Owned by the mob boss, p.24
Owned by the Mob Boss, page 24
part #1 of Ivanovich Bratva Series
“I fucking love you, Camille.”
“I love you too. Don’t stop, Erik.”
He peels my underwear down my legs. Tossing them to the floor, he kneels at the edge of the bed and pulls me toward him.
Oh God, is he going to …
He puts his head under the hem of my dress and brings his mouth to my sex. I reach down and grab a bunch of his hair in wild lust. Anything to anchor me. If I don’t hold on, I might ascend right through the ceiling with the heat rising in me.
He kisses up and down my lips, teasing my clit.
My legs start to twitch and I hear my moans filling the room, rising higher and higher into the air. It is an entirely new feeling.
But I want more. I want him to suck on my clit, to slide his tongue inside of me. I want him to consume my fucking pussy. Oh Jesus, I just want him so bad.
“Erik, touch me,” I whisper. “I can’t take it anymore.”
I inhale sharply when his tongue strokes across my clit. He moves around it in circular motions, and then pulls me toward him. He opens his mouth wide and takes in all of me, his tongue going to war on my clit, my lips, my everything.
“Faster,” I moan. “Oh fuck, faster, faster!”
He flicks his tongue up and down, making me feel swollen, about to burst. His hands dig deeply into my thighs, but I don’t feel that. All I know is the roughness of his tongue, the wetness of his mouth mixing with the wetness of me.
I grab his head with both my hands and pull him into me.
“Right there, baby!” I scream. “Yes, yes, yes.”
I guide him to where I need him, driving my hips down so that there’s as little space between his mouth and my pussy as possible. It’s like I’m falling into him, and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather collapse.
“Ah—ah …”
My throat constricts as the heat blossoms from the end of his tongue, engulfing my clit and then spreading down my thighs like boiling oil. I curl my toes and throw my head back, clawing at the sheets. I’m writhing so much I almost fall off the bed, but Erik holds me in place.
I sit up, breath coming fast, and then slide off the bed and fall to my knees.
“I want you,” I whisper, tugging at his belt.
His manhood is a massive outline, twitching as though desperate to be inside of me. I’ve never felt so wanted.
As soon as I slide his belt free and toss it away, I grab at his pants and yank them down. His cock springs free, the tip glistening with pre-come, the veins standing out starkly against his skin.
He is bursting for me.
I grab the base of him and bring my lips to the head. I’m surprised by the salty taste, and even more surprised that I like it. It’s his moans that do it, soft, throaty growling noises that fill my ears as I tentatively slide my lips around his cock.
I stroke his shaft up and down as I bob my head, licking around the width of him.
When I twist instead of stroking—I’m still in the experimental phase here—his growls get even deeper. I keep going, losing myself in it, my moans muffled and my mouth full of the taste of him.
“Camille.” He touches my cheek softly. “If you keep going …”
He looks so powerful standing over me like that, his chest heaving with barely contained lust.
“I want to make you feel good, baby.”
“Then come here.”
He grabs me under the arms and makes to lift me onto the bed. I place my hands on his chest.
“No, Erik,” I whisper. “I want to make you feel good. Lie down.”
His old twitching smile returns, but when I give him a shove he climbs onto the bed and lies on his back. I hike up my dress and leap on top of him.
He hisses when I grab his cock and guide it to my pussy, sitting down so that an inch of him, and then two, four, six, and then finally all of him slides up deeply inside of me.
I move myself up, propping my hands on his chest. His eyes are locked on me the whole time, his eyebrows furrowed almost in surprise. It’s like he’s been waiting his entire life to feel this.
I can empathize. I feel exactly the fucking same.
“I love you.” I move quicker now, twitching my hips back and forth. “I love you. I fucking love—”
He braces my back and leans up, finding my lips as the sudden pleasure releases.
Our teeth click together in the hurried passion. I’m bouncing on him now like my life depends on it, spurred on by the way he can’t even kiss me, he’s so busy moaning. I want him to feel what I feel.
