Makar is waving at me. Annoyed, I walk over to the bodyguard, arm still around Heather’s shoulder. She moves stiffly beside me, awkwardly out of step.
Makar comes down to greet me. He glances at Heather, and shakes his head. “We’ve got some business to discuss. No women allowed.”
I’m ready to fucking explode. This is bullshit and he knows it. Heather is a wife, not a mistress, slave or fuck-toy. What mafia soldier leaves his wife alone in a nightclub? They’re doing this on purpose because Kostya’s still pissed that he didn’t get to have Heather as a sex slave.
“I’ll be fine,” Heather says to me, standing on her tiptoes and raising her voice to be heard over the pulsing music. “You know where I grew up. I walked past muggers and drug dealers on the way to grade school. You think I can’t handle these lightweights?” She flashes the crowd a scornful look, and then kisses my cheek.
She’s supporting me, despite everything I’ve done to her. She’s a worthy wife. Better than I deserve.
“Anyone looks at you wrong, tell me,” I say, dropping my arm from her shoulders with the greatest reluctance.
Impatiently, I push past the guard and hurry up the stairs, with Makar right behind me. I sit down next to Kostya, who makes a big show of draining the last of his drink. Asshole.
He finally acknowledges me with a sardonic smile. “I just wanted to know how things are progressing with the acquisition,” he says. He didn’t need me here for that; I saw him not twelve hours ago. I told him when I’d have the paintings. Yeah, he only called me up here to fuck with me.
“Everything’s moving according to plan. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you anything more than that,” I say, reining in my anger. “But on Monday, you will have the merchandise.”
He waves at one of his men, who hurries over with a tray full of shot glasses which he sets on the table in front of us. I scan the crowd, searching for Heather; I can’t see her anywhere.
We all down a shot; the vodka is as pure and smooth as Siberian snow. “Excellent,” I say, to be civil. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”
Fuck, I don’t know how Diego does this political shit all day long. Smiling at his enemies. Making boring small talk. I’ve been sitting up here for about sixty seconds and I’m ready to gouge out some eyeballs.
“Another round for my friend!” Kostya says loudly, and his lackey whisks away the empty tray and scurries back to the bar.
Kostya leans back in his chair, tapping the arm with his fingers. Makar sits ramrod straight, like a hound waiting for his master to bark an order at him.
“If you ever choose to disclose your methods of acquisition, I would make it worth your while.,” Kostya says. “My stepfather has been telling some new friends about his new collection, and they are very interested.”
Is he fucking serious with this shit? His stepfather’s bragging about merchandise I haven’t even stolen yet? I honestly think Kostya would prefer it if I screwed up. The way he and Makar constantly, subtly provoke me – it feels oddly personal.
And I don’t get the impression that Kostya is a man who enjoys peacetime. I see it in the sullen set of his jaw; he’s bored, restless, looking for trouble. The only reason he’s holding back is because he works for his stepfather, and if he started a war in Chicago right after he took over this new territory, it would look like failure.
“I will keep that in mind,” I say. “I appreciate the offer. I need to get back to my wife, however.”
His man sets down a fresh tray.
“Another drink! To new friendships!” Kostya says, ignoring me. There’s a malicious twist to his mouth now, and I feel a familiar hot prickling of the skin. It’s a warning sign. I’m about to lose control. The rage that swells up inside me won’t be denied.
I need to grab Heather and go home.
“Yes, to new friendships!” Makar smirks at me. He stands up. “I would like to toast to the beginning of new relationships. Our friend Claudio here - ” He’s about to launch into a lengthy monologue, just to fuck with me, because he can tell I’m itching to get out of here.
“Our friend Claudio does not let his wife wander around nightclubs un-escorted,” I interrupt him. I toss back my drink and hurry away, looking for my wife as I head down the stairs.
I can’t see her anywhere. Fucking hell. Has she left? Her brother’s still in the hospital, and she knows I could get to him there. Would she run anyway?
