“I can’t!”
“He waterboarded you, didn’t he? The same night he beat you and branded you. Am I right?”
My mouth is like a roulette wheel. All the right words are spinning away from me.
“Why does he want to find your sister so badly? This is more than just honor, sweetheart. This is about something bigger.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I try to shove past him, but he just pushes me back onto the bed.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Fine! He did it to send a warning!” I dig my nails into the mattress, feeling fragile and exposed—bruises, scars and all.
“To whom?” Driving one knee between my legs, he covers me on all fours, caging me in with his arms.
“Stop, Aiden.”
“I said I was a patient man, but my God you’re really testing me.”
There’s a secret burning a hole in the pocket of my resolve. I need to tell him something, anything, to shine that spotlight away from this spiraling intensity.
“Maxim,” I whisper. “He did it as a warning to Maxim.”
He rears back in surprise. “Maxim?” I watch the flash of shock turn to fury as he jumps to the wrong conclusion again. “I fucking knew it… That slimy bastard was all over you on our wedding day.”
“It’s not like that—”
“Do I have a defective model? Was my pretty little Russian doll ruined before I had a chance to break her in?”
“No!” I cry out in fear as he drags me to the edge of the bed and catches my jaw between his fingers. “No,” I repeat, this time as a whisper. “My father is jealous of our closeness. Maxim is more of a parent to me than he’ll ever be. That’s why my father banished him to Cannes.”
“Did he fuck you good, Ielena.” Not Issa. The cold look he’s giving me is like a bomb exploding inside my chest. “Did he make your tight pussy cream as much as I do? Do the scars on his back from your nails match the ones on his face?”
“Why won’t you listen to me!”
“Because I’m not particularly liking what you have to say. Did you suck his dick, too? Maybe you let him finger fuck you in your pretty pink palace bedroom. Was he a sweet sixteen present to yourself?”
“He’s not in love with me!”
“Sex ain’t love, princess,” he grits out, that strange British dialect of his making an unwelcome return. “It’s a far more enjoyable experience than that. And here I was thinking that your father had hurt you to get back at Zaccaria and me. Christ, I even felt guilty about it for all of three seconds, and I never feel guilty about anything.”
“He’s in love with my sister!” I scream, unable to take his look of disgust anymore, the one that’s searing my skin far deeper than my father’s branding iron.
He lets go of my face immediately. “What?”
“He’s been in love with my sister since she was nineteen years old.” And just like that my tears are threatening to make the second unwelcome appearance of the morning. Still, I refuse to look away from him. “I’ve never kissed a man, touched a man, lain with a man before you.”
“Convince me.”
I gape at him in shock. “Wasn't it obvious last night?”
“Not that,” he clips. “Convince me that they’re in love.”
“Are you going to tell Zaccaria?” It comes out sounding like a dare, but it couldn’t be further than the truth. Inside, I’m begging and pleading for him not to. If the Italians decide to torture Maxim, I know he’d rather die than give away Karina’s location, but it’s still a dangerous risk to take.
“I’ll consider it, but only on one condition.”
I stare up at him—wanting to believe him. I need so badly for him to be on our side.
“Ielena,” he says sharply. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to tell me everything.”
That’s non-negotiable. But I can give you a breadcrumb trail of your own.
“Maxim hates my father.”
“Tell him to join the queue… It’s not generally in the job description of a Pakhan’s Brigadier, though.” He reaches for a pair of black jeans hanging over a nearby chair. At the same time, I flip the gray sheet back over my nakedness. I barely feel the brushed cotton against my skin. I’m too numbed by our conversation and its potential consequences. I’m putting all of our lives in the hands of a man I don’t entirely trust yet. “Are you saying he’s screwing your sister to get back at daddy?”
“No,” I shake my head. “That’s not... Shit, it’s coming out all wrong.”
“Then start from the beginning.” He takes a step back and eases up on his tone, but all I see is red.
“Is this how you torture people?” My swell of anger catches us both by surprise. “Sprinkle in the sweetness when the sour gets too salty?”
“I don’t have the tolerance to torture people, Ielena,” he snaps back. “If they don’t give me what I want in the first five minutes, my bullets tend to direct the conversation.”
“Are you going to shoot me, too?”
“No, halfway,” he says, killing the distance between us instead. “I have a much better idea that that.” He rips off the sheet and grabs my ankle. As he flips me over onto my front, I slam my elbows down to stop my scars and bruises from hitting the mattress.
“Get off me!”
“Never going to happen.” He crashes his own elbows down next to mine, grinding his fury against my ass.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Incentivizing.” He scuffs my shoulder with my stubble, driving heat between my legs. “Demanding….” He moves to nip my ear and throat with his teeth, and I let out a soft moan. “Apologizing…” My eyes flutter open again as his mouth moves to the nape of my neck. “I shouldn’t have doubted you. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. But the thought of you…” he trails off with a groan. “Damn, woman, I’m losing all fucking sense and reason around you.”
I know how that feels.
“You’re still a bastard,” I hiss.