I want him to lose himself as badly as I am lost.
“You’re so fucking good at that,” he whispers with a small laugh.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
I make to push his shoulders down again. He grabs my wrists. We lock in place, his cock buried deep, our bodies connected so intimately that right now, in this moment, I can’t imagine being apart.
“But now it is my turn,” he smiles.
“Ah!” I cry as he flips me over.
I run my hands down his back, clutching onto his hips and pulling him into me. He attacks me with kisses: my forehead, my cheek, my neck. One hand slides under my dress and cups my breast and he plants the other beside me, holding himself up.
“You need to come in me,” I moan, my pussy electric now. I feel a tsunami coming, threatening to shatter me utterly. “With me, baby. Come in me and come with me.”
His face gets tight and he runs his lips along my forehead in a trembling gasp. His whole body stiffens as drives himself deeper than he has gone yet, so deep that his cock crushes that sweet spot inside of me. He holds it there, muscles bulging like they might burst from his skin.
“F-f-fuck,” he gasps.
I try to moan but all that comes out is a staccato, hollow sound, as though I am choking. I find his lips as we grind towards a shared crescendo.
He collapses on top of me as his cock begins to wilt, showering me with gentle kisses.
“We’re in deep now,” I whisper.
“There’s no place I would rather be,” he replies, drawing circle patterns on my shoulder with his finger.
“That tickles,” I giggle.
“It does? Tell me … does this?”
He slides his hand down my collarbone, over my breasts, toward my belly.
“Don’t you dare—Erik!”
Laughing like a woman possessed, I leap across the bed, away from his exploring fingers, not trusting myself to stay away if he presses the issue too hard.
He chases me, tickling under my armpits, over my belly. Finally he grabs my ankle and strokes his hands over the bottom of my feet.
I’m laughing so hard that I forget about the world, forget about Mom, forget about Rob, forget about who this man is and what I’m supposed to feel. For the first time since we met, I just sink into the here and now.
It’s a wonderful place to be.
I clutch onto my baby as the warm waves lap around my knees, splashing like droplets of summer rain.
The scene couldn’t be more picturesque if it was a vacation ad: palm trees sway in the gentle breeze on the beach behind me, the sky blazes clear and blue, and the little bundle in my arms makes cooing noises that damn near melt my ovaries.
“We have to keep the child safe.”
The voice comes from behind me.
I turn, but there’s nothing but the beach.
“Safe …”
The wind whistles through the trees. The phantom voice whispers behind it.
“They want him dead, Camille. Who will keep him safe if I am gone?”
“E-Erik? Where are you? Erik!”
Suddenly the palm trees rupture and break apart.
Cloying air wraps around me like Saran wrap, suffocating.
I lash out with everything I have, but it traps my legs, cutting off all sound. Silence locks around me as Erik’s voices gets quieter and quieter.
“Safe … safe … safe …”
I wake with a start, sweat coating me, sticking to the sheets.
Jesus, I haven’t had a nightmare like that since high school, when I’d imagine standing over Rob’s dead body, trying to scream but not able to.
The room is pitch-dark, Erik a solid presence beside me. I hug him and lay my cheek on his chest, feeling his heartbeat pounding through my body.
When my cell phone buzzes from the table, I almost grab it and smash it against the wall. Whoever it is can wait. I get a little philosophical in my half-asleep haze, cursing technology and convenience and wishing that Erik and I were on a farm somewhere, disconnected from the world.
But when I answer the call, all those happy dreams vanish at the snap of a finger.
“Mom?” I walk into the hallway, phone held against my ear. “Is something wrong?”
“Oh, Camille.” She’s been crying. “It’s your brother.”
My body gets cold, like somebody-turn-down-the-fucking-air-conditioning cold. No, worse than that. Suddenly, it’s like I’m standing in the middle of a blizzard with shards of ice whipping at me.
