Year of the Scorpio: Part One

by Stacy Gail

  “Do you even know what a personal level means? Don’t answer that,” I tacked on, holding up a staying hand. Ugh. What an ungrateful bitch I was. It wasn’t his fault my emotions were all over the place. “I’m...seriously, I’m just glad you were looking out for me, Polo. Thank you for that, and I’m sorry for being crazy.”

  He grinned, and for once it wasn’t that affable smile that could be so terrifying. This was the real deal, and it was downright breathtaking to see. “That’s pretty damn sad, if that was your attempt at crazy. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”

  All too well I remembered back to when we first met, when Polo had been virtually mute and barely human... “Still, I’m grateful to you and I’m not showing it properly. If you hadn’t gotten there in time to save me from the cops—”

  “I still would have saved you from them. There just would’ve been a lot more mess, and one hell of a lot of funerals involved. So yeah, I’m glad I got there in time, too. No need to end good people just because they’re doing their jobs.”

  The thought of him going full-on Scorpio on Chicago’s finest made me shiver, while at the same time I couldn’t stop staring at his smile. Or, more accurately, his mouth. When had his mouth gotten so delicious-looking? Dear God, that was a mouth made for sin, I was absolutely convinced of it. “I...don’t know what to say to that. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be feeling right now.”

  “Sleepy. You should be feeling sleepy.” Kon got to his feet and stretched, then made his way to Polo to clasp his hand, brother-to-brother style. “I know she’s safe with you, so I’m going to bounce and get some shut-eye.”

  “Bullshit.” Polo’s grin widened as he walked Konstantin to the double doors. “I saw you get that bottle-service guy’s number before I made my appearance. He’s probably watching his phone right now, waiting for it to ring.”

  “And it would be wrong to keep anyone waiting, because you know what I always say—nothing is too good for the ones we care about. Wouldn’t you agree, Polo?”

  As I watched, Polo’s eyes slid to me, and for no reason that I could think of, my throat slammed shut.

  “Yeah, I do,” Polo murmured, his dark gaze almost devouring me whole even as it pinned me to the spot. “I most definitely do.”

  Chapter Three

  The vibe in the room changed the second Konstantin left. I tried to convince myself the change came from the newness of being in Polo’s sanctuary, or even leftover adrenaline from the night’s events.

  Too bad my papa had taught me how to spot a lie.

  I was alone with Polo Scorpeone after he’d vanished from my life—my world—for half a year, and everything about him seemed at once familiar and utterly different and new. For the first time since we’d known each other, he was free to choose to be in my presence.

  Anything could happen.

  Anything.

  I crossed my legs when my girlie parts tingled in shocking anticipation.

  “There’s a guest room you can sack out in.”

  Annnnnd, the tingling topped.

  Well, crap.

  “Oh?” Trying to play it cool when irrational disappointment was doing its best to crush me, I folded my hands in my lap while he headed toward me. “You’ve never struck me as a guest-room kind of guy.”

  “It happens from time to time. You’ll also find new toothbrushes in the guest bathroom’s vanity, as well as toothpaste and floss, soap and deodorant—all that kind of crap. Oh, and someone left some perfume behind as well, if you’re into that.”

  Oh.

  Oh.

  Now I got it. That was why he was so well-prepped for an unexpected overnight guest. The man was used to having sleepovers, and I wasn’t talking about the kind where you did each other’s hair, practiced kissing on your hand and giggled over the Cosmo quiz until two in the morning.

  Silly me. I should have guessed.

  The thing was, I wasn’t his usual sleepover friend. Hell, I wasn’t even a friend, according to him. I was his former job. I was someone he invited to sack out in the guest bedroom, not his bedroom. Not that I wanted him to invite me to sleep in his bedroom. No. After all, we’d known each other since we were teenagers. Something like that would be awkward and weird, so no. I didn’t want that.

  Maybe.

  Ugh.

  The truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted when it came to Polo.

