“I understand that you’re my wife and that it is your duty to submit to me.”
“Please…”
“And now you’re begging…” He grabs my arm and yanks me around to face him. His eyes draw a line down my nightgown to my toes, each moment filling his face with more anger than before. “You’re begging when you should be silent. When you should be faithful and obedient.”
“Gio, please—”
I wince, realizing far too late the mistake I’ve made. His palm collides with my face and I taste blood before I even feel the pain on my cheek.
“You dare speak my name.”
I whimper. “I’m sorry.”
“Get out.” He releases the iron grip on my arm. “I’ll deal with you tomorrow. I don’t want an ungrateful wench in my bed tonight.”
I dart off the bed and keep my head down as I walk toward the door. He says nothing else and I say a silent prayer of gratitude as I close the door behind me. The sound echoes, traveling back and forth through the empty corridor, just barely overwhelming the pulse thumping in my ears.
My feet move me directly across the hall and I push open the door to Lucian’s room. I can tell before I see him that he’s sleeping, the quiet sounds of his breath moving his chest up and down in the darkness.
Run.
I shake my head as I sit down in the rocking chair. It’s the obvious solution. Take Lucian and walk out the front door — but we’d never make it. The guards rarely stray from their paths and there’s never a moment when every exit of the estate isn’t being watched.
Kill him.
I look into the crib, listening to my son’s steady breath. Killing Gio would be a mistake. An honor, for sure, but a grim mistake. Even if I managed it, I’d never survive the aftermath and then what would become of Lucian? Would he be sent to America to be raised by his Zappia uncles? Or even Antony himself? I shudder at the thought.
Luka.
There’s a shimmer of hope in my chest, but it leaves me just as fast as a passing breath. Luka Lutrova owes me nothing. I’ll never ask him for anything, just as I promised. I can’t ask him for help again.
Even if he wanted to help me again, there’s still the matter of the family truce to consider. He’d never risk that, and I wouldn’t either.
No one can ever know.
I lick my lips and, for a moment, I feel his tongue against mine, but the effect becomes acid in my throat. I can’t let this become the norm. I can’t let these feelings deep down get the better of me.
I have to stay away from Luka Lutrova until the day I die.
Chapter 12
Luka
I stare across the table at Sofia, feeling a quiet rage building inside of me.
She hasn’t raised an eye to me all morning. Her attention has been laser-focused on Lucian instead. Head down, long hair draped over her face, purposefully covering his left eye in painfully obvious ways.
And Gio has not been subtle.
“Be a good wife and fetch me another glass, Sofia.”
A good wife. It’s the fourth time he’s slurred it since he’s sat down.
“Yes, sir,” she says, reaching for his empty glass.
I watch her leave, hoping she’ll raise her head to look at me as she passes, but she doesn’t. She’s avoiding me for a reason. The only one I can think of is the piece of shit sitting across from me with his smug eyes locked on her ass.
“Excuse me,” I say, standing up. “I’m going to use the facilities, and then Yuri and I will get out of your hair.”
“Please, little brother…” Yuri groans from the chair beside me. “A little quieter, please…”
I offer a comforting pat on his back and Gio chuckles at him as I quickly turn and follow Sofia into the hall.
She disappears around the corner toward the kitchen and I do a quick scan of the hallway to make sure no one sees me as I trail her inside.
Sofia looks over her shoulder and she gasps. “Luka—” She scans the room for witnesses. “What are you—”
I push the hair out of her face, exposing the purple bruise taking over her left cheek. Her eyes fall and she cowers from my touch.
“What did he do?” I ask, barely holding in my rage.
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Sofia…”
She brushes my hand away and steps back. “We can’t be seen here like this. You should leave.”
“Come with me.”
The shock in her eyes matches the surprise in me. I have no idea where those words came from, but they feel as real as any other.
“Come with you?” she repeats.
“Yes.”
“You mean…”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
“You did before.”
It stabs deep. “That was a mistake,” I say through my shame. “I didn’t know any better. I should have taken you from this place when I had the chance.”
“Luka, please. Nothing has changed.”
I picture those perfect silver eyes staring up at me from my ankles. “Everything has changed.”
“I understand why you think it has, but it hasn’t,” she says. “I have kept my promise to you. No one will ever know. Please, keep that promise to me, too.”
I can’t stand it, but she’s right. This isn’t just about me or her or even Lucian. It’s about our entire families as well. One wrong move could tear this truce apart and we’d both probably end up dead because of it. What would become of Lucian then?
“I want him to know,” I whisper. She blinks with confusion. “Not now, but someday. I don’t want him to grow up thinking Gio is his father. I want him to know the truth… when he’s ready.”
“Then, he will.” She nods. “I promise.”
I reach for her face again and she flinches as my fingertips graze the bruise beneath her eye. How any man could lay an angry hand on something so beautiful…
I lean in to kiss her, but she turns away.
“Don’t come back,” she says, her face wrinkling as if just saying it causes her pain. “I can’t trust myself around you, Luka…”
I lower my hands. “Sofia…”
“You have to go.” She stares at the floor. “Now.”
