Her fucking brother had sent her away.
Not only had Gio set up dinner date after dinner date with prospective arranged marriage suitors, but he was also shipping her off to a damn convent.
I understood his reasoning, knew he thought that was the only way to save her from a lifelong, forced marriage with a piece of shit and ease the pressure off from the higher-ups that wanted an alliance.
But that didn’t mean it didn’t still piss me off and cause the very possessive, territorial side of me where Claudia was concerned from rising and demanding blood.
And then there was the prick who’d touched her, had insulted my girl. He’d degraded her for the fact that she was nothing more than a female, as if she were just a novelty to him. I’d been chewing that over, feeling my rage grow because of it.
And she was my fucking girl in every sense of the word. Every single part of her was mine.
Claudia had solidified that when she refused to listen to me being a hard-ass and telling her not to write to me.
She’d made herself mine when she sent me those pictures of her tight little body with those perfect breasts, that tucked-in waist, and that lush, juicy ass. And fuck… her long, toned legs that had me picturing what she’d look like totally naked, those perfect limbs spread wide so I could get a look at her. Every. Single. Part. Of. Her.
Claudia had tied herself to me when she kept writing after I told her to be my good girl.
Fuck. I was getting hard.
I’d reached out to my connections, found out what I needed to, where to find him, and was hungry to pay that fucker a visit.
I hadn’t been in a good street fight in a hell of a long time, but that shit was going to change.
I stepped out into the sun, a breeze blowing by and giving me one last scent of the stench that seemed to cling to the prison. I eyed the guards, who watched me warily, and gave them a grin and two middle fingers.
When I was finally let out and passed through the gate, free for the first time in five years, it was my brother leaning against his dark SUV that greeted me.
He had a pair of dark sunglasses on, and his black leather jacket stretched over his broad chest as he crossed his arms.
For a second he just stared at me with the most apathetic expression he could muster, and then he smirked. It wasn’t a sardonic one, but a genuine tilt of his lips that told me he was happy I stood in front of him. I chuckled deeply as we embraced, slapping each other on the back.
“Look at you,” he said gruffly and took a step back. Nikolai pulled his sunglasses off and eyed me up and down. “You really beefed the fuck up, didn’t you, man? Looking like a damn beast, Dmitry.”
There wasn’t much to do in prison aside from working out, jacking off, reading, and trying not to kill an asshole who looked at me the wrong way.
Besides, the inmates knew who I was, who I controlled. They kept a wide berth or their life span would’ve been cut drastically short.
“Finally fucking free, brother.” Nikolai slapped me on the back again. “I have a little get-together planned. The boys insisted on throwing their Pakhan a welcome home party. They wanted it at the strip club, but I said fuck that. I knew you wouldn’t have wanted that, not with the way you’ve been acting over a certain Italian princess.” He grinned wider. “And I wasn’t about to hang around a bunch of nasty tits and asses when I have my Amara at home. So we settled for Sdat'sya. Plenty of booze so, by the end of the night, you won’t even remember your damn name.”
At the look on my face, he exhaled and scrubbed a hand over the back of his head. “Or I guess just skip the fucking party and jump right into bloodshed?”
“You guess right.” I’d already talked to Nikolai about all of this. Hell, he was my lifeline outside of prison for the last five years, the only person I trusted completely.
He knew what I wanted… what I wanted to do. It was the only thing I’d been able to think about, obsess over, since I got her last letter.
He grinned and tipped his chin toward the SUV. “Well, get in, you surly bastard. We’ll head to the airstrip now so I can be back to Amara before dinner.”
I grunted in affirmation, got into the passenger seat, and took the sunglasses Nikolai handed over.
“Let’s go kill a motherfucker.”
Nikolai chuckled. “Music to my fucking ears.”
Chapter 25
Dmitry
“He’s there—”
“I know exactly where he fucking is.” My voice was a hiss of words and sounds, barely restrained rage as I rested my forearms on the bar countertop and stared at the piece-of-shit bastard I planned on killing slowly.