  But I did know one thing.

  I knew I didn’t want to be there anymore.

  “Well.” The corners of my mouth pulled into a smile that felt as plastic as Barbie’s. “You sound like an excellent host. I’m sure your overnight lady friends give you high marks.”

  “I haven’t had any complaints. Lots of rave reviews, but no complaints.”

  “You should be on Yelp.” He knew I could be a smartass. No reason to hide it now.

  “Nah, I like to keep a low profile.”

  “Don’t I know it.” His profile was so freaking low I hadn’t even known what his place looked like until tonight. It sucked, seriously sucked, that it had taken an unexpected police raid to have him reveal this much to me. He hadn’t even chosen to voluntarily come back into my life. If Yuri and Alex Rodin hadn’t alerted him that I might be in trouble, he would have continued to ignore my existence, because he was finally free from the Vitalievs.

  So much for our happy reunion.

  “I wouldn’t mind if you gave me rave reviews.” He rounded the end of the sofa and held up the bottle of beer he still held. “Wanna sip?”

  “No thanks.”

  “What do you want, Dash?”

  I blinked. “Sorry?”

  “You look like you want... something. What is it?”

  I want for you to want me to be here, idiot. “To be honest, I really want to go home.”

  “Your brother wanted you here.” He dropped back beside me, and all at once the flesh nearest him went insane, jangling with hypersensitivity while that nuclear heat came back with a vengeance. “That means you have to stay here.”

  Just when I thought our time together couldn’t get any worse, he had to prove me wrong. “Polo, I’m not going to allow my brother to force you to babysit me. That’s not your job anymore.”

  “Knives isn’t forcing me to do anything.”

  “Yes, he is.” I reached into the clutch Konstantin had saved for me and fished out my phone, all the while not looking at him. “I’ll just call a taxi and be out of your hair in no—”

  “Dash.” He reached over with his free hand and snagged my phone away before my brain could get its act together and stop him. “I asked you what you wanted. It’s not a taxi, and it’s not to go home. I don’t know what it is, so you’re going to have to stop assuming I’m a mind-reader and tell me what’s got you looking like someone came along and took a piss in your Cheerios.”

  Nice. “It’s what I don’t want that’s bugging me.”

  “What the hell does that even mean?”

  I gave up. “You said I was your work. When I first walked in here, you said the reason you’d never had me over was because I was your work. Anyone else—hell, everyone else was welcome to come traipsing into your place, hang out above Heaven, have a beer, brush their teeth and wear perfume. But not me. I was your work, the one thing you didn’t want around when you were off your fucking duty. So now I’m extremely uncomfortable and feeling unwanted. Oh, and also, it should be said that I’m about five seconds away from throat-punching you so I can get my fucking phone back, call a taxi and get the hell out of here.”

  He sat perfectly still for several moments before he slowly lifted a brow. “Good luck in throat-punching me.”

  “You think I won’t?”

  “I think you’ll try, Fearless, but that’s only going to get you into trouble. And before that wacky Vitaliev brain of yours takes that as a challenge instead of the helpful bit of information that it was intended to be,” he added when my fingers curled into a white-knuckled fist, “thinkin
g of you solely as my work was a necessity. It was the safest thing I could have done back then. For both of us.”

  By degrees, my fist uncurled. “You’re going to have to explain that.”

  “I can’t believe I have to. Have you forgotten who I am?”

  That dead blankness—the look of Scorpio, the Vitaliev Bratva’s most prolific torpedo, or hitman—surfaced in his eyes. I hated the sight of it. “Don’t. You’re more than just a name.”

  “Maybe I am...now. But I wasn’t when those fucking Scorpeones gave me to your father and told Borysko that he was free to kill me if the Scorpeone family ever acted against the Vitalievs again.” He made a bitter sound and looked away as the old, old fury rolled off of him in waves. “To this day, I still have nightmares about that, can you believe it? I relive that moment of betrayal, when my old man told Borysko that I was the hostage they were sacrificing for peace between our families. I can’t remember that cocksucker’s face, or any of the faces of my former family, or anything about my life before. But I’ll never forget that moment.”

