Page 98 of The Arrangement

“I wish we would ha—”

“But you didn’t.” Fingernails bit into Anton’s palms again. The only thing he wanted to do was end the person responsible for everything that had happened. “You haven’t done a thing for her since her family was killed. She’s been alone. No fucking thanks to you, she’s a hell of a lot better off now. I’m going to leave this hospital, and I expect you to as well. But before you go, make sure the front desk knows Ivan is her lawyer and the only one with control of who enters and leaves her room. Is that understood?”

“Not you?” Lucille asked, appearing confused.

“No, I have things to do. After all, you said it first. When you’re called back to a hospital tomorrow, perhaps the feds won’t look to me.”

• • •

The sky was quickly darkening. It was the only real indication for the Bratva boss as to how much time had passed him by. He was ignoring the green glow of the digital clock on the dashboard. As it was, he’d already been gone far too long.

Anton glanced out of the SUV’s tinted window. Constantly on alert. He checked and rechecked behind, around, and in front of their vehicle more times than he could count. Sure, he’d lost whoever was trailing him before he even left the hospital’s underground garage thanks to a switch of clothes and a well-placed fedora, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t on edge.

“What do you think?” Bo asked quietly. Anton’s youngest brigadier checked his own mirror.

Because Anton couldn’t risk being seen at his club, he called Bo to pick up his weapon of choice. The particular set of scopes he’d been looking for that the man had previously delivered to him as a birthday gift were going to come in handy sooner than he thought.

Anton’s hand came to rest on the steering wheel lazily. The pain simmering up his arm only served to fuel his low lying rage. The cuts crisscrossing his neck were nothing compared to the wound on his shoulder. One of the bulls had hastily dropped superglue along the jagged tear before wrapping it up with some gauze. It was sealed tight. Still, the injury seemed to lick with an excruciating burn every time he moved, so that needed to be looked at soon.

An infection was nothing more than a bitch he didn’t need.

“Boss?”

Anton ticked his chin up in the direction of the apartment building.

“Right there. One of his mistresses, I guess. Ivan’s been trying for days to find out where the bastard was staying, but I got it from his wife like it was nothing. Woman wants him gone; she just won’t outright say it. I think she’s screwing around with the cousin, actually. Sonny’s got his head shoved so far in the sand it’s crazy. Everything he touches turns to shit. He’s a walking, fucking disease.”

Bo cleared his throat, taking a heavy drag from the cigarette dangling between his fingers. “You’re taking this remarkably well. If it was Steph …” The younger man trailed off as he exhaled the smoke into the SUV’s cab.

Anton disagreed. He wasn’t taking it well at all. Whatever care or concern he might have had left for anyone in the direct vicinity of Sonny Carducci was in no way his problem when the scene went down. The quiet, stillness of his own person was just a by-product of his own anger and anxiety, one he learned to control with near silence and little movements.

Ethics? Gone.

Lungs? Breathing.

Heart? Aching.

Viviana? Alive.

Anton felt robotic. As if he was just moving through the motions for the time being because that’s what he had to do. He just fucking had to. Despite the city moving around them with a gentle, humming flow, sounds didn’t register. The only thing he heard was rushing blood in his ringing eardrums.

Stony.

Calculating.

Seething.

Anton was pissed.

And there wasn’t anything quite like a Russian boss with a vendetta.

“You could say that,” he finally replied indifferently.

Red hot and ice cold.

The man inside that building had damn near taken away Anton’s entire life with a horribly placed, substandard bomb. The damned thing could have been a how-not-to-do manual for any pipe maker. That wasn’t to say it hadn’t gotten his point across, but the Bratva prince had a much better one coming. It was sure to turn a few heads and make headlines.

When it came to Viviana, lucky was a downright understatement. Had she been just inches closer to the blast, had Rocco not taken her down like he did, had the medics not gotten her heartbeat to regulate—there were too many variables that slipped into place for her.