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Our kiss deepened slightly, and I felt her wince from the action. “Shit,” I said. “Sorry.”
Annie’s lips were cut and swollen, so the pressure of our kiss had irritated her skin. She smiled at me. “It’s okay,” she told me. At some point, her hand had ended up on my own, and I squeezed it slightly.
“We should get some rest.” She looked exhausted, which made sense considering the ordeal she’d just gone through.
I thought she was going to argue with me for a moment, but instead, she released a large yawn and nodded.
I didn’t wait for permission as scooped under her legs and lifted her up into my arms. We said nothing as we settled into the hotel room. We didn’t need to say anything. For now, we just needed to be.
Tomorrow, we would deal with whatever came next.
* * *
“Why the hell did you call me in the middle of the night?” I asked Maximoff as I walked into his house. I’d received a call from him barely an hour after I got Annie settled into bed. Maximoff had made it clear he expected my presence at his home, and I was curious enough to comply. “Annie barely got to sleep tonight…”
“I wouldn’t have dragged you away if it wasn’t important,” he said.
“Why didn’t you come and see her?” It was a valid question. Maximoff clearly loved his daughter, but he’d barely shown any emotion when she’d been taken, and I knew that he had not yet gone to see her.
“The first person that Annie asked to see was you,” he said, as though that explained everything. I wanted to push him on it, but I didn’t.
“Why am I here Maximoff?”
“Follow me,” he ordered.
I wanted nothing more than to tell him to go fuck himself and remind him that I didn’t work for him. But instead, I allowed my curiosity to get the better of me, and I followed him towards the closed door hoping that whatever happened next, it wasn’t something that I was going to regret.
I could overlook Annie being the daughter of the Pakhan. I loved her too much to care. And I knew that she was a good person with a kind heart. But I wasn’t about to allow myself to get caught up in mafia bullshit.
I was going to have to distance myself from this as much as possible.
“There are some people who want to speak with you,” Maximoff said.
When he opened the door, I nearly turned back around and walked right out. Sitting at a long table were Dom Blanchi and his brother Marco, and at the sight of them, I felt myself immediately stiffen.
“Mr. Wright,” Dom Blanchi said politely. “Thank you for joining us.”
I wanted to turn back around and go to the hotel room, but once more, my curiosity got the better of me. “I wouldn’t have come if I knew that the two of you would be here.”
Marco snorted, but his brother shot him a stern look.
“I understand that, especially after your press conference today.”
My jaw tightened. In order to buy time and distract O’Connor, I’d spilled my guts on live television. Dom and Marco would have known about how their father had taken mine from me.
“What is it that you three want?” I asked.
Maximoff sat at the head of the table. I sat opposite from him. I wondered if him taking the head of the table was some sort of power play. Frankly, it didn’t matter. I’d reached out to Maximoff because I’d had no other choice, but I wasn’t interested in continuing any sort of relationship with him, and I definitely didn’t want anything to do with the Blanchi family.
“We wanted to talk about how we might work together,” Maximoff said, crossing his hands together.
I snorted and started getting out of my seat. “Not interested.”
“Hear us out,” Dom said.
I turned to look at him. “No.”
“We all have a common enemy,” Maximoff reminded me.
