She wanted to fight him just as much as she wanted to fuck him. To push back and push forward and push sideways until he cracked open. Until they cracked open. It had to be the forced proximity—the stress of hiding that they’d ignored in favor of marathon sex. Or maybe it was the lies. She was still keeping things from him. He wasn’t being entirely honest with her. They’d bathed in each other’s spit and come, but their belief in each other was fragile, made of wishes and dreams and not reality.
Maybe he saw a hint of those wishes and dreams on her face, because he stopped pacing and parked himself before her, crossing his arms over his massive chest. She’d braced her palms against that chest. Now it was an impenetrable safe with his heart locked inside. “If we do make it out…how do you think this is gonna go, Doc? You gonna introduce me to your family? Marry me in that Sikh temple? Live happily ever after?”
The last few words were sharp and bitten off, like expletives. He made it all sound completely absurd…but hadn’t they already survived the unbelievable? Wasn’t this entire situation already bordering on big-screen action-adventure ridiculousness? “Why can’t we have a future?” Neha demanded. “You have no idea what my parents are like,” she pointed out. “Ma and Papa taught me to help people, Joe. To stand up for myself. I am the woman they made me. You think they’d turn you away because you’re white? Because you’ve killed men? Did I?”
He flinched. “You should have! You should’ve told me to fuck off and get the fuck away from you. I’m poison, Neha. Why the hell did you pour yourself a cup of it? I don’t deserve you. I never deserved you, and you knew that.”
The condemnation hit her like a fist to the gut and infuriated her all at the same time. Neha shoved at his shoulder. “Bullshit! You can’t pull that noble crap on me now. Not when you stripped me naked with your eyes every time I walked into Brooklyn Detention. You don’t get to rewrite how we started just because you don’t know how it will end.”
Joe swore in a mix of English and rusty Italian, his fists clenched so tight that the whiteness radiated out from his knuckles like spikes of infection. “I had to have you,” he said thickly. “I wanted you so bad I couldn’t think about anything else. That’s on me. I know it’s on me.”
And she knew that her own lust was on her. She’d walked into this with eyes open. All she was trying to do now was keep her eyes open. “I get it. I was a distraction. An easy prison fantasy. But we’re back in the real world now, and I’m a real person. With my own needs and my own thoughts. I’m complicated, Joe. And messy. And angry. I want to fix all of this as much as you do. The difference is…unlike you, I still have hope.”
“You think hope is that easy? That fixing this is that easy?” He turned as if to punch the wall, and she had no idea what held him back. Certainly not any concern for Auntie’s property. “You think I wanted to be mixed up in this?” he growled. “Fuck. I work construction. I keep my head down and my nose clean. Maybe I go grab a beer at the Knights of Columbus once in a while. But then…those shitheels dragged Kenny into the middle of their turf war. Just a dumb kid who liked to smoke up and chase skirts. Never hurt a fly in his life.” Instead of his fist, Joe’s head hit the wall—with a dull thump, like he was taking the pain that this Kenny had never caused anyone else. “Kenny Castelli,” he ground out, as if he’d heard the question in her mind. “Basically my baby brother. You know they didn’t even spend a day on the hit that killed him and the others in that strip club? Twenty-four-hour news cycle… Fuck, it wasn’t even twenty-four minutes. And I bet he wasn’t in any of those files they gave you about my case. Like he didn’t matter. Like he never existed at all.
“And, Neha, all I could see for days after was red and cold. There was no insanity. No PTSD. I didn’t shift. I didn’t attack out of animal instinct. I planned it. I took out those motherfuckers because I wanted to. Because I needed to. Because I couldn’t think of anything else. And you still think you can get me a deal? Now? After all of this?” He waved around them indistinctly. At the mess their lives had become. “Christ.”
This was what she’d wanted to hear for weeks. His “why.” She ached for having learned it. And he was right: It wasn’t a motive that would get him knocked down from Murder One to manslaughter. Neha didn’t care about that, though. She cared about the smudges under his eyes, the shadows within them. She cared that his shoulders were slumped and his body was angled away and he might never touch her again. That he might never be kind again. That he might never know kindness from anyone else. That was what she was fighting so hard for.