Kostya and Makar follow me down the steps. Kostya catches up to me, and grabs my arm. As he does, a stunning blonde slides in front of him and throws her arms around his neck.
“Hey, baby, I missed you,” she sings out. I actually recognize her; she’s had minor parts in some Hollywood movies and she’s Insta-famous. Those Hollywood types love a bad boy. If only she knew how bad he really was, she’d be running for the door, not rubbing her fake tits on his chest.
She smiles at me flirtatiously. “And who’s your cute friend?”
He looks bored, and shakes her arms off of him, stepping away from her. “You want to fuck him? If not, get lost. I’ve got shit to do.”
“Are you serious? You’re such an asshole!” Her face flushes red with anger. She storms off into the crowd.
Kostya inclines his head in her direction. “Seriously, if you want her, she’s yours for a gram of coke. Gives decent head. Tight little pussy.”
“No, thanks. Not my type.” No one is my type but Heather. I’m still craning my head, looking for her. She’s not where I left her. If I don’t find her soon, I’m going to lose my shit.
Kostya shrugs moodily, watching the blonde make her way through the crowd, headed towards the dance floor. “Whatever. I’m tired of her. She’s far too... willing.”
And people think I’m a sick fuck?
Finally, I spot Heather across the room, pressed up against the wall by a sea of drunk-ass partiers. She catches my eye, and waves, smiling.
“She doesn’t seem like she’s with you because of some debt,” Makar snipes. He’s all but calling me a liar, but actually, it gives me a warm feeling to hear that. Does Heather give the impression that she’s with me because she wants to be? And could that possibly be true?
“She knows that if she doesn’t behave, there are consequences,” I say shortly, and I plunge through the crowd. Everyone’s drunk and they’re packed together like sardines. I lose sight of her again.
My heart hammers in my chest, and sweat beads on my foreheads and trickles down, stinging my eyes. Exactly how I felt right before I beat the shit out of that guy at the North Chicago Social Club.
Calm down, calm down, don’t screw this up...
I see her again. She’s moved into an empty doorway that leads to the bathrooms. As I hurry towards her, a drunk asshole deliberately steps in front of me. When I step to the side, he moves again, blocking me, and throws his arms out wide, laughing drunkenly.
Until I punch him in the jaw so hard it shatters. A red haze of rage envelopes me, and I am pounding him, my fists raining down on him. His face is pulped, his ribs shattering.
Half a dozen men are swarming over me and pull me off him. I’m dead. I fucked up, and I am so, so dead. And worse, I’ve fucked over Diego, and my wife, both.
And then I hear Heather’s voice, slicing through the noise. “Let go of my husband! This man tried to rape me!” Heather screams. “He hit me in the face and tried to drag me into the bathroom!”
Instantly, the men release me. The front of her dress is ripped, and her lip is bleeding. When did that happen? Because when I started beating the guy up, she was fine. But now she’s sobbing into her hands, shoulders heaving. Fuck, she is a very, very good actress.
I rush over to her, and gather her in my arms. Kostya is there, and his face has gone pale. “I’m sorry,” he says to me in a low, urgent voice. He glances down the hallway; fortunately, most of the people in the nightclub aren’t looking our way, and they’re too drunk to notice.
I glare at him. “My fucking wif
e, man,” I snarl. “That piece of shit disrespected my wife. Do you know how this makes me look? It makes me look like a weak ass pussy. This brings shame on not just me, but the Family.”
Kostya looks down at the drunk ass on the ground, draws his foot back, and kicks him in the stomach so hard the man vomits. Heather winces, but doesn’t say anything.
“I think your response speaks to your honor and your ability to defend your woman,” Kostya says. “But again, I apologize.”
“This would not have happened if you hadn’t insisted on me leaving her unattended. If you had told me you needed to speak to me alone, I’d have bought a chaperone for her,” I say stiffly. “I am taking my wife home now.”
We’re hurried out a side door.
When we get in the limo, she drops the weepy act and straightens up.