No. Not like this.
An urge charges down my spine, screaming at me to take her in my arms and kiss her, but I beat it down. Taking what I want from her might feel good, but that would make me no better than Gio.
I step back. “Goodbye, Sofia,” I whisper.
She looks up and her eyes glisten with hidden tears. “Goodbye, Luka.”
Chapter 13
Luka
The further we travel from the Zappia estate, the more I feel it.
That sense of loss over something I didn’t even know I had. Sofia, the girl in my dreams. Lucian, the son we created together.
And Gio, the bastard who believes they both belong to him.
She should have let me take her with me. I should have thrown her over my damn shoulder and dragged her out of there three years ago before she ever walked down that aisle.
Yuri raps his fist against my knee. “What’s wrong with you, brother?” he asks. “You’ve been off since yesterday.”
I try and force her face out of my mind, but I can’t shake that beautiful smile. “Just eager to get back home,” I say, staring forward at the back of the driver’s thick head.
“What’s the rush? We should stay in Rome for a night or two. Get a nice meal, meet a few girls…”
“I’d rather not.”
He snorts. “I’d rather take a day off.”
“No one is stopping you.”
The driver takes a hard right turn off the busy street and we roll into a warehouse — one far away from the airfield we’re supposed to be going to.
“Luka, this—”
I hold up a hand, interrupting Yuri. “Excuse me,” I say, signaling to the inept Zappia driv
er to explain himself. “Where are you going?”
He slams on the brakes and throws his door open.
Yuri’s jaw drops as the driver races outside on foot and disappears. “Hey—”
I look around the warehouse. It’s dark and completely deserted. Either this is the oddest encounter that’s ever happened or…
This is a hit.
I reach for the pistol stashed behind my back. “Get down, Yuri.”
“What?”
“Get down.”
The bullet breaks the windshield and pierces the leather seat between us. I grab Yuri’s shoulder and force his head down between his legs. A second bullet hits the seat behind him, and I grit my teeth.
I lean down behind the front seats and peek ahead through the cracked windshield, scanning the warehouse for the attacker, but I see nothing behind the stacks of crates and machinery.
“Stay here, Yuri,” I growl, shoving my door open.
“Luka—”
I ignore him, buzzed on adrenaline and rage, and step outside onto the concrete floor. My stare shifts from stack-to-stack, knowing that the shooter must be behind one of the columns between me and the far wall.
I flick the safety off and move forward, ready and willing to fire the one bullet necessary to end this bastard.
The warehouse is completely silent beneath the passing traffic on the street outside. The noises echo in the shadows, blending with my beating heart and my tongue turns dry. I twist my head left and right, sensing nothing and no one behind every box or pillar and I grow even more frustrated with each one I pass by.
I spin around to head back toward the car when a shape darts out of the shadows.
I raise my gun to fire but there’s barely a moment to breathe before I feel the pain firing up my wrist. I clamp my fingers around the butt of my gun, refusing to drop it as the masked man takes another go at disarming me. He takes hold of my wrist and twists it back, tangling the nerves inside and pain spikes up my arm.
I headbutt his obscured face, connecting with his jaw and he falls backward into the sunlight behind a row of boxes. He’s dressed in black from head to toe with a tactical vest strapped to his torso. A balaclava covers his face, everything but his eyes. Just like…
Like the hissing man in Moscow.
The kobra.
I flex my jaw, more eager than ever now to put a bullet between his eyes. He darts to the left, swooping low to sweep my knee. I can’t react quick enough to stay on my feet. He grabs at my gun again and I pull the trigger. The bullet passes by him to ricochet off the floor, echoing so loudly it trembles my ears.
“Luka!”
Yuri bounds toward us with his gun drawn.
As I spin back, the man’s foot connects with my chest, forcing me even closer to the floor. My gun slips from my fingers to fall directly into his hand.
Yuri fires a quick stream of bullets in our direction and I keep my head down as the man in black rushes to hide behind the nearest pillar. My brother is a businessman, not a marksman, so he misses every hit. At least he bought me some time to get back on my feet.
I run forward, eager to catch up with this bastard and finish this, but a scope brings me to a grinding halt.
He stands at a tall stack of crates with a sniper rifle trained directly at my brother’s head.
“Stop!” he shouts, his accent distinctly American. “Put it down.”
Yuri grows an inch taller. “You first.”
The muzzle flashes and my heart stops, fearing the worst as the bullet passes me by before I can throw myself in front of it.
“Yuri!”
The bullet strikes Yuri’s gun and it tumbles from his untouched hand. It spins roughly as it hits the floor and slides away from us.
The man in black lowers the rifle and raises his other palm. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, heaving a thick breath. “I just want to talk.”
“You shot at us,” I point out.
“And I missed,” he says. “That wasn’t an accident. I had to get your attention.”
“And now you have it. What the fuck do you want?”
