Among the Flames (Kisses and Crimes Book 3)

by Natalie E. Wrye

  “I’m not here to tell you what to do, Sienna, but so help me, God, I will knock his fucking head off his shoulders if he does something to hurt you. When you’re done with this shit, Ang will be waiting. I will be watching. We’re at the Doubletree uptown when you’re ready to come home.” He let me go. “I’ll see you soon.”

  They left—Ang ahead of Javi, concern contorting their usually smiling faces into frowns. I was sad to see them go. I was even sadder that I couldn’t tell them why I couldn’t go with them. I rotated towards Giovanni, feeling rage begin to rumble inside my chest. The effect was darkly sobering. I stepped towards him.

  “I don’t have a lot in my life. I don’t have a lot of clout or money. I don’t have a lot of family and I sure as hell don’t have a lot of friends. But what I have—” I grit my teeth. “What I had just went walking out the door… so you’d better give me a good fucking explanation as to why I let it.” I walked closer.

  He stepped around me. The man Jessica had referred to as Giovanni stalked his way over to the wet bar. Grabbing a handful of ice and the nearest bottle from the mini bar, he poured himself a swallow or two of scotch.

  He downed it. Watching him take the gulp, I could see that the surface of his tanned, almost-sand colored skin was shining with a thin layer of sweat, soaking into the edges of his rumpled suit.

  Something wasn’t right.

  And no matter how hard Giovanni was trying to brush it off, it was obvious. If you looked hard enough. Those crystal clear green eyes of his were murky, muddled with emotion. The back-and-forth between us had always been a form of torture, but this was a new sort of Hell. We had always held something back with one another. We’d let our attraction simmer instead, stopping it from turning into the inferno we both knew it could be… dousing it with sense and logic and all of the other reasons that two complete strangers should not sink too far into each other.

  But right now? I wanted to chuck all of those fucking reasons out of my hotel’s front door. Even when every single neuron firing in my brain was saying that I shouldn’t…Slightly drunk and freshly bruised, Giovanni would probably never be more open, more vulnerable to me than he was in this moment. The thought made my stomach drop ten stories.

  Because I knew it. I knew that I wanted him.

  I could feel his breath on my face. And in that moment, I wanted nothing more than for Giovanni to take advantage of the moment… and for me to take my own advantage of him. He would never be more vulnerable than he was in this second—looking the way he did, slightly drunk, battered and bruised.

  I knew what I would have to do… I walked up, nearly at his back, hovering.

  “You lied to me.”

  He snorted. “Which time?”

  I held strong. “At the party. What you said about the senator’s daughter…”

  “That wasn’t a lie,” Gio grumbled, still pouring, filling another expensive glass with Scotch. “I said I was trying to do the right thing for the senator’s daughter… and I will.”

  “You’d trade $5 million dollars to the Gafanellis for her then sell her to the FBI?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Yeah. You don’t need me to do it… I know I’m former FBI, Je—Giovanni.” I swallowed my pride. “But I’m nobody’s middleman. You don’t need me as an FBI connection. I’m sure you have plenty yourself, given your line of work…”

  I inched even closer, practically breathing on him. His body was warm and solid. I could feel the heat radiating off him in waves, despite the air conditioned chill in the air. I knew if I touched him, he would feel just as warm. I bit my tongue.

  “So, why me, Giovanni?”

  His hand stopped mid-air. The drink that was between his fingers froze, and as he lowered his arm to lay at his side, I could see the muscles tensing there, his strong forearms pulsing as he twirled the edge of the glass in his hand.

  And then it exploded.

  It shattered into a thousand pieces as he threw it at the wall, shocking me into silence. He turned, hair messy, his light green eyes wild and deepening in color as his pupils grew large under the low amber lighting in the room in my hotel room.

  “Truth… is a dangerous fucking thing, don’t you think, Santiago?” His voice rumbled low. “Anyone can handle a lie. Lies are flowery. Lies are the roses plucked straight from the bush, shaped to be what you want them to be, built to be sweet-smelling and easier on the eyes. But the truth… The truth is the thorn. Raw and real and inescapable. And no matter how you hold the rose, no matter how carefully you handle the stem, eventually…” He exhaled, staring. “Eventually, you wind up pricked. The thorns can’t be ignored forever.”