“Oh God, is he …”
“Missing,” she says quickly. “He’s been missing for days. And—well, you know what he’s like. I didn’t think much of it at first. But it’s been four days now and I’m worried. He’s never been gone this long.”
“He’s probably found a poker table someplace,” I mutter, but that doesn’t exactly comfort me. It doesn’t ring true, either. I can tell by my mother’s voice: this isn’t normal Rob behavior.
“I’ll ask Erik to look into it,” I tell her.
“Thank you, but there’s something else. I’ve been getting these calls. The voice is all robotic, like the kind bad guys use in the movies when they’ve taken a hostage. The number is always unlisted.”
“What sort of calls?” I ask.
“Threats, Camille.” She bites back a sob. “They say the most awful things. They’re going to kill me. They’re going to kill Rob. They’re going to—I can’t even repeat it.”
My mind whirs toward an absurd idea, or an idea that should be absurd. Erik was set up and it failed. Now Rob is missing and somebody clearly isn’t happy with him—understatement of the century—and so is it possible that Rob was the one who called the police on Erik?
“Erik will help us,” I say. “Just try and stay calm, okay? I’ll be there soon.”
“I’m sorry to be a bother—”
“Mom, don’t be stupid! I love you.”
I’m about to return to the bedroom when I hear a muffled grunt from down the hallway. Instinct drives me toward it, probably a stupid one. This is how girls get killed in horror movies, after all.
But by the time that’s dawned on me, I’m standing at the top of the stairs.
Rob is hefting a large burlap sack, looking like a cartoonist’s impression of a burglar, complete with black wool cap and thick black gloves. The only thing he’s missing is dollar signs in his eyes.
“Rob!” I hiss.
“Ah!”
He spins, dropping the bag. A brick of cocaine falls out and tumbles down the stairs. He has the gall to laugh when he sees it’s me.
“Shit, sis, you scared me.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
I take the steps two at a time and use my big-sister strength to shove him against the wall.
“How did you get in here? What about the guards?”
He brushes my hands away.
“This ain’t what it looks like,” he mumbles.
His lips are dry and cracked and his eyes have never been more saucer-like. He’s not just high. He’s on freaking Pluto.
“Start explaining yourself, now,” I snarl. “Or I swear to God I’ll wake Erik up and let him deal with you.”
“Will you just—”
“If you tell me to relax, I’ll deal with you myself.” I grab a bunch of his hair and give it a twist. “I’m not screwing around here.”
“Ow, ow!” he whines. “Jeez, just … fucking hell, sis. All right.”
He pushes my hand away.
“One of Erik’s lieutenant guys told me he’d pay me two hundred big ones to frame him for that double murder. It should’ve been easy, y’know? Win-win all around. But rich men get away with everything.”
Even if it was what I suspected, I still feel like I’ve been sucker punched.
“And now you’re here to frame him. You’re not stealing coke. You’re fucking planting coke!”
He smiles sadly. “You always were the smart one, huh?”
“Rob.”
I put my hand on his shoulder, softening a little.
“I know it feels like you don’t have a way out, but we’ll explain everything to Erik. He’ll help you. We’re together now. I’m going to have his child. Shit, we might get married at some point. He won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You don’t know him,” Rob growls.
It’s like his high mask is eating into his face. The last recognizable remnants of my little brother disappears as his eyes glaze over.
“You don’t understand these people. Erik will fucking execute me. That’s what they do.”
“Rob …”
“No!” he snaps.
He shoves me in the chest. It’s more the shock that sends me reeling back, stumbling onto the stairs.
When I make to stand, he pulls a gun from the back of his pants, licking his lips and glancing around like he knows this is fucked but he’s in too deep now.
“Stand up, sis.”
25
Erik
When you have lived the life that I have, you become attuned to certain things, able to distinguish between a car backfiring and a gunshot, reading the intent in a man’s eyes moments before he swings on you.