“Yes, but I’m your bastard.” He moves onto his side and runs his hand up the back of my thigh. I try to wriggle away, but he only yanks me back again. “Don’t tempt me, Issa.” Back to Issa again. “I like a good hate fuck as much as the next man.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want some embellishment on what you just revealed. As much as I dislike talking about Maxim when you’re naked like this in my bed, on this occasion needs must. What does he have against your father?”
“I can’t tell you… I’ve already said too much.”
“Zaccaria,” he growls threateningly
One name. One threat. One conclusion.
“He doesn't agree with the way my father treats Karina and me,” I blurt out. Hating him. Hating me. I’ve backed myself so far into a corner over this I’m tasting paint. “We grew up as toys to be paraded about when he felt like it, but most of the time we were packed away and forgotten about. I didn’t even know he was a Pakhan until six months ago. I was led to believe he was a successful businessman from Russia who’d made a name for himself after relocating to Paris. Then one night, a man came to dinner. He and my father had words. I sneaked out for a late-night walk and I watched from the shadows as Maxim beat him, over and over, until my father pulled out a gun. That was my introduction to the Bratva world.”
“Cute story,” he says mildly. “Did it come with Pepsi and popcorn?”
I drop my head between my shoulders, too exhausted to smile, too exhausted to fight. “It was like someone shook up a Paris snow globe souvenir of my life. When the glitter settled, I finally started paying attention. I worked out the key players in his organization—”
“And the two Russian lovebirds?”
I can feel my nails digging deep into the mattress again. I’m a double, triple traitor for sharing their intimacy with him.
“I caught their secret smiles across rooms. I stumbled across notes.
” I watched their love bud, blossom and bloom. I omit that part though, knowing it would make a man like Aiden gag. “Last year I confronted her and she told me everything: That they’d been in love for four years. That it had started the day she turned nineteen... That whenever she could, she’d sneak down here to the Riviera to be with him.” I blow out a breath. “And then she got sick.”
“Sick?”
I shoot him a look, but he doesn’t flicker. In turn, I feel a spark of uneasiness. I know exactly what I let slip to him by accident last night, so why is he pretending otherwise?
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She needs a kidney transplant.”
“Ah.”
So now he looks shocked?
“A couple of months ago she started getting confused. She’d sleep all day and be in constant agony all night… With our mother in her perpetual ‘cocktail hour state of mind’ and my father spending most of his time in his 6th Arrondissement apartment with Marie, it was easy to hide it. When Maxim found out, he—”
“Why the hell would you hide something like that? Papa Bratva can buy her the best doctors in the world.”
“Our father has a strong contempt for weakness.” I collapse down to the bed, too exhausted to hold myself up any longer. “It’s another reason why he’s so eager to find her. He doesn't take too kindly to humiliation, same as Zaccaria. Although who’d inflict her with the most pain if they ever tracked her down…” I leave that question to the unpartisan stillness of the room. Both men are as cruel and malicious as each other.
We’re interrupted by the harsh beep of a cell phone.
Aiden reaches out across the bed and steals it from the nightstand. “What is it?” There’s a pause. “Tell him I’m not interested… I don't give a damn, Frankie. Just do it.” He hangs up and tosses the device back to where it came from.
“What was that about?” I ask. And how did you get a new cell phone that fast?
“A persistent problem, but it’ll all be sorted soon enough.” He flips a lock of my hair away from my shoulder blade and runs the pad of his thumb along my lips. I shudder at the tender gesture, still hating him for earlier. “Where’s your sister now?”
“Maxim found a top medical team in Europe and she became a priority candidate for a donor. They planned to leave together last month, and then her health deteriorated even more. The next day Zaccaria approached my father about the Riviera deal. It was as if the hangman was coming to claim his prize. We needed to move fast so Maxim fixed it to look like Karina had ran away. He managed to charter a medical helicopter across the channel, while he and I stayed behind to add texture to the lie.”
“As simple as that?”
“As simple as that,” I say, leaving out the biggest part of all. The digital clock is blinking seven a.m. at me. Sixty minutes.
“Does your father know about Karina and Maxim?”
“Do you think Maxim would still be alive if he did?”
“True.” He rolls me onto my back again and nudges his leg between my thighs. “He’s a dickhead, but he’s a smart dickhead.”
“Will you do something for me, Aiden?” I say, reaching up to cup his jaw, thinking fast.
“Only if it’s illegal.” He gives me a flash of that wolfish grin that I’m starting to crave like a fine wine. I wouldn’t like it half as much if his apology hadn’t been half as genuine.
“I need you to play nice with my father.” His grin slips. “I don’t want the Monaco Police Force to find him washed up on a Riviera beach. He needs to sit down with Zaccaria on Thursday. Whatever happens, that deal needs to be made so they can choke on their arrogance and their future billions, and forget all about my sister.”
“You ask too much.” He pushes my hand away with a frown. “I’m not letting him get away with what he did to you.”
“But don’t you see? You’re not rejecting me because of it, which means he’s already lost the battle. Or are you…?” There’s a trace of vulnerability in my voice.
“What the hell do you think?” He moves in closer and plants a soft kiss to my lips. It’s a painter’s kiss, or rather an abstract impressionist’s kiss—as subtle as a Rothko, with the heart-stopping punch of a Picasso.