“What happened to your lip?” I ask her.
“I banged my face against the wall.” She touches it gently, wincing. Then she looks at me. “Makar,” she says. “It’s Makar.”
I look at her in confusion.
“What’s Makar?”
“Makar is the one who’s getting you upset. I was watching you with those guys, and I could tell. Your body language – every time he spoke, you looked like you were barely restraining yourself from killing him.”
I tap my fingers on the seat in a frenetic rhythm, pondering her words. “You don’t think it’s Kostya?’
“No. It’s different. You seem to just find him annoying, but Makar really sets you off.”
Is that true? I’m so un-connected to my feelings that I genuinely don’t know. Makar does try to get under my skin, but then again, so does Kostya. Perhaps my wife knows me better than I know myself.
I roll down the partition between me and Carmelo. He’s a computer whiz. “Hey,” I call out to him. “I want you to find out everything that you can about Makar.” And I roll it back up again, and slump back in my seat.
“I really fucked up,” I say to her. “You literally saved my life back there. If Kostya didn’t have me killed, Diego would have had no choice but to do it himself.”
“I know.” She flashes me an uncertain look, then takes a deep breath and looks me in the eye. “We’re even now, Claudio. I know how the Family works. For that kind of favor, I’ve earned my freedom.”
She’s right – but what she says detonates an explosion of fury inside me.
I’ve given her a beautiful home, a closet full of designer clothes, and the best fucking orgasms of her life. To say nothing of sparing her brother from a nightmare death. She has no right to ask me for more – to ask me to feel things I can never feel.
“What did you say?” Rage sizzles form my voice, and she winces, but doesn’t back down.
“You heard me, Claudio. What you did at that night club, it would have blown up in Diego’s face, and I know you well enough to know that to you, that’s worse than dying. I saved not just your life, but your boss’s honor. I’ve more than paid off my brother’s debt to you. Let me go.”
“Never,” I say instantly. “You’re never leaving me, and don’t ever fucking ask me again.” I’ve clenched my fists, and I force myself to unclench them. I’m not going to hit her; I would never do that. But I will keep her prisoner until the day I die, because some broken part of me needs her.
“Why not? Why won’t you let me go?” she looks at me searchingly. I know what she wants. She wants me to say that I’ve caught feelings for her. Love, even.
I can’t, and that just makes me even angrier. When she pushes me like this, she’s just throwing it in my face that I’m too damaged to give her what she needs.
“Why do you want to leave?” I demand.
“You know.”
“No, I don’t. Say it.”
“I’m nothing but a possession to you. I want more than that. I want the real deal, or nothing.” Her eyes blue eyes are the color of a storm-tossed sea. I’m scorching her with the heat of my rage, but she won’t melt. She’s strong and proud, and too good for me. “I don’t want to spend my life trapped in a marriage of convenience, and you’ve made it clear that’s all I am to you. Convenient.”
“You want to leave, so you can fuck someone else?” I snarl.
She shakes her head, tears spilling onto her cheeks. I feel their burn as if they are my own tears, as if acid were dripping down my face, but I say nothing. “How can you even ask that? Have I ever given you reason to think that? I’d just rather be alone then trapped with a man who doesn’t love me.”
“You married me so your brother can keep breathing. You’d do well to remember that.”
“If you ever hurt my brother again, or anyone I care about, I will escape you, or die trying. You’d do well to remember that,” she spits at me.
I storm out of the room before I say something I’ll regret, and I head to the gym so that I can take out my rage on a punching bag.
I could say the words that she wants to hear, but she’d hear the lie in my voice. If I could tell anyone that I loved them, it would be her. But she’ll never hear those words.
When I was in my uncle’s basement, being torn apart, day after day, in pain from morning to night...when I was being violated by Ditmar in ways that I don’t dare let myself fully remember...I locked away my feelings somewhere deep and dark. It was the only way to stay sane. To keep from killing myself. I had to be numb inside.
If I open up that place inside me, who knows I’d find there?