The first thing I notice is the quality of the air.
It is cooler. Camille is gone.
Then I hear it: low rumbling from downstairs. A man’s voice, but not Adrian’s, and it is too late for the butler to be in conversation in any case.
I rise from the bed and follow the voice, that strange mixture of calm and adrenaline gripping my body.
I pause outside the living room.
“Will you just fucking move?” It is Rob’s voice, shaky and intoxicated. He sounds like a man on the edge of a very bad decision. “Stop messing me around, sis.”
“You’ll have to shoot me,” she says. The strength in her voice makes me proud. She will truly make a solid Bratva leader if the time ever comes. “What about it, Rob? Do you really think you’ve got that in you?”
“I had to do it,” he grunts. “Two hundred thousand, sis. You know what I could do with that sort of money? It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it. Now get up!”
“You think this lieutenant, whoever the hell he is, is going to keep you around once you’ve served your purpose? Wake up!”
I nod matter-of-factly to myself. So it was Rob who set me up, and one of my men who spurred him on. My mind immediately goes to Fyodor, but it is impossible to know. He could have used a proxy.
“If you don’t move—”
“Do it, then!” Camille snaps. “If this is really how low you’ve sunk, I don’t give a damn anymore.”
“Don’t make me do this. Shit, shit, I can’t leave you here. You’ll go running to him. And then he’ll hunt me down and fuckin’ kill me and burn my body and … I’ve heard of all the shit they do. I can’t let you tell him!”
Would he truly shoot his sister? I clench my fists hard, rage boiling through me. All I know is I cannot let him hurt my baby or my woman.
I will die before I allow that to happen.
“I am sorry to interrupt,” I say, pushing the door open.
Rob swings the gun to me, fidgeting like a trapped rat.
“Stay right there!” he cries. “I mean it.”
I spread my hands, walking in front of Camille. When she tries to move around me—perhaps she thinks my safety is more important than her own—I reach a hand back and hold her firmly in place.
“If you are going to shoot anybody, shoot me,” I say. “The lieutenant will want me out of the way for far longer than those bricks would ensure. Make it permanent.”
“Erik,” Camille whispers urgently. “Don’t.”
I take a few steps toward him.
“But, first, tell me: have you ever shot anybody, Rob? There is lots of blood, far more than you would ever guess. It goes everywhere. Pools of blood will fill this room. You will see them in your nightmares for the rest of your life.”
“Stop it!” he hisses, backing away to the wall, biting his lip, and shooting Camille a look. “Make him stop!”
“You do not want to know what a man smells like when he is dying,” I tell him, almost close enough to dive for the gun now. Once I am within distance, it will be a simple thing.
But even weak men are dangerous with a gun in their hand.
“You do not want—”
“Back the fuck off!” Rob roars.
“No!” Camille squeals, springing up and trying to jump between us.
I shove her aside and throw myself at Rob.
The gunshot explodes in a bright blaze of light, my ears ringing. A hot flash of something scorches through my abdomen, but I don’t feel the pain, not yet.
He makes to fire again, but I am on him. I grab his wrist and wrench it upward.
He drops the pistol.
All three of us dive on it, lost in a tangle of chaos and limbs and the scent of blood. Rob backhands me across the face. I take the blow and headbutt him so hard he thuds against the wall.
Then I grab the pistol and go to aim it at him, but he moves fast, head ducked low, sprinting for the door.
Still, I have the shot. I could end him right now.
But Camille grabs my hand fiercely, her stark blue eyes swimming with emotion.
“Please,” she gasps. “No, Erik.”
I have never hesitated like this before. If there is a threat, I deal with it. It is different with Camille.
I cannot bring myself to pull the trigger.
That is all it takes—a moment of forgetting what is necessary—and Rob is gone, running deeper into the mansion.
I run after him, blood dripping down my bare stomach into my boxer shorts, streaking down my legs. I collapse against the wall, heaving in breaths as I track Rob’s movements: footsteps pounding up the stairs, the click of a door closing.