“Can I trust you, Aiden?” I see a flicker of something moving behind his eyes that both scares and thrills me in equal measure. We’re comets locked on a collision course—me, him, Karina and Maxim—and we’re entering the final descent.
“Give up your most precious secret to me, and I’ll show you how much.”
Now it’s my turn to kiss him, to daub his lips with a surrealist’s dreamscape that has him moaning into my mouth. “Do what I ask of you tonight,” I say, breaking away, “and I’ll give you everything.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Aiden
She slips from my cabin thirty minutes later like the ghost she was when she first arrived last night. I watched the security feed. I saw her check out my laptop, the same way I saw her rifle through the top drawer in my office before Rocco Rossi decorated the front of my casino in his very own shade of crimson.
She closes the door behind her with a shy smile, tossed at me like a winner’s salute over her shoulder. It has me reflecting on that word ‘honesty’, and how open it is to interpretation. Issa and I seem to have very different construals in that respect. As touching as her story is, I know when someone’s holding back.
She lied to me. I lied to her.
It’s the yin and yang of dysfunctional marriages up and down the Riviera. In truth, torturing a person is a fucking high for me. I enjoy breaking the body, but not half as much as I do breaking the mind. In that respect, I played along. I told her what she wanted to hear. I paid attention when she slipped up…
Rising from the bed, I tap a number into my cell as I’m walking toward the en suite. Frankie answers on the first ring.
“What did she say?”
“I haven’t broached the subject yet.” I run my hands through the black hair of the fraud who’s reflecting back at me above the sink. “I know where her sister is, though.”
There’s a pause. “Where?”
“The U.K.”
“He managed to charter a helicopter across the channel.”
There’s only one channel she could possibly be referring to, and I’ve crossed it a fair few times myself.
“Frankie, make a list of all the major hospitals with transplant units.”
“I’ll redirect the teams immediately. We’ll start in London—”
“Start with Cambridge. Call it a hunch.”
“Jesus, Raven,” he exclaims with a laugh. “Is this the part where I’m meant to be impressed? You’re one kinky motherfucker... It only took you five days to get her to talk. Is Zaccaria offering bonuses?”
“My dick can’t take the credit for this one, and I want nothing from Zaccaria when this is all over. I have the money to pay back his loan and to buy the casino outright. He can keep the bars and clubs.”
It’s a muted celebration. My vengeance isn’t lighting up the same fires as it used to. I want that last name on the list, but the cost is rising with every minute I spend in her company.
“Shades of gray?” he says, reading between the lines.
“Shade of gray,” I confirm reluctantly. “But we still have a job to do, so let’s keep our eyes on the prize.”
“Eyes on the prize,” he echoes. “Why Cambridge?”
I reach under the mattress and slide out a drawing of a white cottage with blue shutters, and the taste of black cherries explodes on my tongue. Did she draw them from memory or from her imagination? “Maxim has a beach house listed on his private property portfolio about eighty miles from there. It’s under the name ‘Victor Morrel’, and it’s the only one he owns in the U.K. Find her, Frankie,” I growl. “Zaccaria was the one who raised the stakes, not me. If he wants to play hardball again, this time I’m planning on leverage.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Issa
We reach La Croisette at around nine a.m. The tunnel of palm trees that greets us are like a gently swaying audience, while the white hotels set back from the road are in the cheap seats. The ocean on my left is glinting the same hard, cerulean-blue that is fast becoming my favorite color.
Aiden insisted on keeping his yacht in Monte Carlo and driving me the hour or so to Eloise’s store in Cannes. He hasn’t said much on the journey, and our silence is far from easy. There’s something weighing heavy on his mind. There’s something weighing heavy on mine. Our tension is darkening the shades of his cream leather interior. It’s causing my stomach to fizz and dip like I’m on a rollercoaster with broken brakes.
The problem with deceit is that it comes with many coats of paranoia, like an ageing supermodel with her spoils of war. I took the call from MI6 earlier. I listened closely to their plans for tomorrow night. I accepted Felix’s new ‘gift’ in my walk-in closet drawer, and now the micro listening device is nestled deep at the bottom of my purse.
Aiden pulls over when we reach an empty side street close to Rue Meynardier. The black Escalade that’s been tailgating us all the way from Monaco pulls over, too. He switches off the engine and we listen to the whirr of the cooling system for a moment.
“Louis is coming with you today. No arguments.”
“Is that really necessary?” In the side mirror I watch the beast of the man who held me hostage for all of five seconds last night exit the vehicle. He lights up a cigarette and blows smoke rings at the crystal-blue sky.
“I said no arguments. Don’t worry; he’ll stay outside the store. I wouldn’t want one of my best men losing his fucking mind in the realm of malachite and shocking pink. Why the hell do you like her stuff so much anyway?”
He says it like an accusation, so I reward him with another truth.
“Color breaks up the darkness.”
“It’s not like you need the money.”
“It was never about the money.”
“Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart. We’re all paying a price for something, even if we can’t see the debt.”
Black Skies Riviera: An Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance Page 19