring his past like it will negate the consequences of his actions.
I won’t make the same mistakes.
I won’t keep running from my past like it won’t eventually find me and, as Maksim put it, lure me back.
“I want to see my daughter,” I say.
Maksim frowns. “No.” He makes a spinning motion with his hand. “Roll over.”
I grit my teeth. I should object. If I plan on taking on my father, I should be able to take on Maksim. But after hearing about his deceased wife—killed by my family—I feel like I owe him.
And, while my body still aches, the thought of him inside me is enough to make my sex throb.
I roll over. His arm wraps around my waist, and he pulls me closer to him. My back presses against his chest, but there’s still some distance between my ass and his cock. I wait for him to move his arm down and tug my lower half closer to him.
Seconds pass by. I feel his chest rise and fall behind me. When he moves his arm, I tense up, but he only moves it so our hands can intertwine
again.
“Why didn’t you try to find your daughter?” he whispers. I tighten my grip around his hand. My instinct is to be defensive, but this isn’t how he brought it up last time—he’s not being accusatory. There’s genuine curiosity in the question.
“I did try initially,” I confess. “But I was eighteen. I didn’t have any resources. I’d just walked away from my family and I was … I was alone. Completely on my own. At the time I wanted it that way, but it meant I didn’t have help from anyone. A lot of my time was just spent trying to survive.”
I brush my bottom lip with my hand, nearly forgetting that it’s clasped with Maksim’s. His hand squeezes mine.
“I … well, like I said. I did try. I hit nothing but dead ends and I didn’t have enough money for private investigators. I didn’t even make enough money to save a single penny. I managed to get to North Carolina by selling nearly everything in my apartment. As the years passed … it just felt wrong to continue looking for her. I felt like she’d see me as the mother who wasn’t strong enough to stop her from being taken and that I didn’t deserve her anymore … and I think she’d be right. I still wanted to be worthy, though. Maybe that’s part of the reason I came back. Partly to write for the Fifth Avenue Journal and partly because I knew New York City was the place that would make me strong enough to deserve her. Not just because it’s a city that you need street smarts to survive, but because my family is here and … that’s scary. It’s just scary.”
I rub my face against the pillow underneath my head, trying to erase any evidence of the tears threatening to expose me as a fraud.
Maksim releases my hand. I wait for him to get up and leave, completely repulsed by my weakness, but his hand settles on my shoulder. I slowly turn to look at him.
“It sounds like we have more in common than most people would think.”
He leans down, kissing me with unexpected tenderness.
I unbuckle his belt and slide his pants down. It hasn’t been long since the sex in the shower, but when he pushes into me, it’s like I was dying without this and hadn’t even realized.