I was sick.
Sick that my murderer made me well.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and breathed him in. We were walking. I didn’t want to spoil the moment by speaking, so I kept my eyes closed, my voice silent as he walked and walked some more.
A door opened and closed.
It smelled like cigars and Christmas spices.
Gently, I was being set down. My body came into contact with something deliciously soft, and it wrapped around me.
And then whatever I was on moved, dipped under the weight of the one carrying me. Maybe if I just kept my eyes closed I could imagine that it was Vic without the word murderer hanging over his head like a blazing red sign.
Maybe I could give in to the fantasy that he was just a guy, I was just a girl. Spending the night in each other’s arms, using each other’s heat for energy.
Blankets were piled over my body, pushing me into the mattress with their weight. And then bulky arms pulled me back against the rock-hard chest again.
“Sleep.” His voice carried like a gunshot in the dark; it was a harsh whisper, a command I wasn’t allowed to say no to. Sometimes, you just need to be forced into rest—and when he’d walked in, I’d been tossing and turning in that stupid chair trying to get comfortable for hours.
But now? Now my body was heavy. My mind was silent.
“Did you kill anyone tonight?” I asked the dreaded question. I wanted to know if the hands that were holding me were hands that had washed off blood. I’d tortured myself with ideas of what he was really going to do tonight. Tortured myself with visions of my dad’s face begging for death.
His body was rigid as he bit out, “No, Renee. I didn’t kill anyone tonight.”
“Are you going to kill anyone tomorrow?”
He sighed. “Well, it is a Friday, those are my favorite days to take a life. What do you think?”
I smiled even though it wasn’t funny. “Sorry, stupid question.”
“Which earned an equally stupid answer.”
“Hey, Vic?” I turned to face him. His eyes were so bright in the darkness that it startled me a bit before I could gather my thoughts. “Did he really beg you?”
“Don’t make me talk about it. Not now. Not when you’re tired and upset. Not when you look at me like you’re disappointed. I can handle a lot of things, Renee, your disappointment in me is not one of them.”
I nodded. “I don’t want to be.”
“Sometimes we don’t have a choice, we just are. You loved your father. I took that away. The details don’t matter when you love, only the end result. In this case—the death—it’s all that counts, Renee, especially in this life.”
Tears filled my eyes as I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close. I kissed the top of his forehead and then the end of his nose. He clenched his jaw like he was trying to calm himself down and doing a crappy job of it.
“Sleep.” I smiled sadly.
He blinked and then looked away. I pulled his chin back so he had no choice but to look into my eyes. “Sleep,” I urged again. “Or I won’t.”
“And if someone sneaks into the house and tries to hurt you?”
“At least I’ll die by your side, right?”
“No.” He pulled away and gripped both of my wrists. “I wouldn’t let that happen. Never. I will never let someone take your soul before it’s had a chance to love—to live. Never. Do you hear me? Never!”
“You can’t control everything, Vic. You should know that by now.”
“Which is why I try like hell to at least control what I can,” Vic whispered. “Which is you getting the sleep you need so that you’re rested and so that I don’t decide that it’s a good idea to force exhaustion on you.”
I frowned. “Force exhaustion?”
He gripped my ass with his right hand, squeezed, and jerked me against his body. “Exhaustion.”
“I wouldn’t mi—”
He pulled his hand free and cupped it over my mouth. “Not another word. Sleep.”
I nodded as his hand slid away, his eyes focused on my mouth like he was telling himself just one taste would be okay.
I was making it harder on him.
To keep his oath.
And he was making it harder on me.
To view him as a monster.
Especially when he looked at me as if I was his savior.
Chapter Sixteen
Vic
I let her sleep in my bed.
And when she didn’t wake up after my alarm went off, I let her sleep some more. It seemed like it was the least I could do after killing her father.
“So…” Nixon’s voice surprised me enough for me to nearly drop my coffee cup. Normally I was aware of everything around me.
Normally I didn’t have a sexy woman sleeping in my bedroom.
They were right about her being a distraction, that was for sure.
“Yeah?” I turned around with a bored expression like I’d known he was there the whole time.
He crossed his inked-up arms against his plain white shirt. “Now that she knows her father is dead, now that she knows the truth—maybe it’s best to just rip the Band-Aid completely off?”
“By Band-Aid you mean by telling her why she needs protection twenty-four seven?” I squinted at him.
He rubbed his chin. “Maybe. I’ll talk with Tex.” He turned on his heel. “Oh, sorry, almost forgot…Trace wants to take Serena downtown. We’ll stay at one of the apartments overnight, go shopping. It’s… Let’s just say a lot of this is a reminder for her. It’s a trigger for a lot of us…inviting someone into our home that we have to protect never goes well. They either end up married or dead.”
He was right. Whenever we protected someone it was either marry them so they were untouchable, or they ended up being rats or worse…they were taken out by their own body’s inability to stay alive.
