by Fox, Nicole
As I get closer to my limit, I imagine jerking her around, pressing her up against the wall. I’d bury myself in her, feeling her breathing quicken with my chest against her back. I’d fuck her as her hands tried to grip onto the wall. Her supple ass pushing up against me as she struggled to keep her balance.
When I come, there’s a flood of pleasure. I lean against the wall. As the seconds pass by, the pleasure is replaced by a hollow solitude.
I step out of the shower, but Ally’s mirage follows me out. She dances naked in the center of the bathroom. When I get dressed, I see her in the closet from when we picked out her clothes after our first run. When I go down the stairs, I recall her standing in the doorway, prepared to run away from the deal I was giving her. Even her words and her laugh reverberate in the house like ghosts.
I make myself a drink, hoping to drown the memories out. I check my phone.
Ilya: I’m coming over with the report. Don’t shoot me.
He’s worried. It’s annoying as fuck, but as my right-hand man, he’s equally concerned about me as he is about the Bratva. He’s right about how shoddy my marksmanship was today. My father gave me a gun for the first time when I was five and I practiced obsessively when I was a teenager. I should have been able to take out all of those men easily. But my mind was preoccupied.
The doorbell rings. I finish my drink and get the door.
* * *
Ilya sets his old-fashioned down beside my whiskey on the coffee table. I still smell smoke wafting from the fireplace. I cleaned it out thoroughly enough that nobody would ever know that Ally turned it into our burned bridge.
“The only choice left is to kill him,” I say.
Ilya shakes his head. “Killing the don is what led to this. It would also lead to too much attention from the police. I’m certain they assume that Duilio Colosimo’s disappearance means that the Bratva took him out, but they can’t be certain. For all they know, he skipped town or one of his own members killed him. But if his son is killed as well, they will go after the Bratva without reservations.”
“If we don’t kill him, he will become a much larger problem than the police.”
“We could offer a deal,” Ilya suggests. “There’s no way he would pass up a decent deal for peace. We overpower him in every way. He knows, at best, this ends with us suffering some casualties while the Colosimos are annihilated.”
“He’s willing to burn generations of his family’s work to get back at me for killing his father. He’s not going to fold because we offer him an increase in his profit. Even if he was, I’d rather be skinned than negotiate with him.”
“Lev—”
“No,” I cut him off. “He threatened Ally. He came into the office. He took my goddamn guns. If he disrespects me one more time, I’ll have no problem cutting off his goddamn balls in the middle of the police station. Ponimayesh?”
Do you understand?
“Da,” he says. Yes.
I pick up my drink, finishing it off. He picks up his old-fashioned, taking a gulp. There’s an uneasiness in the room and it’s not just coming from Ilya. I can almost sense Ally sitting on the couch’s armrest, where we had sex without protection. For a brief moment, I think of the baby, then banish that thought. But I can’t banish Ally from my mind. Her voice infiltrates my thoughts, soothing but disapproving.
You should take him to court.
There has to be another way.
You’re pathetic. You’re just a common thug.
“You should get back to Sophie,” I say. Ilya nods, downing the last of his drink. He stands up, placing the glass on the bar.
“You know,” he says as he moves toward the doorway. “I would have cracked a long time ago if it weren’t for Sophie.”
“I know,” I say. “She’s been good for you.”
“I don’t know what happened between you and Allison—”
I scowl at him. He pauses.
“I don’t know what happened,” he repeats. “But letting her go is a mistake. Sometimes you need someone else to keep you from going over the edge.”
“That’s why you’re here,” I say. “And you’re better with a gun.”
“Thank you,” he says. “But Allison is who you need. Sophie agrees. Before Allison, you were relentless and created a legacy—but you were just like Marco. You were willing to give up everything. The only difference is that he’s doing it for revenge and you were doing it for power. Allison gave you something that you wanted to hold onto.”
“Ilya,” I say. “I’m closer to you than anybody else in the world. But if you compare me to Marco Colosimo again, I will cut your bowels open, dump you in the sewer, and let you be eaten alive by rats.”
He nods once. “Understood.”
He leaves quickly, the entrance door softly closing behind him. I pour myself another drink. Ally’s voice continues to cling to my thoughts.
I don’t regret it.
I imagine she does now. I’m not certain I can say the same.
As I drink, I play through the memories. Her words become a symphony, accompanied by her breathing, the sweet sounds she made while we moved together, and the softness of her voice afterward. I imagine her body over mine, soothing me in her warmth and her reassuring hands. The creak of her movements in my bed. The quick patter of her heart. Just as quickly, I imagine a child cradled in her arms—
Creak.
I open my eyes. My bed doesn’t creak.
I sit up. I don’t recall lying down on the couch. I stare into the dim light from the den’s lamp, listening.
The faintest tap. Someone is inside the house. Ilya left and Irina shouldn’t be here today.
I quietly move to my home bar. I lift it up less than an inch and shift it forward. I reach behind it, finding the holster where my Ruger is kept.