  The pain that edged his voice gutted me. “Polo...”

  “It only got worse from there. To every member of the Vitaliev organization, I was part of the family that kidnapped you and Knives. Shit, with the last name of Scorpeone I may as well have kidnapped you myself.”

  “That’s crazy, and anyone with a functioning brain recognizes that. When you were given to my father, you were the same age as my brother when Nizhy and I were taken. Hell, you were in some hoity-toity private military boarding school in Virginia when all that went down. You didn’t even know it had happened until...”

  “Until my piece-of-shit father handed me over to be a sacrificial hostage to stop a war he’d started by kidnapping you and Knives.”

  “Yeah.” There was nothing more I could say. What had happened to the innocent boy that Polo had once been was beyond cruel. I knew most of what had happened to him, but not the horrific, day-to-day details of torture. I didn’t want to. The bottom line was that for two years, a schoolboy who’d dreamed of being a military hero had been made to pay for his father’s sins. That alone made me cringe. But knowing that I was a part of it—because Nizhy and I been kidnapped—just about broke me.

  “It doesn’t matter what the facts were, Dash. I carried the Scorpeone name. That meant I was always watched, even after your father took me under his wing. He trusted me, but only if I performed perfectly and without question. That’s why he placed me as a member of your security detail once he’d finished training me. If I had ever been anything other than strictly professional with you, that would have been it for me.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that.” I had to, because what he said made sense. My father hadn’t gotten to the top of Chicago’s Russian mafiya by being a pushover. “But things changed for you—for all of us—when Papa was diagnosed with cancer.”

  “My name didn’t change.”

  “But everything else did, and you know it. As time went on, you and Nizhy took over more and more of the family’s duties. With every action, you showed that you were a part of the Vitalievs. And in the last year of my father’s life, you became everything to him. Papa needed you by his side even more than he needed Nizhy and me.”

  “He always needed you around, Dash.”

  “My point is that he relied on you. And in the end, when he freed you, he even called you his second son. You were safe from that moment on, but you still didn’t let me in. In fact,” I added, looking around, “this is the first time I can remember that we’ve been alone in the same room together for more than five minutes.”

  “Being alone with you wasn’t safe for another reason. A reason that had nothing to do with my old family, or my new one.”

  “What reason would that be?”

  Again, that brow did a slow rise. “You really have to ask?”

  “Obviously.”

  He stared at me. “We grew up, Dash. And as I grew, I was personally trained by your father to be something other than a bodyguard. You know what that was.”

  I nodded but kept my silence. I was a Vitaliev, after all. Not even in the safety of Polo’s home—a home that was undoubtedly swept daily for surveillance devices, just like the Vitaliev family home was—would I ever openly discuss how Marco Polo Scorpeone had become the most feared assassin in this city’s extensive organized crime history. His few friends called him Polo. The rest of the world knew his bloody work through only one shadowy name.

  Scorpio.

  The tilt of his head was an appreciative acknowledgment of my discretion. “I’ve made a lot of enemies over time. Enemies that would do just about anything to find a weakness in me, and cripple me with it. When I was in the game, if I had shown any personal interest in you—such as inviting you into my home—that would have put a target on you. No way in hell was I ever going to do that.”

  I digested that for a while. “So...you’re hoping I’ll believe you’ve never invited a woman into your home? Who’s the perfume for, you?”

  “No woman has ever been here more than once. Not ever.”

  Without warning, my hostility dropped to almost zero. “Oh.”

  “Damn straight, oh.”

  “Well...I’m here now. Does this mean I’d better make the most of it since I’ll never see this place again?”

  A flash of genuine amusement lit his face, along with something else. Something so lush and hot it made me want to squirm in my seat. “I like the sound of that—making the most of it while you’re here.”