Chapter Eighteen
Heather
Carmelo brings me to the hospital on Sunday. Claudio’s going to be gone all day; of course, he wouldn’t tell me what he was doing.
My stomach is uncomfortably full from the breakfast that Claudio fed me before he left, and I’m tired and jittery.
For the first time, Claudio didn’t want to have sex with me last night. He’s furious at me for asking to leave him. He barely spoke two words to me when he was feeding me.
Am I crazy, for asking for more from him? For wanting more than physical passion and a closet full of designer clothes?
Sometimes I think so. He can be charming and funny and he makes me feel like the most desirable woman on the planet. But then I see the way he withdraws into himself with no warning, suddenly pulling away from me and turning hard and angry. Claudio is with me one minute, a million miles away the next. If I try to talk to him when he’s in those moods, he stalks out of the room.
And it’s never been a real marriage, anyway. I’m still watched all the time, kept under his thumb by the threat of violence. I vow I’ll get my brother and me out of this, and we’ll go far away. Hell, I could even bring Mary with us.
That thought actually cheers me up considerably – until I get to my father’s room. Or, what was my father’s room. He’s gone, and there’s a stranger in his bed.
The enormous vase by his bedside – which always seemed to be filled with fresh flowers every time I came to visit – is gone too. The new guy is asleep, so I can’t ask him how long he’s been there, or if he knows what happens to the previous occupant.
My father was there yesterday. I know because I’d called his room, mid-day, before I was taken to the beauty parlor. He’d been fine. He said he felt worlds better, and he’d sounded stronger than he had in months. The various medications and treatments seemed to be working.
So why isn’t he here?
Panic blooms in my chest. If he died, they would have notified me, wouldn’t they? They have me as his emergency contact.
Carmelo’s out in the hallway – when he’s on prisoner-watch duty, he’s never far from my side.
“Do you know anything about my father leaving?” I ask. My voice rises and I suck in deep breaths. Something must be wrong, or my father would have called me and told me he was checking out.
“No, why would I know something like that?” He looks puzzled. “I’m just the driver. Nobody tells me shit.”
I’m hurrying to the nurse’s station as he talks, and he’s r
ight behind me, a big, unshakeable shadow.
The nurse is scowling at the computer screen. “Hi, I came to see my father, Stuart Jenkins? Room 17?”
She glances up at me, lets out an exaggerated sigh, then returns her attention to the computer screen. “I’m fairly sure that he...let me check...” she’s typing, taking her time with a look of annoyance on her face, and I’m standing there dying.
“You’re fairly sure he what?” I demand. “Is he all right? I need to know!”
She stops typing, pushes her chair back, and gives me irritated look. “Miss. I’ll need you to settle down if you want me to get this information for you.”
Carmelo leans forward. She does a visible double take when she notices the scarred side of his face, which makes me even angrier.
“Tell her where the fuck her father is if you want to keep those fingers attached to your hand.”
Her eyes widen in alarm. “I’ll call security!”
“You do that. But can they put your teeth back in your head for you?”
Glaring at him, she leans forward, and taps something on the computer screen. Then she nods “He checked himself out, against medical advice, a couple of hours ago.”
My heart sinks. He screwed up somehow. That’s why he didn’t call me.
“Why?” I demand.
She shrugs. “I’m not allowed to share that information with you.”
“He signed paperwork saying that I can have access to his medical information.”
“Well, he withdrew it,” she says sharply. My heart sinks. There’s only one reason that he’d do that. He was drinking, or tried to get a drink and they asked him to leave.
“Is Alison here?” Alison may get all snippy with me, but she does seem to care about my father. Maybe she’d tell me something if she thought it would be helpful.
“Not back until Wednesday.” The nurse shoots a fearful look at Carmelo. “Now, please leave, or I will have you escorted out.”
My shoulders slump as we head for the elevator. My brother’s been moved out of ICU and into a regular hospital bed. Soon, they’ll send him off to a rehab center to get physical therapy.
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