With that threat hovering in the air, I stalk to the bathroom and rummage around in the cabinets for a first aid kit and other supplies. I find everything I need easily and head back to the living room, surprised when I see that she’s actually listened to me. She hasn’t run off again. She’s on the couch the way I dumped her, feet dripping blood onto the hardwood.
This woman.
Cazzo, I hope she’s not going to need stitches.
I lower to my haunches and start working, cleaning off her feet first. There’s a small sliver of ceramic coffee cup shrapnel stuck in one of her heels.
“This is going to hurt,” I warn her, picking up a pair of tweezers I’ve wiped clean with alcohol.
“I can take care of it myself.”
“I saw how well you take care of yourself.” I give her a pointed look. “Stomping through a broken coffee cup and taking off down the driveway without any fucking shoes.”
“You broke in to my apartment?—”
“Hold up, I didn’t break in to anything,” I interrupt, grasping her foot as I try to dislodge the sliver with the tweezers.
“Your men, then. And without my permission, all my belongings were packed up.”
“My men didn’t break in either. They didn’t need to.” Carefully, I pull out the sliver, catching her flinch and wince as I pluck it free.
We own the building she lives in, a fact I’ve not bothered to divulge. Convenient. All it took was one call to the manager and everything was in motion. But she doesn’t need to know that.
“You know what I’m saying, Andriani,” she snaps.
“We’ve been over this. It’s Scorpion. Or Lorenzo.” I pause as I wipe the cut with an alcohol pad and then apply some antibiotic ointment before smoothing on a bandage. “Or Daddy or God. Take your pick.”
I add the last two to piss her off, and it works.
She yanks her foot from my grasp. “I’d prefer bastard. Or egomaniac. Or delusional prick.”
I tsk and take her other foot in a firm grip. “That’s no way to talk to your husband of only one day,cara.”
“Sorry,” she says with patent insincerity.
Her fire makes my dick hard. I love when she’s sassy and snarky, using that tongue to tear me a new one. Whenever her piece-of-shit brother is around, the fire dims. I’ve seen the way she interacts with him, and I know she’s afraid of Pakhan. I don’t care what she said that day at her brother’s penthouse. He’s strong-arming her into this, and I want to know how and why.
Now that she’s mine, I can start digging.
I clean up the dirt and blood, finding another shard embedded in the ball of her foot. “This one might sting too.”
I pluck it out, but it’s deeper than the first piece was, so this round involves a bit of squeezing. I hear her sharp intake of breath, but she doesn’t otherwise show any hint of pain. I would imagine she’s suffered far worse in her line of work. Being a ballerina is rigorous, strenuous, and hard as fuck on the body.
I finish up my task, slathering on some ointment and then covering the cut with another adhesive bandage. “Just like new.”
“Thanks.” She jerks her foot away from me, still pouting.
About being married to me, moving in with me, or the damage she did to her feet with her stupid stunt, I can’t be sure. I straighten to my full height, and my cell goes off. The second I see the screen, I know I need to take the call.
It’s Priest.
I tap the screen and answer. “What’s up?”
“There’s a problem with the shipment,” he tells me without bothering to say hello.
“Fuck.”
Last night, we were moving a large quantity of drugs into our territory. The deal had been scheduled long before the wedding, and we had some of our best guys on it, making sure everything went well. As a goodwill gesture to the Bratva because of the wedding, we were going to split it with them, fifty-fifty.