“I love you too. Don’t stop, Erik.”
He peels my underwear down my legs. Tossing them to the floor, he kneels at the edge of the bed and pulls me toward him.
Oh God, is he going to …
He puts his head under the hem of my dress and brings his mouth to my sex. I reach down and grab a bunch of his hair in wild lust. Anything to anchor me. If I don’t hold on, I might ascend right through the ceiling with the heat rising in me.
He kisses up and down my lips, teasing my clit.
My legs start to twitch and I hear my moans filling the room, rising higher and higher into the air. It is an entirely new feeling.
But I want more. I want him to suck on my clit, to slide his tongue inside of me. I want him to consume my fucking pussy. Oh Jesus, I just want him so bad.
“Erik, touch me,” I whisper. “I can’t take it anymore.”
I inhale sharply when his tongue strokes across my clit. He moves around it in circular motions, and then pulls me toward him. He opens his mouth wide and takes in all of me, his tongue going to war on my clit, my lips, my everything.
“Faster,” I moan. “Oh fuck, faster, faster!”
He flicks his tongue up and down, making me feel swollen, about to burst. His hands dig deeply into my thighs, but I don’t feel that. All I know is the roughness of his tongue, the wetness of his mouth mixing with the wetness of me.
I grab his head with both my hands and pull him into me.
“Right there, baby!” I scream. “Yes, yes, yes.”
I guide him to where I need him, driving my hips down so that there’s as little space between his mouth and my pussy as possible. It’s like I’m falling into him, and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather collapse.
“Ah—ah …”
My throat constricts as the heat blossoms from the end of his tongue, engulfing my clit and then spreading down my thighs like boiling oil. I curl my toes and throw my head back, clawing at the sheets. I’m writhing so much I almost fall off the bed, but Erik holds me in place.
I sit up, breath coming fast, and then slide off the bed and fall to my knees.
“I want you,” I whisper, tugging at his belt.
His manhood is a massive outline, twitching as though desperate to be inside of me. I’ve never felt so wanted.
As soon as I slide his belt free and toss it away, I grab at his pants and yank them down. His cock springs free, the tip glistening with pre-come, the veins standing out starkly against his skin.
He is bursting for me.
I grab the base of him and bring my lips to the head. I’m surprised by the salty taste, and even more surprised that I like it. It’s his moans that do it, soft, throaty growling noises that fill my ears as I tentatively slide my lips around his cock.
I stroke his shaft up and down as I bob my head, licking around the width of him.
When I twist instead of stroking—I’m still in the experimental phase here—his growls get even deeper. I keep going, losing myself in it, my moans muffled and my mouth full of the taste of him.
“Camille.” He touches my cheek softly. “If you keep going …”
He looks so powerful standing over me like that, his chest heaving with barely contained lust.
“I want to make you feel good, baby.”
“Then come here.”
He grabs me under the arms and makes to lift me onto the bed. I place my hands on his chest.
“No, Erik,” I whisper. “I want to make you feel good. Lie down.”
His old twitching smile returns, but when I give him a shove he climbs onto the bed and lies on his back. I hike up my dress and leap on top of him.
He hisses when I grab his cock and guide it to my pussy, sitting down so that an inch of him, and then two, four, six, and then finally all of him slides up deeply inside of me.
I move myself up, propping my hands on his chest. His eyes are locked on me the whole time, his eyebrows furrowed almost in surprise. It’s like he’s been waiting his entire life to feel this.
I can empathize. I feel exactly the fucking same.
“I love you.” I move quicker now, twitching my hips back and forth. “I love you. I fucking love—”
He braces my back and leans up, finding my lips as the sudden pleasure releases.
Our teeth click together in the hurried passion. I’m bouncing on him now like my life depends on it, spurred on by the way he can’t even kiss me, he’s so busy moaning. I want him to feel what I feel.