“I do think hope is that easy, Joe,” she told him gently. “Because, right now, it’s all we have to get us through this.”
* * *
Hope. Fuck, he didn’t even know what that word meant anymore. Unless you counted the hope that she’d kiss him back, the hope that he’d get to have her one more time before he had to leave her.
“What’re you hoping, exactly? That I’m a decent person?” he wondered. “You want to believe that, don’t you? That me not tearing up those Russians is some kind of proof? That me leaving people alive at the courthouse is evidence? You think that’s some proof of my conscience, my self-control?” Joe had to laugh again. And again. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m not a good man.”
He was shit at being good. At protecting people. He’d always known that. Seeing Kenny on the slab had made it crystal. Looking at Neha now just hammered in the point. Of course she didn’t trust him. Of course she was mad. And he couldn’t blame her. He’d eye-fucked her in that visitors’ room over and over again. He’d played on her compassion and her interest. He’d manipulated her into meeting him before his hearing. Sure, it felt noble and romantic and frantic at the time, but he wasn’t kidding himself. None of this would have happened to her if it hadn’t been for him thinking with his dick. She should’ve been back in Brooklyn, advocating for people who actually deserved it, instead of riding said dick. She should’ve been anywhere else but here. This wasn’t about having hope. It was about being realistic. She didn’t belong here with him. And he didn’t belong here with her.
It was time to go. Time to draw out Vasiliev’s men and end this.
“It wasn’t self-control, babe,” he told her. “The only reason I didn’t do more damage is because I literally couldn’t. That’s it. And now, thanks to your little game of Operation, I can. That should scare the fuck outta you.”
Neha’s arms were still crossed over herself like a shield. She shook her head, pretty mouth tight with disappointment. “The only thing that scares me is the prospect of you dying before we can fix this.”
“Then you’re a fool,” he ground out, before grabbing the rest of her uncle’s clothes and getting dressed as quickly as possible. Wrapping the shawl around himself like she’d showed him. “You stay here. I’ll go out and do a sweep of the neighborhood.” He’d do more than that. But she didn’t need to know that yet. She’d figure it out soon enough after he was gone.
When she’d played dress-up with him the other day, he’d asked her about wearing a turban to help with camouflage even more. She’d looked horrified, before explaining to him how offensive that was. “These are just clothes. Turbans are part of a religion—of my family’s faith. I know it might hide you better, but there are some lines I’m just not going to cross.”
That was who Neha was. A woman who had lines she wouldn’t cross. Joe’s entire life was about erasing the lines. Kicking dirt over them. Covering them in blood.
Fuck, he was going to ruin her. Maybe he already had. He swiped her iPod Touch from where she’d set it aside. Opened up the secure messaging app and keyed in the number that was burned into his brain. “If I’m not back, if something happens, I want you to call this line. Call it before Feinberg. Before anybody else. Call it. Text it. Whatever. They’re expecting it.”
“You sound like you’re not planning to come back,” Neha
looked at him with that intense scrutiny she’d been laying on him since the beginning. Like she was seeing right through him. “You can’t escape me that easy, Joe.”
Escaping her, running from her, was impossible. She’d dug too deep under his skin. Buried herself there with his damn DNA. But he had to be practical. There was a giant motherfucking target on his back—a target he’d made purposely bigger by making himself visible in Jackson Heights. And every minute he stayed with her was a minute she was in danger, too. “I might not have a choice.”
Maybe the cops or the feds would show up before the Russians did, but they were stretched thin, with resources in use all over the city. Plus, they had to wait for the drone footage to be analyzed. Vasiliev’s guys had nothing but time for vendettas. And any one of their shifters could pick up the traces of his scent. That was what Joe was counting on.