  So did I, if my heart kicking wildly against my sternum was any indication. “But then, that’ll be it, right? Doesn’t sound like much fun to me.”

  “I’m retired now. Been retired for six peace-filled months, and everyone knows it. Whatever I did in the past I did on the orders of a dead man, another fact that everyone knows. My enemies have found new people to hate, and that’s fine with me. The real question is,” he added as I mulled this over, “do you know why you’re here with me now?”

  “You said I was to stay here because that’s what Nizhy wanted.”

  “I didn’t bring you here on his orders, Dash.”

  I frowned. “I thought you said—”

  “I was just told to keep you here once the deed was done. I didn’t have to bring you to my place. No one was after you tonight. You weren’t being targeted by some sinister plot. It was just a stupid, busted-up card game of zero consequence—no big deal. But instead of dropping you off at your place, I chose to bring you here. Haven’t you wondered why?”

  I hadn’t actually, and that was a sad commentary on my overall level of brain activity. It was entirely possible the brilliance of his charisma had left me stupefied. “Are you saying there’s a reason?”

  “There’s a reason behind everything I do. Always.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “And what?”

  He knew exactly what I was asking, the jerk. “And, are you going to share the reason why you brought me here with the rest of the class?”

  “Oh, I could always share, Fearless. But where would be the fun in that?”

  Fun. Right. “I suppose you want me to guess.”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Crap, that tingling in my girlie bits started up again, more urgently than ever, and if I were honest with myself that giveaway reaction to Polo had been there on some level for a long time now. It was just that the months-long separation and the belief that I’d never see him again had brought this eye-opening—and leg-opening—attraction to him into sharp focus. But this time around I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. He’d shot me down once already tonight, so I had to be careful not to make any more embarrassing assumptions. “I don’t know if any of my guesses would be right. Why not just tell me?”

  “Because keeping you guessing is a total kick in the ass.” That genuinely amused smile was back, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew the impact of it was enough to knock the breath out o
f me. “I’m having a ton of fun with this, aren’t you?”

  “Do I look like I’m having fun?”

  “You look like a woman who’s trying to put all the cuss words she knows into a single sentence.”

  “It’s like you’re psychic or something.” Except he was wrong. What I was actually doing was trying to figure out how receptive he’d be if I closed the minuscule gap separating us, arched my neck, and brought my mouth up to that irresistibly smirking curve of his. He truly had a beautiful mouth, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he tasted as hot and dangerous as he was in real life.

  I could find out.

  The thought dropped quietly into the center of my being and stayed there.

  I could find out.

  He called me Fearless. Maybe he even believed it. What I had to do was believe it myself, gather up my courage and cross that invisible line that separated friends from lovers. Though, we’d never been true friends, thanks to our tangled set of circumstances.

  God, I was so over-thinking this.

  “Fuck it,” I muttered and leaned in.

  The bleep of his cell phone sounded like the cosmos laughing at me.

  He sat back to reach for his phone. “Hold that thought,” he muttered, thumbing the screen before bringing it to his ear. “Yeah.” His expression changed almost immediately to once again become that blank void, as if he’d disconnected from all things human. “Okay, I’ll be right down. No, I’m home. Yeah.” He disconnected the call, then slid me a side-eye. “Yuri.”

  The next time I saw Yuri Rodin, I was going to smack him to his knees. “Say hello to him for me.”

  He nodded absently, still watching me. “I don’t know how long this is going to take, so you might as well head on to bed. Don’t wait up.”

  Translation—the moment was gone and it wasn’t coming back. It was amazing, really, how there were times when I could read him like a neon sign. “I don’t suppose any of your lady friends also left behind something to sleep in? Or barring that, would it be possible to borrow a pajama top? I know myself well enough to know that I won’t get any real rest if I try to sleep in my clothes.” I’d been forced to do that when I’d been kidnapped, and I had never slept in my clothes since. I couldn’t force myself to do it.