Alex chuckled, and I savored the rumbling on it against my skin. “I was too busy,” as he spoke, his hands slid up my body, from my waist, going higher and higher with each breath I drew. “I promise I will try to take it off before we continue.”
“Try to?”
He rose on one hand, continue?
I was about to say something when I heard my phone ringing.
It was barely audible from the dining room where I'd left it, but I caught it.
Groaning at having what would have been a very long night interfered with, I had to get the phone.
Alex laughed as I made my way out of the bedroom.
“What?! This better be importa—”
It was my father. The Trievs had attacked him.
Chapter 19 - Alessandro
From the first time I met Katya, I could tell one thing. She was not somebody you walked over.
By the time she'd tried taking my second property, I'd seen that she did not just look hard as rocks, she was as hard as rocks. Maybe even harder.
I'd known her a while now, and I wouldn't have been able to name one thing that could be her weakness.
One thing that anybody could use to get to her.
She had none, no weaknesses. Except for her father.
Unconditionally, Yuri Petrenko was the most important person to her. The only person that could tame the wild tiger that was my wife.
I knew I could never force her to do anything. If she made up her mind, nothing would change it. No one could change her mind.
No one but her father. He was that influential.
If I had proposed joining hands against the Trievs, Katya might have agreed, she was a leader, and she would always choose what was best for her family, but if I had proposed a marriage to make everything easier, she would have disagreed with the same breath.
Maybe she would have handled any issues that arose, maybe she would have found a different, less efficient way, but she would never have agreed to marry me.
Regardless of whether she was attracted to me or not.
The only reason she had.
Her father.
Her father who was now in the hospital, was in a private hospital room resting after undergoing a surgery.
He was a tall, strong, reasonable man, somebody who was not as ruthless as many powerful mafia dons.
Even when the Trievs had caused him trouble, he hadn't used that as a reason to go after them. Instead, he'd dealt with every problem sensibly.
“I think Katya is going to burn down the city if you don't do something,” Arianna came to sit beside me in the corridor, outside Yuri's room. “She's been muttering since about fire and damnation. I'm sure the nurses don't understand a word of Russian, but even they're terrified.”
“Good, at least we're both on the same page on that.”
Ari gave me a look. “I should have gone to Frankie instead. Goodness knows he's better at talking sense into you.”
My eyes were locked on the door, my mind thinking about Yuri, the bullet wounds that had peppered his body before surgery.