Neha shook her head slowly, the disappointment on her lips traveling up to her eyes. “Was that your plan this whole time? Stay with me just long enough for things to die down and then leave anyway? And now’s as good a time as any?”
He couldn’t answer that. He wouldn’t. Because he couldn’t say for certain it was true. Somewhere in the past few days, being with her, he had fantasized about hunkering down here forever and telling the whole goddamn world to fuck itself. But a fantasy was all it could be. “Doc…it ain’t like I want to leave you. I’m just saying I can’t control what’s gonna happen out there.”
Neha moved around the studio, restless, frustrated with him, hurt. Alive. And that was what mattered most. “Half the city is looking for you,” she said as she knelt by their bags and started rifling through them. “It’s not safe out there. Even with you in disguise. You should never have gone out with me for supplies.”
“It’s not safe anywhere I am,” Joe pointed out. “But I was trained for this. For stealth. For recon. You weren’t.”
“Do you want to take this with you?” Resigned to his decision, or at least pretending to be resigned to it, she stood up with her gun and its holster. Which was in no way going to fit him.
He raised one hand. The ripple-burn of the change flowed through his fingers as they turned into claws. The partial shift was one of the first skills they’d mastered at Apex. For those times in which they might need a human brain and a monster’s strength. Joe would’ve been lying if he said it didn’t feel fucking fantastic to be able to do it again. “I got my own weapons back, remember?”
Just like when he’d changed before, she didn’t look grossed out. Didn’t look judgy. “Oh, that’s a nice trick,” she said, managing to sound impressed and a little sarcastic. “You’re practically one of the X-Men.”
“Always did love me some Wolverine,” he admitted.
For just a second, the tension between them drained away. He could’ve ruined it in two seconds by telling her what he’d used to take out the Russians in the club—a nine-millimeter. By talking about how it was important to minimize the glare on the sight of a sniper rifle. By explaining to her how ripping out someone’s guts with your own claws wasn’t like a comic-book panel or a movie. Violence was purely theoretical for this gorgeous woman in front of him. She’d never really known the practice of it. Not until he’d brought it into her life.
She claimed to not be that religious, but he saw how it was still in her. All of that faith. All of that goodness. “Keep your gun,” he told her, trying to be gentle after the harshness of earlier. “Keep your phone. Keep everything that makes you feel safe.”
He hadn’t earned the way she smiled at him then. Or how she crossed the room. Or her lips on his cheek. He had earned the salt her whisper poured on his wounds. “You make me feel safe, too, Joe. That’s why I’m keeping you.”
When he slammed out of the apartment a couple of minutes later, that whisper dogged his heels. Haunted him like a damn ghost. Got in his veins and his head and distracted him in ways he had no business being distracted. Because he didn’t pick up the tail for nearly ten blocks. Just north of the Sixty-First Street–Woodside station. As he was cutting through a construction detour—closed in on two sides by flimsy green walls, with his six totally vulnerable and his twelve, too. Fuckfuckfuck. This was what he’d wanted. What he’d asked for. But he’d already lost control of it.
The flap of wings coming at him. The flash of black in his peripheral vision. Footsteps behind him. Cologne and animal musk. Danger. Danger. Joe tried to shift, but it was too late.
He’d had the shit kicked out of him. He’d been shot. Knifed. Bitten. Blown back fifteen feet by an IED. He’d never been tased. His second-to-last thought before he hit the pavement was that a gazillion volts hurt like a sonofabitch. His last thought was…Neha.
Chapter 22
Yuri Medvedev was as dark as her brother was fair, with the sort of dangerous good looks that belonged on the cover of one of those mafia romance novels that Yulia’s Confessional regular had once talked of. But the sight of him in the halls of Kamchatka did nothing to inspire romantic thoughts. Just cold, clawing fear. Yulia wanted to keep on her path to the Pit’s hostess station, wanted her feet to continue steering her in the slightly safer direction, but her mind refused the easy way and guided her instead to the basement bar, where Yuri nursed a vodka and tonic…and a grudge. Something had tightened his shoulders. Something had him surveying the arena floor like a threat could emerge at any moment. She owed it to Danny, and to herself, to try to find out what that threat was.