  I raised my chin, tilting my head to look at him. Gazing at him face-to-face. Feeling fearless…and so damned afraid. All at the same time. My throat was tight, and somehow I managed the words anyway.

  “So, give me the thorns… Salt.”

  It was a word I wanted to rub into his wounds--the ones I couldn’t see, but felt. Just as sure as if I’d inflicted them myself. Hell…maybe I had. He glared at me as if I were cutting him at that very second. I swore he almost winced. He sighed, standing straighter. He inhaled deeply and I sensed his exhaustion in my soul.

  “You’re right, Santiago. It couldn’t be anyone else. It had to be you.”

  His eyes turned into slits.

  “I’m not going to rob the Senator of five million dollars.”

  He blinked once, then twice.

  “We are.”

  Know You Now

  GIOVANNI

  She was a pro.

  She never flinched.

  I didn’t give my little secretary enough credit. Not nearly as much as was due… seeing how Congressman Stevens had just tried to pinch her ass.

  Knowing she spoke not a lick of English—well, to his knowledge, of course—he nodded in her direction, smiling, and as she passed, reached out to palm her curvaceous bottom. She swatted his hand away before it made contact, as if it were a pestering fly. The shocked Congressman could do nothing but shrink.

  Seeing it from across the room, it took every bit of my restraint not to cross the room and knock out every false tooth in his greying head. It wasn’t familiar—the feeling of possessiveness I felt. Mostly, I couldn’t give two fucks about belongings. I’d just as soon as throw out everything I owned and replace it as I would brush my teeth, but there was something about Sienna, the hidden smell of innocence within her that she secreted away like unwanted smoke.

  But where there was smoke… there was fire. And she was a walking flame. All heat and curves, arousing a horniness in me I hadn’t experienced since I was a teenager—young and wild. Undisciplined.

  Like all things in my world, I handled even my lust with a fine-toothed comb, molding it, shaping it, controlling it. But with her, every day, I lost a little bit more of that control and even at the private conference we were attending, I could barely hold onto it.

  It was getting harder and harder to pretend to be Viktor Erikkson, much more dangerous. With every appearance, the charade was only strengthened, growing stronger and stronger as we pieced together the connections that would put us in direct contact with Senator Robert Fletcher’s money.

  But Sienna and I grew further and further apart.

  She withdrew from me—the night of the revelation. She hadn’t believed me. And even when I mentioned needing her to go “undercover” as she had done before with Penelope Castalano, she hadn’t reacted. Hadn’t said a word besides “Get out.”

  She naturally assumed I was lying. I knew curiosity was the only thing making her stay. No, more than that, she wanted to keep an eye on me. Make sure I didn’t run.

  I didn’t mind. I was doing the same to her.

  We were both watching each other, making sure the other didn’t escape when we least expected. It was a strong mutual distrust, and in another world, one where we actually were married as we were pretending to be, our common suspicions would be par for th
e course. We were better suited for marriage than we believed, both engaging in long sullen silences, while we fought conflicting feelings of attraction and skepticism.

  And meanwhile, the search party continued the search for Audriana Fletcher.

  News reports of her desperate situation flashed across screens even while we rubbed elbows and drank expensive wine.

  Governor Shelley Price seemed to be the only person sticking by the senator’s side through the melee. Rumors swirled that maybe Fletcher’s dirty connections had sealed his own daughter’s fate, and they were everywhere.

  The headlines screamed with it. But there wasn’t anything louder than the yells inside my own head, the ones telling me to get out while I still had a chance, to send Sienna away, and let the chips fall where they may. And yet every time I looked her way, the volume of the warnings—the ones telling me to fuck the world and everything in it, including her—decreased by that much more.

  Christ. What the fuck was happening to me that I couldn’t get a grip around this goddamned girl?