I want him to lose himself as badly as I am lost.
“You’re so fucking good at that,” he whispers with a small laugh.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
I make to push his shoulders down again. He grabs my wrists. We lock in place, his cock buried deep, our bodies connected so intimately that right now, in this moment, I can’t imagine being apart.
“But now it is my turn,” he smiles.
“Ah!” I cry as he flips me over.
I run my hands down his back, clutching onto his hips and pulling him into me. He attacks me with kisses: my forehead, my cheek, my neck. One hand slides under my dress and cups my breast and he plants the other beside me, holding himself up.
“You need to come in me,” I moan, my pussy electric now. I feel a tsunami coming, threatening to shatter me utterly. “With me, baby. Come in me and come with me.”
His face gets tight and he runs his lips along my forehead in a trembling gasp. His whole body stiffens as drives himself deeper than he has gone yet, so deep that his cock crushes that sweet spot inside of me. He holds it there, muscles bulging like they might burst from his skin.
“F-f-fuck,” he gasps.
I try to moan but all that comes out is a staccato, hollow sound, as though I am choking. I find his lips as we grind towards a shared crescendo.
He collapses on top of me as his cock begins to wilt, showering me with gentle kisses.
“We’re in deep now,” I whisper.
“There’s no place I would rather be,” he replies, drawing circle patterns on my shoulder with his finger.
“That tickles,” I giggle.
“It does? Tell me … does this?”
He slides his hand down my collarbone, over my breasts, toward my belly.
“Don’t you dare—Erik!”
Laughing like a woman possessed, I leap across the bed, away from his exploring fingers, not trusting myself to stay away if he presses the issue too hard.
He chases me, tickling under my armpits, over my belly. Finally he grabs my ankle and strokes his hands over the bottom of my feet.
I’m laughing so hard that I forget about the world, forget about Mom, forget about Rob, forget about who this man is and what I’m supposed to feel. For the first time since we met, I just sink into the here and now.
It’s a wonderful place to be.
I clutch onto my baby as the warm waves lap around my knees, splashing like droplets of summer rain.
The scene couldn’t be more picturesque if it was a vacation ad: palm trees sway in the gentle breeze on the beach behind me, the sky blazes clear and blue, and the little bundle in my arms makes cooing noises that damn near melt my ovaries.
“We have to keep the child safe.”
The voice comes from behind me.
I turn, but there’s nothing but the beach.
“Safe …”
The wind whistles through the trees. The phantom voice whispers behind it.
“They want him dead, Camille. Who will keep him safe if I am gone?”
“E-Erik? Where are you? Erik!”
Suddenly the palm trees rupture and break apart.
Cloying air wraps around me like Saran wrap, suffocating.
I lash out with everything I have, but it traps my legs, cutting off all sound. Silence locks around me as Erik’s voices gets quieter and quieter.
“Safe … safe … safe …”
I wake with a start, sweat coating me, sticking to the sheets.
Jesus, I haven’t had a nightmare like that since high school, when I’d imagine standing over Rob’s dead body, trying to scream but not able to.
The room is pitch-dark, Erik a solid presence beside me. I hug him and lay my cheek on his chest, feeling his heartbeat pounding through my body.
When my cell phone buzzes from the table, I almost grab it and smash it against the wall. Whoever it is can wait. I get a little philosophical in my half-asleep haze, cursing technology and convenience and wishing that Erik and I were on a farm somewhere, disconnected from the world.
But when I answer the call, all those happy dreams vanish at the snap of a finger.
“Mom?” I walk into the hallway, phone held against my ear. “Is something wrong?”
“Oh, Camille.” She’s been crying. “It’s your brother.”
My body gets cold, like somebody-turn-down-the-fucking-air-conditioning cold. No, worse than that. Suddenly, it’s like I’m standing in the middle of a blizzard with shards of ice whipping at me.