Gun in one hand, I take the cocktail shaker in the other. I reach it into the doorway, using the reflection to check for anyone in the hallway. When there’s no one, I set the shaker down and step out into the hallway.
I listen again. Nothing.
I search the halls and the rooms on the first floor. Empty. I keep my gun raised. As I move toward the entrance, mind racing, I notice a small dark shadow underneath the door.
Not a shadow. Blood.
I jerk the door open, fear gripping me as I picture Ilya, dead on my doorstep. More than my second-in-command, the man is also my closest friend—something I rarely acknowledge. But if he’s been killed …
I take several steps out, my finger over the trigger. Another dead body lies farther out in the yard, but no moving targets.
I check the body at the front door. It’s not Ilya. Relief washes over me, along with regret as I see that it’s Bogdanov—a low-ranking soldier. Even so, he was one of my men, and I treat all their deaths the same—with the aim to avenge the loyal fallen. His throat has been slit, blood painting his lower neck and most of his chest. Tension ricochets in my body as I go farther out to check the other body. Semyonov. Another soldier, who had three kids. A knife wound to his eye, one to his throat, and three to his chest. Ilya must have assigned them to the house.
Fuck.
I pull out my cell phone, then hear a sudden sound, deafening, followed by indescribable pain.
For a split second, I feel my body crash into the cement and the blood-drenched grass before everything is gone.
20
Allison
“Could you pour us some wine?” Julia asks as she sets the pot roast back into the oven. “It should be ready soon after your parents get here.”
I take two glasses out of our cabinet. After I pour one glass, I stop before I pour into the other one.
What is the likelihood that I’m pregnant? I try to recall the statistics—it’s either fifteen percent or twenty-five percent and both seem like a high risk.
I set the wine bottle down and fill my glass with water from the faucet instead. When I hand Julia her glass, she glances between the glass of water and my
face.
“Are you driving somewhere tonight?” she asks.
“No,” I say. Avoiding her maternal gaze, I look over at our dining room table. I can almost see Lev sitting there, refusing to drink more because he knew how I felt about driving under the influence.
Her eyes narrow. “This dinner isn’t to tell your parents that you’re pregnant, is it?”
I nearly spit out my water. She rubs my back as I cough into the sink. It only makes me feel worse.
“Um,” I manage to get out. “No. The dinner is because my parents wanted to talk about my relationship with Lev.”
Her hand on my back feels too small. Lev’s arms, steady and toned, gave me security without feeling restrictive. When he held me after I told him about the car crash, he turned all my panic into the heartbeat of something new.
“I could see why your father wouldn’t like him.” Julia sips from her wine. “Why isn’t Lev here then?”
“Well … we broke up.”
She rubs the back of her neck. “I think you might have spiked my drink because I’m already confused. Why are your parents coming over if the two of you broke up?”
I shoot her an apologetic look. “We were kinda engaged.”
“Are you shitting me?” She sets her glass down. “What the hell, Ally? Take a few steps back. So, at one point, you got engaged. And at some point, this became past tense. Have I been downgraded to your next-door neighbor or something? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was chaotic. Everything was overwhelming,” I say. “But it’s over now. So, my parents should be happy.”
“Are you happy?”
“Yeah,” I lie.
She eyes me suspiciously. “And this engagement had nothing to do with a pregnancy?”
“No,” I say. “That … is something else entirely.”
“Excuse me?”
“I missed two of my birth control pills. So … I might be.”
Julia throws her hands up in the air. “Holy shit, Ally.”
“Can we please change the subject?” I ask.
“Not yet. What does Lev think about all of this?”
“He doesn’t want it. I doubt there’s any pregnancy anyway,” I say. She frowns.
“Well, I guess that works out,” she says. “It’s still not great. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s just forget about it. Tell me about your day.”
She sighs, taking another sip of her wine. “Fine. In comparison, my day has been boring, which is saying something. So, the first call I get, it turns out to be a guy with a huge swastika on his neck. His friends have similar tattoos. This guy has overdosed, I’m trying to save his life and get him into the ambulance while his friends are trying to prevent me from helping him because Faiza is with me and I guess they didn’t like the look of him or something. The police end up coming to help us. On my second call, a man was beating his kid and the kid had locked himself in the bathroom. That’s all we were told, but once we got there, we found out that before the kid locked himself in the bathroom, he’d stabbed his father in the abdomen four times with a pair of scissors. We ended up needing the police to help restrain the man as we tried to help him and the man still tried to attack us.”
“Don’t you ever want to just walk away?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I used to. But, after you’ve done this for enough years, you stop reflecting on who’s worth saving or whether or not they did something terrible. It’s not like the courtroom. We’re not placing judgments. I just know that I want to do a good thing and I don’t need society’s approval for that.”
“That almost sounds critical of the legal system.”
“The courtroom is your thing and I love you,” she says, squeezing my arm. “But I don’t want to regret anything. I didn’t want to put less effort into saving that father and finding out later that he’d been an immensely loving father that accidentally ingested some drugs. Morality is subjective. For one man, an eye for an eye is good. For another man, killing to protect his loved ones is good. For a wonderful, amazing roommate, the legal system is good. It is what it is.”
