I clenched my jaw so tightly I wouldn’t have been surprised if I cracked some teeth. As I stared at the dirt and trash strewn on the ground, the stench of decay and age surrounding me, I knew what I had to do.
“You and I both know you’re going to take him out.” The confidence in Dmitry’s voice made me instantly want to break his neck, but I said nothing, just glared at the prick. “My brother and I don’t need more war. We want an alliance between the Cosa Nostra and Bratva. We need to grow stronger and create not only domestic deals but international ones. And we found a way to do that. But if our father stays in power, he’ll destroy the progress we’re making.” Dmitry looked at Nikolai and smirked, as if they shared a silent conversation on what was really going down.
“Didn’t you know?” Nikolai prompted and pushed off the wall, stalking toward me. “I’m getting hitched. Got an arranged marriage to a sexy little just-turned-eighteen Italian hottie.” He wagged his eyebrows and grinned lasciviously.
“That’s your plan? An arranged marriage between the Petrov Bratva and Cosa Nostra?” I ran a hand over my face and shook my head. “You guys are even crazier than I thought.”
Dmitry grinned and didn’t say anything else. Good. I wasn’t into all the politics that came with the crime underworld. And I didn’t want details and logistics on what was all going to go down.
“So we came to a father killer to handle this.”
I kept my expression composed as I stared at Dmitry. They wanted their father out of the picture, wanted to fucking tie themselves with the Italian mafia, so that was their fight to deal with. But now Lina was in the mix because of me and my fuckup. I had to finish this. I had to go into the fold whether I wanted to or not, but when it came to her, I realized I’d do anything to protect her.
She had secrets, ones she’d tell me eventually, ones I'd take care of for her, so she never had to worry about anything again but being with me.
I'd do anything to make her mine. And tonight I was going to make her see—and feel—just that.
17
Galina
I woke to the groggy feeling that I hadn’t been asleep for very long, the weight of that tiredness trying to pull me back under, but something had woken me up, so I forced myself to blink my eyes open.
I stared at the ceiling, a sliver of the ambient city light coming through the curtain of the bedroom window. As my mind cleared and I woke up further, I realized what had roused me.
I wasn’t alone.
I felt someone watching me, and my gaze was pulled to my side of the bed, where I saw a large masculine body sitting, his forearms braced on his thighs, his head cocked to the side, and his eyes latched on me.
I gasped and sat up, knowing it was Arlo as the fog in my mind cleared. With a hand on my racing heart, I licked my lips and let the silence stretch out between us.
“Moye serdtse bolit, kogda ya smotryu na tebya.” His voice was deep and low but still had the intense effect of moving over every inch of my body and lighting it up.
“Arlo?” I whispered his name in the darkness. “What’s wrong?” It wasn’t by the way he watched me, but the tension in his shoulders, the way he clenched his jaw so tightly I could all but hear his teeth grinding. “Is everything okay?” Every little shift I made on the bed was followed by his eyes, as if he was tracking me and refused to let his prey go.
“It will be,” came his reply.
My heart thundered at those three words that sounded almost threatening. But not to me. Never to me, I thought with certainty.
I'd put my hair in a loosely knotted bun after my shower, and a strand tickled the side of my face. I pushed the lock away from my cheek, seeing Arlo watch the act with a clarity that was startling.
After he’d left for the night, I stayed on the patio for so long my fingers had felt like ice before going numb. I’d taken a too long and too hot shower, then slipped into bed, where I was sure I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep because I felt too wound up, my thoughts too consumed with Arlo. He’d been on my mind a lot before all this drama happened, but now being in his home, surrounded by the constant sight of him, the masculine way he smelled, and coupled with our almost intimate self-defense classes, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
I glanced at the small clock on the bedside table and realized I’d only been sleeping for an hour, and although I’d been groggy upon first waking and still very much tired, my body had woken up like a firework exploding in the sky with each passing moment in his presence.