by Stacy Gail
“Polo.” The enormity of what he was saying caught me by surprise, and with a wonder I didn’t bother to hide, I reached up and cupped his cheek. “No one?”
He lifted a restless shoulder, a gesture that seemed designed to minimize the true depth of his confession. “I told you that I never brought anyone back to my place more than once. I don’t even remember any of their names because...”
I leaned forward, and my other hand came up to frame his face, making it impossible for him to look away. “Because?”
Again, he tried to shrug it off. “Because there was no reason to remember them. None of them were you. Your name was the only one that ever meant anything to me. Why bother remembering anyone or anything else? Waste of good headspace, if you ask me.”
A shiver of sweet, sweet joy blossomed somewhere deep inside. “You know I’ve only had two men in my life—”
“What the hell, Dash, you want to talk about old boyfriends now? For fuck’s sake, I’m still inside you.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that he’d started it by talking about other women. I had other fish to fry. “I never told the second one who my father was, but he found out the day after he spent the night for the first time. And the last, as it happens.”
“Okay, I’m starting to get pissed here. Do me a favor and stop talking about other goddamn men.”
“Was it you?” I pressed before I lost him entirely. “Did you tell him?”
“So what if I did?” he shot back with so much heat it was a wonder the room didn’t catch fire. “If he’d been the guy for you, he would’ve had the balls to stick around. But he didn’t, because he wasn’t good enough for you.”
“You decided that for me, did you?”
“Damn straight I did. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
“What gives you the right to decide that?”
“Because I’m the right man for you. Shit.” His expression was now more thunderous than lover-like, and his arms tightened around me even more, as if he thought I might try to leave him. I laughed, partly because the mere idea was absurd, and partly because the possibility that Polo had been jealous way back then filled me with giddy happiness. But my laughter only seemed to piss him off more. “What the hell are you laughing at?”
“I’m laughing at both of us.”
He looked like he wanted to bite me in two. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
“It means I agree with you. You are the right man for me.” Still chuckling, I flattened myself against his chest and had to lament the fact that he still had his shirt on. “I’m sorry it took me a while to see that.”
“A while? More like an eternity.” The tension drained out of him, and he closed the small gap between our mouths for a kiss that was so possessive it made my heart pound against his chest. “From the second I met you and you said you were going to protect me, you gave me a reason to live. That was the moment I knew I was meant to protect the most important person I’d ever have in my life. You.”
The words wrapped around my heart and squeezed in the most painfully beautiful way. “The one thing I’m not is important.”
“You are to me.” He kissed me again, softer this time, and so poignant that by the time he broke away my throat was tight and my eyes were burning. “You’re everything, Dash. My everything. That’s why I’ve got to protect you. If I don’t have you, I’ve got nothing.”
“You’ll always have me.” As I spoke, I heard the promise threading through the words, and I could only hope that he did as well. Because that was what it was—a promise of always. He would have me with him for the rest of our lives if that was what he wanted, because I loved him, and the only thing that surprised me about that was that it took me so long to realize it. He wasn’t perfect, but then neither was I. Somehow he managed to overlook my flaws and accept me as I was, and that made me the luckiest woman alive.
Getting back to the party was low on our list of priorities, but eventually we put ourselves back together and headed in the direction of the salon. But before we could even think about going in, Polo came to a stop while simultaneously pulling me behind him, his whole body on alert.
“What...?” Peeking over his shoulder, my eyes widened when I saw Konstantin advancing toward us like a heat-seeking missile.
“Where the hell have you guys been?” Konstantin’s eyes were blisteringly hot as he stopped in front of us, and he seemed to be struggling to keep his voice down it a kind of yelling whisper. “I’ve been looking all over this hoity-toity shithole for you. Don’t you believe in answering phones?”
“What is it?” Polo kept me tight to his back by wrapping my arms around his middle, and I could feel the tension humming through him like electricity. “Talk to me, Kon. What the fuck are doing you here?’
“Got a call from Knives—and incidentally got reamed for not guarding Dash, even though she’s with you. Apparently I’m supposed to be on duty around the clock now,” he added with a pissed-off scowl. “And who knows, maybe I should be, with all the Scorpeone shit going on. That’s why Knives called me,” he added while Polo’s tension ratcheted into the stratosphere. “Apparently a little bird told the boss man that Matteo Niccolo Scorpeone and his wife were going to be attending this gala tonight. Normally Knives doesn’t give two shits about Matteo’s social life, but he remembered Dash mentioning Tiffany Stoddard-Fanning, connected the dots and sent me over to make sure she was covered.”
“We need to leave.” The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was going to speak, but I liked what my mouth was saying. The tension in Polo was scary enough at the mere mention of his biological family. I sure as hell didn’t want to find out how much worse it could get if he actually saw a Scorpeone in the flesh. “Let’s just go before they get here.”
“Too late.”