“Go.” I shrugged. “We’ll be fine, just take all the extra men with you.”
“I know you’ll be fine, and we have an army of men coming.” Nixon’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. He turned around, nearly making it out of the kitchen before he called back over his shoulder. “I was watching you for three minutes before you knew I was in the kitchen with you—should I be worried?”
Shame was a bucket of ice water dumped over my entire body, making me go completely rigid as I clenched my teeth and let out a harsh, “No.”
“Good. I would hate to find out that one of my favorite cousins can’t keep an oath…”
I rolled my eyes. “You said Sergio was your favorite last week.”
Nixon just laughed and walked off.
With shaking hands, I set my coffee cup down and slapped my face a bit. I needed to snap the hell out of it before I got myself or someone else killed.
Maybe Chase was right.
Maybe it was because the temptation was there. Maybe I did need to get it out of my system, but the last thing I wanted to do was sleep with her once just to satisfy this craving between us and then go back to normal.
It would be impossible to go back to normal without always wanting her in my arms.
I could always visit the club.
The idea had merit.
It would make Petrov trust us more, plus I would owe him a favor. Bastard always loved holding favors over people—he might as well get my blood on a contract.
It was decided then.
So why was my heart still hammering in my chest? Why was I still dreaming of her mouth, the way her body molded perfectly against mine? Why did my stomach clench thinking about touching someone who wasn’t her?
At least she could sleep in and not worry about the kids. I made a quick call to see if Junior was coming over, but Phoenix and Bee were going to bring Junior into town too.
They lived the closest.
I gulped.
That left Chase around two miles away.
Tex ten miles.
Dante and Sergio even farther.
&nbs
p; I wiped my hands over my face.
It was fine.
It wasn’t like I needed a babysitter to keep it in my pants, right?
Within an hour they were gone.
And I was alone with Sleeping Beauty.
My lips twitched as I walked by my room and heard a soft snore. How the hell even her snore was cute I had no idea. It was close to ten, and I didn’t want her waking up thinking that she hadn’t done her job.
I walked in the room, careful to keep quiet, and sat down on the bed, then rubbed her arm. “Renee, time to wake up.”
She grabbed my hand and held it.
And I just sat there and let her.
She unarmed me in a way that was terrifying.
She unarmed me with hand holding.
I hung my head as she squeezed my fingers tight.
“Renee.” I leaned closer. “Time to wake up, sweetheart.”
She stirred a bit then opened her eyes, still holding my hand. She didn’t let it go as she sat up and pulled her knees to her chest. “What time is it?”
“Ten,” I answered just as a panicked expression crossed her face. “Don’t worry, everyone’s gone.”
“Gone.” Her eyes widened. “Why are they gone? What happened?”
“Family staycation in downtown Chicago—normally I’d be with them, but they have an army of men, and I needed to stay and take care of you.” I knew the silent command from Nixon was to protect her at all costs. Suddenly she was more important than his family, she had to know there was a reason.
She frowned. “I still don’t get it. Nixon won’t tell me anything, but there’s more to this, there’s more to my father’s deceit. He wouldn’t just…hurt the families, you have to believe me.”
“On purpose? No. He would not. Then again…maybe he was protecting you by doing what he did. If anything, it brought our attention to him again. It reminded us why he was so important in the first place.”
“Because of how good he was at his job?” she asked out loud.
“Because he was in charge of protecting you.”
“But he was never home,” she said in a confused voice.
Ah, how to explain life and death to someone who only wanted to see life even in the worst situations.
“Renee, your father wasn’t just a made man, he wasn’t involved in typical business meetings…your father, he had over forty kills to his name—he was sent to Sicily to do…business.”
“With who?”
“You should eat breakfast.” I stood and let go of her hand. “Do you want toast? Eggs? Ice cream?”
She glared. “I’m not one of the kids.”
Her breasts were practically spilling out of her low-cut tank top, and already I could see her toned thighs fucking taunting me with every step she took in my direction. I wanted to lick between them and see how many licks it would take to get to her center. Countless. Licks. “Yeah.” I croaked. “I’m aware.”
Her eyes flickered to my mouth like she could read my thoughts, and then she breezed past me. “I hope you make a mean egg.”
I smiled in that empty room.
The same room I’d felt isolated in for so long.
The same house that had never felt like a home.
And suddenly—because of her, it was all of those things.
Danger!
I squeezed my eyes shut, I clenched my fists, and I stared ahead at the blank white wall.
The one with no pictures.
No memories.
No life.
Dangerous.
She was so fucking dangerous to someone like me, someone who’d lived in darkness so long they had no idea that light was even possible.
Until she flipped the switch.
And smiled.
Chapter Seventeen
Renee
I felt him even when he wasn’t in the room. I shivered as I made my way into the abandoned kitchen.
The kids were gone.
It was just me and Vic.