Lev killed to protect me. And I hated him for it.
Julia sips from her wine. “So, now that you’re breaking up with Lev, is it because he was bad in bed?”
“What? No.”
“Which means that he was great at it,” she teases. “That guy was an arrogant ass, but with that much confidence, his cock must have been massive. It’d have to be with the size of his balls. The man called me out without flinching.”
“You deserved it.”
She laughs. “I absolutely did. I’m glad I didn’t waste too much time trying to like him, but I have to give him some credit. He would’ve defended you against a prison full of angry felons if they’d insulted you.”
“He did defend me in front of my father.”
Both of Julia’s eyebrows shoot up. “Wow. Going up against his fiancée’s father. That must have been rough.”
It’s not something I’d considered before, but she’s right. This whole con was based on the idea of getting my father to trust and like Lev, but Lev went after him the moment Dad called me reckless and foolish. He ruined his chances from the start. All because he defended me.
I drink my water, wishing it was wine and that I could have one more night with Lev before everything went to shit.
* * *
When my parents knock on the door, I’ve replaced my water with a glass of grape juice. I take their coats, our greetings to each other jumbling together, and hand them each a glass of wine as Julia serves the pot roast onto four plates.
By the time we’re sitting down, it should be easy to pretend everything is exactly the way it used to be before I met Lev. But it’s hard to ignore how much I crave his hand on my hip or his breath hot against my ear as he whispers something to me.
It’s also hard to ignore the way my father keeps looking at me, clearly waiting for a chance to give a speech about how I’m ruining my life.
I turn to him after everyone’s second bite. “Lev and I broke up.”
Dad’s face lights up before his whole body relaxes, a small laugh eclipsing the story Julia was telling my mother.
“Oh thank God,” he says. “I knew you’d figure it out, Ally. I’m so glad. This is great.”
“They broke up?” my mother asks. She playfully smacks my father on the arm. “See, Peter. You didn’t need to worry about anything.”
My father takes my hand, squeezing it over the table. “This is great. Everything is still going to work out for you. Did Elizabeth offer the internship to you?”
I nod.
“Wonderful. Your future is set.” He beams. “This is phenomenal. Everything is falling into place for you.”
“We’re very happy for you,” my mother adds. “Elizabeth seems to think you’ll be able to do anything you want after the internship. It’s such a great opportunity.”
I nibble on my food. The conversation drifts to Julia’s day, then my father’s day. I know why my father is so happy about this news—his daughter is no longer dating a dangerous criminal. But it’s jarring to hear that they care more about my future than my current happiness. I’d hope that if Lev were anyone else, they’d at least ask how I was dealing with the breakup.
“Officer Wilcox was ready to fight the nurses to get out of the hospital,” my father laughs. “But Morris is nearly ready to order room service there. Yesterday, he tried to get a nurse to give—”
He stops as his phone beeps. He pulls out his cell phone.
“Peter,” my mother warns.
“It’s the station. I have to answer it,” my father says. He taps on the screen before putting it up to his ear. “Chief Harrington.”
His eyes shift back and forth for half a second before he looks directly at me. His forehead furrows.
“Yes, I do,” he says. “She’s right here in front of me.”
I sit up straight, setting my fork and knife down. The confusio
n clouding his face slowly changes. His eyes widen and his body stiffens. He looks away from me, slowly standing up.
“Good,” he says. “I’ll be there soon. Keep the media as far away from it as possible. Call in our best people. If this is a Mafia war, we need to cut it off at the knees. Even if it’s random, it could lead to trouble. Good. Go.”
He hangs up.
“What’s going on?” I ask, standing up as he grabs his jacket.
“Nothing,” he says. “Stay here.”
He turns to my mother, giving her a quick kiss. He mutters something to her and she nods.
“Dad,” I say. He touches my shoulder in a half-hearted attempt at reassurance before nearly sprinting out the door. I turn to my mother. “What did he say to you?”
“He just told me he loved me,” she says, avoiding my eyes. “Let’s finish dinner.”
“He mentioned the Mafia,” I say.
“We could turn on the TV,” Julia suggests. “If it’s something big enough for the chief to be there, it could be breaking news.”
“No,” my mother says. “Let’s just eat. Julia, tell me more about this evil man who hit his son.”
Julia glances between us before describing the situation with the abusive father who’d been stabbed four times.
I stand up. “I’m going to pee.”
Before anyone can question me, I rush into the bathroom. As soon as the door is closed, I pull my phone out of my pocket and check the local news.
On the first website, there’s nothing notable.
On the second one, there’s the same news.
On the third one, there’s a breaking news alert.
Reports of Explosion at House of Mariya’s Revenge Owner
My heart stops beating, but I barely notice as I reread the alert over and over.
Several social media accounts have reported hearing an explosion and seeing a fire at the residence of Lev Alekseiev, owner of Mariya’s Revenge and several nightclubs.
I scroll, waiting for more words to appear, but that’s all that’s written.