“Oh God, is he …”
“Missing,” she says quickly. “He’s been missing for days. And—well, you know what he’s like. I didn’t think much of it at first. But it’s been four days now and I’m worried. He’s never been gone this long.”
“He’s probably found a poker table someplace,” I mutter, but that doesn’t exactly comfort me. It doesn’t ring true, either. I can tell by my mother’s voice: this isn’t normal Rob behavior.
“I’ll ask Erik to look into it,” I tell her.
“Thank you, but there’s something else. I’ve been getting these calls. The voice is all robotic, like the kind bad guys use in the movies when they’ve taken a hostage. The number is always unlisted.”
“What sort of calls?” I ask.
“Threats, Camille.” She bites back a sob. “They say the most awful things. They’re going to kill me. They’re going to kill Rob. They’re going to—I can’t even repeat it.”
My mind whirs toward an absurd idea, or an idea that should be absurd. Erik was set up and it failed. Now Rob is missing and somebody clearly isn’t happy with him—understatement of the century—and so is it possible that Rob was the one who called the police on Erik?
“Erik will help us,” I say. “Just try and stay calm, okay? I’ll be there soon.”
“I’m sorry to be a bother—”
“Mom, don’t be stupid! I love you.”
I’m about to return to the bedroom when I hear a muffled grunt from down the hallway. Instinct drives me toward it, probably a stupid one. This is how girls get killed in horror movies, after all.
But by the time that’s dawned on me, I’m standing at the top of the stairs.
Rob is hefting a large burlap sack, looking like a cartoonist’s impression of a burglar, complete with black wool cap and thick black gloves. The only thing he’s missing is dollar signs in his eyes.
“Rob!” I hiss.
“Ah!”
He spins, dropping the bag. A brick of cocaine falls out and tumbles down the stairs. He has the gall to laugh when he sees it’s me.
“Shit, sis, you scared me.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
I take the steps two at a time and use my big-sister strength to shove him against the wall.
“How did you get in here? What about the guards?”
He brushes my hands away.
“This ain’t what it looks like,” he mumbles.
His lips are dry and cracked and his eyes have never been more saucer-like. He’s not just high. He’s on freaking Pluto.
“Start explaining yourself, now,” I snarl. “Or I swear to God I’ll wake Erik up and let him deal with you.”
“Will you just—”
“If you tell me to relax, I’ll deal with you myself.” I grab a bunch of his hair and give it a twist. “I’m not screwing around here.”
“Ow, ow!” he whines. “Jeez, just … fucking hell, sis. All right.”
He pushes my hand away.
“One of Erik’s lieutenant guys told me he’d pay me two hundred big ones to frame him for that double murder. It should’ve been easy, y’know? Win-win all around. But rich men get away with everything.”
Even if it was what I suspected, I still feel like I’ve been sucker punched.
“And now you’re here to frame him. You’re not stealing coke. You’re fucking planting coke!”
He smiles sadly. “You always were the smart one, huh?”
“Rob.”
I put my hand on his shoulder, softening a little.
“I know it feels like you don’t have a way out, but we’ll explain everything to Erik. He’ll help you. We’re together now. I’m going to have his child. Shit, we might get married at some point. He won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You don’t know him,” Rob growls.
It’s like his high mask is eating into his face. The last recognizable remnants of my little brother disappears as his eyes glaze over.
“You don’t understand these people. Erik will fucking execute me. That’s what they do.”
“Rob …”
“No!” he snaps.
He shoves me in the chest. It’s more the shock that sends me reeling back, stumbling onto the stairs.
When I make to stand, he pulls a gun from the back of his pants, licking his lips and glancing around like he knows this is fucked but he’s in too deep now.
“Stand up, sis.”
25
Erik
When you have lived the life that I have, you become attuned to certain things, able to distinguish between a car backfiring and a gunshot, reading the intent in a man’s eyes moments before he swings on you.
The first thing I notice is the quality of the air.
It is cooler. Camille is gone.