Aleksei’s mood had turned uncharacteristically cheerful that morning. He hadn’t barked unreasonable orders at Elizaveta or Minka, hadn’t scowled at the busboys. Yulia could only surmise that his operations were going well. But Yuri’s arrival in the Pit, and the fury that he radiated, spoke of anything but positive turns in the Vasiliev family business. As she closed the space between them, his glower deepened. So, it was she who’d warranted this thundercloud? Dread crept up Yulia’s spine like a spider. More spiders skittered along her back and upper arms as Yuri spoke.
“You have been busy, little girl.” People who did not understand Russian often thought the language harsh, coarse and unpleasant to the ear. They could not possibly understand what it was like to hear true violence in simple words. In a tongue that had always been like music to her.
“It’s always busy here,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding his meaning. “You would know this if you came to visit more than one or two times in a year.”
He scoffed, not buying her deflection, and slammed his glass down on the bar. “This is not a ‘visit.’ This is business. You are business now.”
Don’t panic. Stay calm. She thought of Danny’s steady hand on her arm. His warm gaze giving her strength. “Me? Don’t be ridiculous, Yuri.”
“I am never ridiculous. Only serious. You should remember that, little fish.” From any other man, such a statement might be flirtatious. Yuri Medvedev was not any other man. He was not any other bear.
As if she’d ever forgotten that. Yulia was proud of herself for not betraying a single hint of her inner turmoil as she reached for the ever-present bottle of Mamont and poured Yuri a shot. Tonic be damned. It was easier still to swipe a glass from the stack just beyond a human patron’s reach and pour herself one as well. “What are you so serious about today, then? What have I done that requires your attention?”
“It is not what you have done. It is what you will do.” Yuri could have said more. Explained. But that would ruin the suspense. Ruin these moments where he held so much power. The pleasure of it was in his voice, in the flirtation that was not with her but with death.
Perhaps her hand shook just the tiniest bit this time, as she poured again. Because the things that her brother and his henchmen could make her do… That list was endless, was it not? Endless like a scream. Was she to wake up tomorrow in a shipping container with a dozen other women? Would she be gifted to that man who’d held court with Aleksei just da
ys ago? All the blood she’d given, all the loyalty and time, and it would never be enough. Her body, her soul, her life were all still commodities.
“Your games will not work on me, Yuri,” she murmured, buoyed by the sweet burn of vodka sliding down her throat. “Tell me what you intend, deliver your punishment, but this cat and mouse grows tiresome.”
His dark eyes glinted with an emotion that might have passed for respect. “No punishment. Consider this…a promotion. We are expecting a very important package today, and you will be tasked with its care.”
A package. She’d been embroiled in this family nightmare long enough to understand what that meant. A prisoner. Someone they did not trust to be handled by just any guard…but would gladly hand off to someone they could also control. For what was Yulia but a prisoner, too?
I’m here for you, her imaginary Danny reminded her. I will set you free.
But Yulia could not truly count on fantasy rescuers, could she? Her fate, and this mysterious package’s fate, was solely in her hands. So, she smiled. And she sat down next to a killer and met his brutal gaze like she’d meet a lover’s. “Oh, thank you, Yuri, for this momentous news,” she purred. “I am so happy for the extra work.”
“Are you?” Yuri bristled, both literally and figuratively, not appreciating her tone. “It sounds to me like you aren’t grateful at all, little fish.”
She lied as if her very existence depended on it. Because it did.
* * *
After an hour, Neha had no choice but to go looking for Joe. Especially after their argument. Neha couldn’t trust—especially given his lack of assurances—that he wouldn’t leave her and go after Aleksei Vasiliev and his men on his own. Maybe that had been his private plan all along. Joe Peluso had a strong streak of self-sacrifice in him, whether he realized it or not. And it was probably going to get him killed.
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