My skin iced over at the colorless, from-the-grave voice emanating from Polo. I’d never heard that particular tone from him in my life, and it brought my gaze to his face. Though I could only see his profile, his feral grimacing smile was downright terrifying. Quickly my attention snapped to where he was looking, and I spied a man and woman walking out of the salon, their heads turned toward each other as the man spoke. The woman was perhaps ten years older than me, blonde in a smoothly classic, Lana Turner kind of way, wearing a glittery silver strapless gown and a white fur-trimmed wrap. The man was around the same age, and dressed much like Polo, his clean-shaven face relaxed and vaguely handsome in a nondescript, conventional way. His dark hair was short and parted ruler-straight on one side, putting me in mind of a military man, and the only remarkable thing that stood out about him was his long-legged gait. It was almost identical to the way Polo walked...
At that moment, the man’s dark eyes lifted to where we stood, and in an instant the deadly sharp edges were there for me to see. Before I could blink he had the woman behind him in very much the same stance that Polo had me.
“Well, well,” the man said, and the rumbling tone could have either been a purr or a growl. “If it isn’t my little brother Marco.”
Chapter Sixteen
Polo
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Polo stared at his brother Matteo and fought like hell to push down the acid-hot bile climbing up his throat. He hadn’t seen his brother in fifteen years except in Borysko’s surveillance photos, couldn’t even remember if they’d ever seen each other face-to-face. But there was no doubt about it. There, standing before him like a paragon of motherfucking perfection, was the much-adored golden boy and crown jewel of the Scorpeone family, Matteo Niccolo.
God, how he’d grown to hate the sonofabitch.
“We need to leave.” From far away—so far he almost didn’t hear it—Dash’s voice came to him, tethering him to a world that didn’t seem real. Tuxes, evening gowns, country clubs...none of that shit was real in his mind.
What was real?
Vengeance.
The kind of vengeance where he took the gun he had tucked in it
s ankle holster and shot out his brother’s shoulder joints, then his knees, then his ankles. The kind of vengeance that compelled him to show his brass-knuckled trench knife to Matteo so he could think about all the ways it could be used. The kind of vengeance that urged him to see how accurately he could stab Matteo’s heart while his target feebly tried to avoid the killing blow. The kind of vengeance that made him lean into the face of his dying brother, so that he could tell Matteo he’d been dreaming of killing him for a decade and a half.
Yeah.
Vengeance.
He would have a huge helping of it.
Arms that were around his middle tightened, and belatedly Polo realized he’d begun to move toward his brother to turn his fantasy into a beautiful, blood-soaked reality. But goddamn it, someone held him back.
“Polo.”
Dash.
No.
He couldn’t do this in front of her. She knew about his dark side, of course, but he’d always done his best to shield her from it. She deserved better.
“Polo, don’t. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t, okay? Please?”
Dash should never have to beg for anything. Least of all anything from him. He’d burn the whole city down for her, if that was what she wanted. The whole world. He couldn’t really remember what he’d been like before he’d been given to the Vitalievs; that good guy who’d wanted to go to a private military academy, then on to the Air Force Academy, serve his country and fly jets...that boy had died long ago, and the facts associated with that boy had no more connection to him than stats on the back of a baseball card. The man he was now was a grenade that went off if jostled the wrong way.
And by God, he’d been jostled a hell of a lot in his lifetime.
Dash was the pin that kept him in check. Always Dash. Whenever he’d unleashed that dangerous, explosive side of who he was—the side that was intent on washing the world in blood—just thinking of her brought him back. Without Dash, he self-destructed and tried to take as many people as he could with him.
But with Dash, he held back.
Because she held him together.
Thank God. Thank God for her...
“Keep. Walking.” It was the hardest thing to do, digging his voice out from under all that murderous rage. He had to hold onto his thoughts—to who he fucking was—to get through this without starting a war. A war by himself was fine. Longed for, even. But Dash was with him now. He’d never allow her to get caught in the crossfire. “Just...keep...walking.”
Apparently his brother had gone deaf during their years apart, or maybe he was just stupid. Matteo simply stood there, his woman behind him while he stared at Polo as if he were a pissed-off cobra that had been unexpectedly stumbled upon. “I’ve often wondered if our paths would ever cross, Marco. I’ve thought about meeting up with you so many frigging times, it’s not even funny. I’ve even dreamed about it, isn’t that crazy? But I never thought it would be like this.”
Polo’s palms hurt while the sound of Matteo’s gentle, thoroughly out of place tone grated on his nerves. It took him a while to figure out that the pain came from his fingernails cutting into his own flesh. “Did you not hear me?”
“I’ve seen a couple pictures of you over the years,” he went on as if Polo hadn’t spoken. Fucking idiot. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to recognize you without having seen them, especially with that ponytail you’ve got now. When we were kids Mom always insisted on cutting our hair at the beginning of every month. Even when we didn’t need it, she wouldn’t stop until she’d corralled us in the kitchen by the back door. She said she always did it there so she could sweep the hair out for easy cleanup, remember?”