  I took a sip of my drink and tuned back into the dull conversation of the man in front me, a dry-skinned director from the Department of State who was droning on, refusing to acknowledge my death stares and casual dismissal.

  He snorted with laughter at his own jokes.

  “The banking industry isn’t what it used to be, Vik,” he called me. “Don’t tell anyone… but I like to keep a good chunk of my money in the “Ol’ Hip Pocket” National Bank or what I like to call the ‘Under the Mattress Lending and Loans’.”

  “Good way to get robbed,” I muttered, taking a swallow of my drink.

  “If my wife didn’t spend so much,” he continued, “I’d keep more there. But alas, women are an expense. There’s always gifts and presents to be given. And then half of the time, she has no interest in making the, uh… soldier salute, if you know what I’m saying?”

  He tried to nudge me, but he missed. His chuckles trailed off as he followed my gaze across the room.

  “Ah, but you’re still young, huh? What, forty or so?” He noted my fake greying beard. “You probably don’t have any problems getting yours to ‘stay at full attention.’ And who wouldn’t? With a wife like that on your arm?”

  “Mm.” I hummed my agreement. Truth was… it was the first fucking thing I’d agreed with old man on all night. Sienna looked sweet and delicate in her “Natasha” blond wig and heels. The platinum bob brushed the tips of her shoulders. A pink lipstick lined the curve of her luscious mouth, and it complemented the stark white of her elegant, off-the-shoulder cocktail dress.

  She looked… almost innocent.

  The image of her in white was a vast difference from the fireball I’d grown to know, and though I’d missed that feisty version of her tonight, she still looked beautiful and delicate…and certifiably fuckable.

  I wanted to slide the rest of the fabric from her shoulders and feast there, to place my lips on her naked skin and draw it into my mouth. Biting, licking, sucking. Touching with my tongue over and over again until she lost control.

  She had no idea that kind of attention she compelled. Not asked for, but demanded. Certain women looked for attention; everything about Sienna Santiago commanded it, and not for the first time all night, did I wonder if it was wise to bring her here, to a place where politicians and rich men could put their pervy eyes on her.

  Examining. Scrutinizing. Inspecting.

  Gawking in awe. Just like I was.

  I stared at her so long I didn’t notice that the company in front of me had changed until my new companion cleared his throat, raising his drink. His stature was short—well, at least shorter than mine—but what he lacked in height, he more than made up for in presence. He had the sort of magnetic pull that sucked the air out of the room.

  I looked his way, recognizing him immediately.

  It was a phenomenon only second to his boss—Don Gafanelli.

  From what I heard, Don’s brother, Giaimo, standing in front of me was much more handsome…and ten times as ruthless as his sibling. I sipped with caution before setting my drink on the nearest table. I smiled, extending a hand.

  “Sorry, not sure we’ve met. Viktor,” I practically sang in my best Swedish accent. “Viktor Erikkson.”

  “I know who you are, Viktor,” Giaimo smirked, smug. He grabbed my free hand. “You’re one of the premier bankers in the world. And I’ve been trying to arrange a meeting with you for quite some time. You’re a busy man, it seems. You have be… to neglect such persistent clientele.”

  His tone was tinged with anger. He was grinning in my face, but his handshake, combined with the slight tightness of his teeth, told me that Giaimo Gafanelli wasn’t too happy being ignored, not even by a man like Viktor Erikkson.

  That was a consequence of being a Gafanelli; you thought you ruled the world. And when powerful men like Senator Robert Fletcher made moves that reminded you that you weren’t, you took extremes to regain position.

  Like target his children, namely his daughter…without regard to the aftermath or the extra enemies you might make in the process. Giaimo didn’t know it… but he was looking at one. I did my best to play it cool.

  “It’s a gift and curse to be this busy,” I commented, shrugging. “Minor issues become major. Perhaps my secretary misplaced your meetings, Mister…”

  “Gafanelli,” he hissed. “Giaimo Gafanelli.”

  I nodded as if I didn’t already have the knowledge.

  “A pleasure.” I held his hand just a second too long, just a tad too tight. He withdrew, and so did I. I was forgetting myself, getting much too familiar with a man who was deadlier than the infamous arsenic Sienna regularly referenced.

