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“I know I’ve been an asshole, and honestly I have no clue how to do this relationship shit.” I snort at his choice of words, and he returns my wry grin and lifts his free hand to trace the line of my cheekbone. “But I know I want you sleeping in my bed with me every night.”
I smile and thread my fingers through Daniil’s. He brings his face to mine and plants a sweet kiss on my lips. Daniil is offering me something I haven’t experienced in so long. Someone in my corner, someone who cares for me, who has my back. And yet, I can’t allow myself to get swept up in our connection.
He might do bad things, but I believe he is a good man and doesn’t deserve my betrayal. But none of that matters. I sealed my fate the moment I crossed enemy lines. I have one purpose, and that is to avenge my family’s death.
No matter the cost.
No matter the sacrifice.
I’ve made up my mind, and nothing can stop me.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
DANIIL
The roarof the Thunderbolt whooshes past me as a bunch of kids high on sugar and fun careen past us on the way to the Wonder Wheel spinning in the distance. Bianca’s laugh as she veers out of the way of the grubby monsters is clear and bright. I turn towards her to see her face turned up, soaking in the afternoon sun and general revelry that is Coney Island’s Luna Park.
An unfamiliar pleasure ripples down my spine. Sensing my eyes on her, she returns my smile, and a sweet, comfortable energy settles between us.
I’m not in the habit of blowing off work for a woman. As in I’ve literally never done it. But here I am, on a Thursday afternoon at Coney fucking Island with a personal SWAT team of security around us, all because Bianca told me she’s never been to an amusement park outside of one family trip to Disney World. I suspect there are a lot of things she missed out on in her life, and I don’t know why, but it makes me want to give them to her. To give her everything.
Of all the ways this crazy arranged marriage could have gone, I never imagined it could bethis. A spark of light in the darkness. It’s been two weeks since I took her into my bed. Two weeks since I stopped fighting the magnetic force that draws us together.
“Another round of bumper cars?” I offer.
“Ugh, I think I need to let that hot dog settle first.” Her hand lands on her belly, as a lopsided grin splits her face. “But I wouldn’t say no to an ice cream cone.”
We meander over to the nearest ice cream vendor and order waffle cones with soft serve, then take the cones to a quiet area where a picnic bench sits under a willow tree.
Watching her devour the cone in delight, a slow smile spreads across my face. Bianca catches me staring with what’s got to be a stupid grin on my face. “Penny for your thoughts?” she asks, parroting the question I’d asked her the first time we met.
“Nothing really.” I shrug. “I’m just good.” I mean it. For the first time in a long time, I don’t have the restless feeling that’s usually bubbling under the surface. “You know my parents used to take us here when we were young—before the Kozlov Bratva was so powerful, and we could leave the house without an armed militia—and we’d spend weekends making ourselves sick going on ride after ride. Andrei wouldn’t want anyone to know this, but he has a glass stomach. The first swoop of a roller coaster he’d be retching into his lap.”
“Ugh,” she grimaces. “Gross.” Then softly she asks, “Tell me about Kira?”
Her question fills up the space between us. “What do you want to know?”
“All of it.”
I stroke my chin, hoping to stall for a moment. Her question is complicated. I haven’t shared this story with anyone outside of our immediate circle. But she is my circle now, my everything. With a jagged breath, I say, “My father revealed we had a half sister as he bled to death in Andrei’s arms.”
Her hand reaches for mine, threading our fingers together. “Shit. I’m sorry.” She cringes.
“Yeah, well… it’s the world we live in. And in some fucked-up, twisted way, there is a happy ending. We found Kira after months of searching. Or rather, she found us, though she had no clue we were related. Her father, Oleg Antonov, was a sadistic fucker, and our family’s biggest rival. To hurt our father, he’d seduced our mother, gotten her pregnant, and when she was at her lowest, took the child from her. That baby was Kira.” Pain swirls in my veins like a drug, the untouched ice cream melting in my hand. I toss it into a garbage bin nearby.
Bianca’s face falls. “I get it, you don’t have to go on.”
But I need her to know everything. Iwanther to know. A humorless smirk touches my lips, and I reach out to run a thumb over the edge of her jaw, admiring her beauty in the early afternoon sunlight. “Kira didn’t know the truth of her past. She just knew that her father was a monster.” A dry laugh escapes my throat when I think back to my pint-size sister’s boldness. “She devised a plan to take over as the head of the Antonov Bratva, and that plan included abducting Georgia as leverage so Andrei would agree to help her take down her father. Our reunion was rather… dramatic. She learned we were her brothers with her father’s gun pointed at her head.”
“Holy shit!” Bianca’s eyes widen dramatically. “And I thought my family history was fucked-up.”
“Yeah, well, we all have our skeletons, don’t we? What matters is we’re together now. And if it wasn’t for our quest to find Kira, Andrei would never have met Georgia. Maybe things turn out the way they do for a reason.”
“Do you really believe that?” she asks, head tilted to the side.
“Maybe,” I scoff. “I don’t really know what I believe. I don’t buy that my mother deserved what happened to her. Seduced by the enemy, left to deliver a child in secret in a mental hospital, then having a newborn ripped from her arms. It’s what led her to take her own life.”
Bitterness drags through my veins as I run a shaky hand over my jaw. Bianca doesn’t respond with words, all of them useless right now. Instead, she comes to me, nestles in my lap, and presses her tits into my chest so she can put her lips on mine. “I’m sorry,” she whispers against my mouth. “For all of it.”