Then I hear it: low rumbling from downstairs. A man’s voice, but not Adrian’s, and it is too late for the butler to be in conversation in any case.
I rise from the bed and follow the voice, that strange mixture of calm and adrenaline gripping my body.
I pause outside the living room.
“Will you just fucking move?” It is Rob’s voice, shaky and intoxicated. He sounds like a man on the edge of a very bad decision. “Stop messing me around, sis.”
“You’ll have to shoot me,” she says. The strength in her voice makes me proud. She will truly make a solid Bratva leader if the time ever comes. “What about it, Rob? Do you really think you’ve got that in you?”
“I had to do it,” he grunts. “Two hundred thousand, sis. You know what I could do with that sort of money? It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it. Now get up!”
“You think this lieutenant, whoever the hell he is, is going to keep you around once you’ve served your purpose? Wake up!”
I nod matter-of-factly to myself. So it was Rob who set me up, and one of my men who spurred him on. My mind immediately goes to Fyodor, but it is impossible to know. He could have used a proxy.
“If you don’t move—”
“Do it, then!” Camille snaps. “If this is really how low you’ve sunk, I don’t give a damn anymore.”
“Don’t make me do this. Shit, shit, I can’t leave you here. You’ll go running to him. And then he’ll hunt me down and fuckin’ kill me and burn my body and … I’ve heard of all the shit they do. I can’t let you tell him!”
Would he truly shoot his sister? I clench my fists hard, rage boiling through me. All I know is I cannot let him hurt my baby or my woman.
I will die before I allow that to happen.
“I am sorry to interrupt,” I say, pushing the door open.
Rob swings the gun to me, fidgeting like a trapped rat.
“Stay right there!” he cries. “I mean it.”
I spread my hands, walking in front of Camille. When she tries to move around me—perhaps she thinks my safety is more important than her own—I reach a hand back and hold her firmly in place.
“If you are going to shoot anybody, shoot me,” I say. “The lieutenant will want me out of the way for far longer than those bricks would ensure. Make it permanent.”
“Erik,” Camille whispers urgently. “Don’t.”
I take a few steps toward him.
“But, first, tell me: have you ever shot anybody, Rob? There is lots of blood, far more than you would ever guess. It goes everywhere. Pools of blood will fill this room. You will see them in your nightmares for the rest of your life.”
“Stop it!” he hisses, backing away to the wall, biting his lip, and shooting Camille a look. “Make him stop!”
“You do not want to know what a man smells like when he is dying,” I tell him, almost close enough to dive for the gun now. Once I am within distance, it will be a simple thing.
But even weak men are dangerous with a gun in their hand.
“You do not want—”
“Back the fuck off!” Rob roars.
“No!” Camille squeals, springing up and trying to jump between us.
I shove her aside and throw myself at Rob.
The gunshot explodes in a bright blaze of light, my ears ringing. A hot flash of something scorches through my abdomen, but I don’t feel the pain, not yet.
He makes to fire again, but I am on him. I grab his wrist and wrench it upward.
He drops the pistol.
All three of us dive on it, lost in a tangle of chaos and limbs and the scent of blood. Rob backhands me across the face. I take the blow and headbutt him so hard he thuds against the wall.
Then I grab the pistol and go to aim it at him, but he moves fast, head ducked low, sprinting for the door.
Still, I have the shot. I could end him right now.
But Camille grabs my hand fiercely, her stark blue eyes swimming with emotion.
“Please,” she gasps. “No, Erik.”
I have never hesitated like this before. If there is a threat, I deal with it. It is different with Camille.
I cannot bring myself to pull the trigger.
That is all it takes—a moment of forgetting what is necessary—and Rob is gone, running deeper into the mansion.
I run after him, blood dripping down my bare stomach into my boxer shorts, streaking down my legs. I collapse against the wall, heaving in breaths as I track Rob’s movements: footsteps pounding up the stairs, the click of a door closing.