“No.” He remembered nothing of that woman, or of the house he’d been raised in. Not because he’d been so young when he’d been destroyed by his family; he’d been fifteen, for fuck’s sake. He didn’t remember them because he’d willed himself not to remember them. They’d fucking betrayed him. They threw him to the wolves so they could skip away clean and happy, laughing without a care in the world while he suffered unspeakable torture for years. He’d gotten the only revenge available to him by forcing them out of his mind. It was his way of killing them—their faces, their shared past, their so-called love. He killed them all in his head until they no longer existed there. All he’d kept was the hate, and the memory of when his father had handed him over with the announcement that Borysko Vitaliev could murder him if he wanted.
The only thing he now knew of his mother was how he’d cursed the bitch who’d agreed to sacrifice him for her other children.
God, he fucking hated her.
As Polo watched, the head of the Scorpeone family blinked in what looked like a passable show of surprise. “Really? You don’t remember how every Saturday morning Mom would set all three of us up in the den with blankets and pillows and let us eat our breakfast in front of the TV so we could watch cartoons? Or how you sat on Mom’s lap whenever Nona visited because you were scared of her? Or how on the last day of school she’d take us out for ice cream, and the next day she’d have us invite all our friends over for the summer’s first official pool party?”
“None of that fairy tale shit ever happened.”
Matteo looked stunned. “What?”
“Biggest memory of my growing-up years is of a gun being pressed to my forehead, told that my life was forfeit because the Scorpeone family had moved against the Vitalievs, and me pissing my fucking pants as the men around me laughed. Then I remember listening to the trigger being pulled on an empty chamber. That’s where the memory of my life begins.” That wasn’t completely true. He had vague flashes of memory every now and again of his time at the military academy, and he had the impression he’d enjoyed his time there. But there was almost nothing of his family except a sick sense of betrayal.
The woman behind Matteo made a small noise that annoyed Polo, because it sounded pitying. But before he could address the fact that a survivor like him didn’t deserve to be pitied—much less from the people in the Scorpeone camp—his brother stepped forward.
“Marco, listen to me—”
“I’m Polo to my friends and Scorpio to my enemies. Call me Scorpio.”
Matteo’s mouth tightened. “Our father’s dead, but our mother is still alive, do you understand? She lives in an assisted living community north of Chicago, on the lake. She talks about you every time I visit her. Same with Angelina. Do you at least remember our sister? You two were often mistaken for twins when you were little. She’s only a year older than you.”
“I remember a fantasy I used to have when I was a kid—finding out where each Scorpeone lived so that I could blow up their houses, then listen to them scream as they burned,” he said savagely and took a dark kind of joy when Matteo flinched. “Now, I know what you’re going to say—blowing up houses wouldn’t undo the years of torture I had to endure as payment for the sins of your family, and you’re right. It wouldn’t. But I’d at least have the satisfaction of knowing I’d wiped you Scorpeone scum off the face of the earth. So that’s something, yeah?”
“Oh my God,” the woman whispered, clearly horrified.
“You have the right to be pissed off, even hate us for what happened to you,” Matteo gritted out, and Polo didn’t miss the new, dangerous thread edging his tone. “But don’t you ever think about coming near my family. My kids don’t even know about any of this shit, you get me? They’re completely innocent.”
“So was I.”
That undeniable truth echoed around the room before Matteo growled. “Come near my kids and I’ll be the one who ends you.”
“Aren’t you a fucking riot, trying to sound all fierce and threatening.” To Polo’s shock, he found himself laughing, despite the fact that he hadn’t been this angry in years. Oddly enough, though, his laugh didn’t sound quite right, and the way Dash’s arms tightened around his middle had him wondering if he sounded unhinged. “See, here’s the thing. I’d probably be impresse
d with your badass performance if I weren’t the genuine article. Fierce and threatening? Dumbass, that’s me on a lazy day.”
“Oh, I know all about you, Scorpio. So much for that pure-hearted, idealistic kid who wanted to fly jets and be a fucking hero, yeah? You’ve left a mountain of bodies in your wake, if even half the stories about you are true.”
“I can’t help it if I’ve become an urban legend.” The urge to laugh welled up again, along with the need to go for his gun, just so he could have it in his hand where it belonged. Just to hold it. That was all. “Look at this face. Do I look like a killer?”
For some reason his brother no longer seemed to want to look at him at all anymore. “I don’t give a damn about those stories. None of that scary-ass shit I hear about you will stop me if you come near my family. I won’t hesitate in putting you down like the rabid dog you’ve become if you come for them.”
“Put me down? Man, you’re such a drama queen.” Polo didn’t bother holding back an eye-roll, or another laugh, because the sight of his brother’s fear made his night. “You can relax, all right? Unlike you and that piece-of-shit father we happened to share before he kicked the bucket, I don’t harm innocent people, especially children. For some reason I’m real sensitive about that sort of thing. I wonder why? Any guesses?”
Again Matteo flinched, but this time he shook his head in obvious anger. “You really are out of your mind if you think I had anything to do with you being traded away for peace.”
“You benefitted from that trade by living a happy, carefree life while I got bones broken, or raped, or beaten into unconsciousness on a weekly basis thanks to a psychopath who thought I was his personal fucktoy, but no. As it happens, I don’t think that.”
Matteo paled at his words, but his gaze remained steady. “Then why the hell would you lump me in with that piece-of-shit father of ours? I don’t harm innocent people.”