He drops his rifle to the floor and slides the clip from my gun, along with popping the bullet free from the chamber with a quick flick of his wrist. He stuffs the clip into his pocket and the gun into his belt before reaching for his mask.
He pulls it free, revealing his pale, shadowed face and ruffled brown hair. A long, white scar stands out on his left cheek. He presents his hands to show he’s disarmed. “I was sent here to kill you.”
I scoff. “You must not be very good at it, comrade.”
“I was sent here to kill you, but I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
He reaches into his breast pocket as his eyes shift between us and pulls out a flash drive attached to a short clip on his vest.
“And what is that?” Yuri asks.
“A white flag,” he answers. “Something that will make the entire Lutrova family very happy and very busy for a long time.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific if you plan on walking out of here,” I growl.
His eyes flick to the right as he hears the same honking car as I do. This man is trained, alert — just like me.
“It’s the Snake Eyes master file,” he says. “It’s a list of every member, every job, everything you need to take them out for good.”
“The who?” Yuri spits.
“Snake Eyes,” he says again. “It’s an underground organization made up of the deadliest people you could ever imagine. I work for them as an assassin.”
“Never heard of ‘em.”
“That’d be the point, wouldn’t it?” He looks at me. “You know more about them than you think.”
I pause, letting the dots connect in my head. Bodies littered across Europe and Russia with bullets through their eyes. The hissing man. The cobra tattoo.
Never let a snake loose in Moscow.
“That was you,” I accuse. “Three years ago in the warehouse outside of Moscow—”
“No…” He shakes his head. “I’ve only been in a year and a half.”
“Bullshit.”
“This file can tell you who it was,” he says. “Along with anyone else whose killed on your turf. That means something to you.”
Yuri scoffs. “Think again, you—”
“Yuri…” I stare at him. If what this man says is true, then we could clear my name — without Gio’s help — along with solving the mystery of who killed our grandfather. “Nash dedushka.”
He raises his brow, firing me a quick, pensive look and closes his mouth.
“Da,” the man says, instantly drawing our attention back to him. “Viktor Lutrova znal slishkom mnogo.”
Viktor Lutrova knew too much.
I smirk. “You speak Russian?”
“A little.”
“Hrmm.” I shift on my feet and he does the same, never once dropping his guard. I don’t sense fear in his eyes at all. He could have killed us already if he really wanted to, that much I can say for certain. “You know who we are, then?”
“Yuri and Luka Lutrova.” He nods. “Sons of Nikolai Lutrova. Heirs to the whole damn crime family.”
“And who are you?”
He takes a deep breath. “My name is Fox Fitzpatrick. I’m from Los Angeles, California… and I just want to go home.”
Yuri laughs. “Then, take a plane.”
“It’s not that simple,” Fox says. “Snake Eyes isn’t the type of organization you walk away from. If I don’t check-in within the next hour, they’ll send an extraction team to find out what happened to me. I’ll need a new identity, new papers, all of it.”
I furrow my brow. “You’d betray your own people just for that?”
“They’re not…” He pauses, flexing his jaw. “I work for them, but not by choice.”
“We get you home and you give us that file. That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I study h
is face. He’s as young as I am but scarred and weary with experience. “What’s the catch?” I ask.
“Well, obviously, it won’t be simple to crack into. You’ll need a hacker.”
“We’ve got one.”
“A good one?”
I raise a brow. “Is that all?”
Fox grabs my gun from his belt and grips it by the barrel before holding it back out to me. “Yes.”
I reach out and squeeze the gun’s grip, ignoring the protesting look in Yuri’s eyes as I take it back.
“What I’m offering you is worth way more than what I’m asking for it,” Fox says.
I smirk. “And while you run off into the sunset, an underground organization of assassins comes knocking on our door looking for you.”
“I wouldn’t have come to you if you couldn’t handle it.” He slips his toe beneath his rifle and flips it up to grab it off the floor.
I take another hard look at him. He’s a killer, I can see it in his eyes, but there’s a softness buried deep behind the duty and the pain.
It reminds me of Sofia. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, of course, but she’s made some tough choices.
“Okay,” I tell him. “I’ll get you home.”
Yuri grabs my arm. “Luka…” He pulls me away, forcing me to turn my back on Fox. “What are you doing? Pops would never—”
“We can find out who killed our grandfather, Yuri,” I argue. “I’m sure he’d think twice before wasting that.”
He leans in closer so only I can hear him. “We should just kill him and take it.”
I lay a hand on his shoulder and pat him twice. “I love you, brother, but I know our limits.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I mean…” I glance over at Fox. He’s still on full alert — eyes wide and ears open. “We should already be dead.”
Yuri furrows his brow at me, not believing a word of it. I’m sure he’s disappointed in my weakness, but it’s quite the opposite. Looking out for him is my job and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep my big brother alive. Hearing what Fox Fitzpatrick has to say is the easiest way to survive at the moment.
I turn to Fox and extend my hand again. “We can work together,” I say, “but I would prefer to be armed. You understand.”
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