“It’s a real thing, but the truth is there are a lot more than five criminal syndicates going on in this city. But the five families control the big players, and the majority of wealth.”
“Is this your way of boasting about how rich you are?” I teased him.
He grinned. “How richweare, Molly.”
“Hmm, I like the sound of that,” I murmured as he pressed a kiss to my forehead and we headed through the beautifully preserved foyer and deeper into the building.
“Kirill Chernov,” a loud, arrogant voice broke through the murmur of the crowd wandering in the direction of the doors.
Kirill tensed, and his expression was one of pure fury for a second before smoothing into something pleasant. A polite mask stretched over angry bones.“Good evening. I should have known you wouldn’t miss this evening,” Kirill said, turning me with him as he spun around.
An older man stood before us. He had graying hair at the temples, a strong roman nose, and intelligent eyes. Next to him was a lovely woman. She was so young that she had to be his daughter, or so I hoped. She had dark hair and olive skin, with blood-red lips. A siren and she was looking at Kirill with something that made me feel odd.
“Tosca is Sofia’s favorite,” the man said as his identity slipped into place in my mind. Antonio De Sanctis, the man who had nearly killed Kirill and I, and his daughter, Sofia, who had been engaged to Kirill for a short while.
Sofia De Sanctis. Christ, she was lovely. I willed away the jealous lump in my throat. It was petty as hell to be jealous, and uncalled for, considering what Kirill had told me about her. Her eyes met mine, and she smiled. It seemed sad somehow, and not in an envious way.
“And this is your wife?” The boss, Antonio, had an unpleasant way of leering.
Kirill bristled beside me.“Yes, this is her. If you’ll excuse us, we’ll go and get seated now,” he said, clearly not wanting to prolong the awkwardness any longer.
Antonio nodded, and his eyes made my skin crawl with his frank appraisal. His eyes told me he had assessed me and found me lacking.
His daughter flinched when he reached for her arm and my jealousy died. I knew that feeling. I’d had it around my departed father. A fear reflex too deeply ingrained to ignore.
“Are you all right?” Kirill asked as we moved away.
I could feel Antonio’s eyes on my back. “I think he might still want to kill us,” I muttered.
Kirill nodded. “He does.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
He sighed. “I haven’t made up my mind. I don’t think an all-out attack is in our best interests. I can see why Viktor and Nikolai think so . . . they have nothing to lose”—he glanced at me—“unlike me.”
“You said you embarrassed him. Maybe he needs a gesture to save face. You know rich old men who think they have honor and respect. Saving face is the most important thing to them,” I said, thinking of Henry. My father had lost my mother’s fortune and driven us to be indebted to the bratva to shore up his reputation as the biggest fish in the small town where we’d grown up.
“I think you’re right, but I don’t know what gesture is enough. Money is too impersonal. The rejection of an alliance with his family, bound by blood in marriage, is very personal. He wants a pound of flesh from someone,” Kirill muttered.
A cold chill ran through me at the words. “It can’t be from you. He had his chance.”
Kirill nodded, though I sensed he considered it unfinished business. I had a lot to learn about the world I now navigated at his side, but I would. I had to. I chose this life when I chose him.
Kirill pressed a kiss to the back of my hand. “Enough worrying about Antonio for tonight. Let’s enjoy this romantic opera.”
“The program says it’s a tragedy,” I pointed out, sitting beside him.
Kirill laughed shortly. “So, what’s the difference?”
“A romance has to have a happy ending, obviously.”
Kirill took my hand in his and brought it to his mouth, kissing it, before lightly biting along one of my fingers. He was always putting some body part of mine in his mouth, as if it was only by extreme exertion of self-control he could stop himself from eating me whole.
“So, you want a happy ending, princess? A happily ever after?” His tone was musing, shot through with the worries that seemed to plague him constantly lately with everything going on with his father and brother.
“Of course, doesn’t everyone?”
“Just the hopeful ones, I guess,” Kirill murmured cryptically.