  Not to mention the fact that Sienna had already made a habit out of making enemies out of Gafanellis. Marco was just the first. Had they figured out that she was FBI? No…

  But it was only a matter of time. Don Gafanelli was nobody’s fool, and if nobody else figured out Sienna’s involvement in Marco’s imprisonment, he would. The head of the notorious mafia family held his organization together by sheer will alone, and many men—and women—had met their ends at the hands of his minions.

  It was my job to make sure Sienna and I didn’t join them.

  Which reminded me…

  Where was the faux blonde? I had to get to her, get the fuck out of here…before Giaimo got a good look at her. She was in disguise, decked out in a dress that left everything to my imagination, but I wouldn’t risk Giaimo recognizing her if he saw her.

  The consequences would be too great.

  Feigning indifference to the scene around me, I casually perused every part of the room, my fake-blue eyes searching. When my eyes couldn’t do the trick, I let my nose join in, sniffing the air discreetly for her scent—a delicious smell that wafted out of the room and up the stairs, past the hall and to the terrace.

  It was faint, so very faint, but I followed it.

  When I found her, her bare back was facing me, taunting me with peeks of skin. The shawl at her shoulders slipped by the slightest fraction, and I slipped in with it, sliding in to stand behind her as I snatched the fabric from mid-air, replacing it around her delicate decollatage.

  But she didn’t move. She didn’t look at me.

  She only spoke, and even when she did that, it was barely above a whisper, a quiet notion spoken aloud as if it to herself and no else.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  I looked over her shoulder at the painting that had her attention… and found a beautiful mess.

  It was wild; that was the only word for it. A barely contained madness with broad strokes and a myriad of colors. The sweeps of the paintbrush had been bold, and they stretched the length of the canvas like that was the only thing they could do.

  I didn’t know what the fuck it was, what the hell the artist even meant for it to be…but Sienna was right. It was fucking incredible.

  Free and unapologetic.

&
nbsp; Like her.

  To possess a beauty like it was…wrong. And yet the painting and the woman were all I seemed to want at the moment. It was an exercise in futility.

  I wouldn’t own Sienna. Couldn’t. Not when I promised—and been paid—to deliver her to someone else…

  I lingered, placing my lips by her shoulder. Her sweet scent overwhelmed me in the sexiest of fucking ways.

  “We have to go.”

  “You know,” she interrupted. “Nobody stops and stares anymore. Nobody sits and takes the time to appreciate or gaze in wonder.”

  Funny. That’s exactly what I was doing… with her. She continued.

  “Nobody stops and smells the roses anymore. I guess they’re too busy worrying about the thorns, right…? Because the thorns are truth, and we both know how opposed you are to that…”

  She threw some of my own words back at me, never glancing back. I stared at her unmoving figure.

  “Guess that means you don’t believe me about the senator’s daughter.”

  She sighed softly, her tiny shoulders moving up and down. Fuck, she was irresistible.

  “You guessed correctly.”

  “You don’t believe that I’ll follow through with the exchange, the five million dollars for the senator’s daughter?”

  “I believe you’ll do what works for you. I also believe that five million dollars is a lot of money,” she asserted.

  “A drop in the bucket for a man like Fletcher. But that’s what it takes…to get her out of the Gafanellis merciless clutches.”

  “For years, Don Gafanelli and Senator Robert Fletcher were thick as thieves.”

  “Once,” I barked. “Now? They’re in full blown war. The senator double-crossed the Gafanellis. Fucked with their alliance more than once. You should know the senator’s seedy underdealings, his willingness to cut his enemies—and allies—off at the knees more than anyone… You were investigating him.”

  Sienna stiffened, her blonde head of hair turning rigid.

  “Don’t be so shocked, Santiago. It only makes sense. The man is a cancer. He’s terrible to anyone who’s ever known him. He traded his wives like playing cards, and if the last young and beautiful one hadn’t been murdered in her hospital bed, it would have only been a matter of time…before he swapped for the newest, shiniest version.”