My father’s murderer was going to make me eggs.
And I was going to what? Just let him?
I dug my nails into my palms as Vic walked into the kitchen, grabbed a pan, and then went to the fridge.
He moved around me effortlessly like I wasn’t even there. I was stuck in a daze of confusion. Not over breakfast.
But over life.
What did that mean for me?
Was my mother aware I was trapped in this house with one of the wealthiest crime families in the world?
Especially after knowing about my father’s death?
Did she even know he was a murderer like Vic?
Pieces of a puzzle still fit together once you look at every piece, but I didn’t have the pieces. I knew very little. So I had no picture.
And I really, really needed a picture so I could focus on the positive—or find out if that was even possible.
“Eggs are ready,” Vic called in his raspy, addictive voice.
I jerked my head up.
He was holding out a plate with a piece of toast and an egg fried in the middle, cut out in a perfect little square.
I smiled. “What’s this called?”
“Good food.” He shrugged. “The perfect combination of fat, protein, and carbohydrates.” He shoved the plate into my hands. “Eat.”
“Thank you.” I took the blue plate, walked over to the breakfast bar, and sat just in time for him to hold out a fork about two inches from my face. I gripped it in my right hand and dug in.
While he watched me.
As if I could eat an egg the wrong way.
I chewed my first bite and nodded. “You know, if you weren’t so good at killing people you could probably be a chef.”
“You mean switch from blood to ketchup?”
“Yeah, think of the possibilities.”
His smile was sly. I both liked and hated it, mainly because his level of sexiness just kept increasing with each minute I was with him. “What if I like killing people?”
I choked on my next bite.
His massive hand came crashing down on my back like I’d just sucked down a grape.
Slap, slap, slap.
I almost herniated.
“Fine!” I said hoarsely. “I’m totally fine, just…wrong tube.”
“You sure?” he asked, hand raised.
I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. “Yeah, I’m…great.”
I hadn’t realized how close he was.
Or the fact that his crystal blue eyes had pieces of yellow outlining the irises. In another life he would have been a vampire out to glamour me.
And I would have fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
“Good.” He didn’t move.
I cleared my throat and reached for my fork again.
“And no…the answer’s no.”
I looked up into the depths of his eyes—I looked into his soul. I liked it there, it was the eye of the storm, calm—just waiting to twist into violence. I waited for him to say more.
He let out a sigh. “I don’t like being the last thing people see when they leave this earth.”
“I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree—because I can’t imagine anything better to look at during my last few breaths.”
He swayed toward me, then moved behind my stool, bracing his hands on either side of my body, pinning me against the hard granite. “Don’t say things like that to me, Renee.”
“Why?”
He closed his eyes and inhaled. “Because it’s unwise to offer an addict free drugs, that’s why.”
“So now you’re an addict?”
His eyes roamed over my body like a slow burning fire. “All it took was one taste….” He jerked away. “I’m going to check the perimeter. Finish your breakfast.”
“Am I allowed to watch TV?”
“Have you finished your chores?” he teased.
My jaw dropped as a laugh erupted from his body in a way that had me wanting to be the cause o
f it.
“Don’t make me throw my fork at you!”
“Cat-like reflexes…”
I threw it.
He literally caught it midair and shrugged then placed it back on the countertop. “And yes, you can do whatever you want…within reason.”
“You ever going to tell me why I’m a prisoner here?”
“No.”
“So it’s not even up for discussion a little bit?”
“No.”
“And I can’t persuade you?”
He stiffened. “Don’t.” His jaw clenched. “Even. Think. About. It.”
For some reason his response only encouraged me more. It wasn’t like I was going to get any answers from anyone else, and it was already hard staying away from him.
Staying away from the bad guy should never be a problem.
And yet it was mine.
If I closed my eyes I could see my dad’s blood on his hands.
And yet I still wanted those hands on me.
Something was very wrong with me.
I groaned, grabbed the fork, and shoved another bite into my mouth, berating myself for being the worst sort of person.
For wanting his brand of danger.
And wishing that he would give in to my brand of temptation.
Chapter Eighteen
Vic
I’d managed to make it the entire day without seeing her. I watched. I definitely watched her. Hell, I knew when she grabbed a snack, bottle of water, when she used the restroom. And when she was in there a bit too long, I almost broke the door down only to hear the shower turn off.
I was in constant pain.
A shadow with a grimace.
Waiting in silence.
Watching.
Wishing.
It was pure hell.
Torture from the seventh circle.
And I endured. I had to. I had no choice but to protect her from everything. She had no idea how much she was worth. The mafia didn’t do things by accident. It was no accident she had been asked to watch the children.
No accident she had been invited into this home, into our lives.
This was no summer job.
This was life or death.
And I hated that her world would eventually come crashing down around her, revealing that everything she thought she knew about herself was a lie.
Envy: An Eagle Elite Novella Page 8