Her eyes, as silver and beautiful as the moon, were hollow. I immediately scanned her for injuries, for something that was wrong. I looked at her straightened hair swishing with each step, the strong jaw against the hoodie that shrouded her neck, down to where she’d sliced off the bottom of it to showcase her small waist. Her black jeans hung low on her hips and were frayed right above those designer heels, the ones I’d gifted her.
They were stained.
I knew those stains better than anyone else.
Blood.
I left my drink at the bar and met her halfway. “What happened?”
She took in the club, not meeting my eyes, but instead scanning everything that was going on in the room. “I wonder if you didn’t tell me about your club because you didn’t trust me.”
“Trust you with what?” I said, trying to at least grab her attention.
She shook her head as if in disgust but didn’t say anymore.
“I’m calling Bastian,” I announced.
“No need. I did already. Everyone will be here soon.”
Katie before the bratva felt nothing. She moved through the world letting everything roll off her back, even when it was the craziest shitstorm barreling through.
Katalina, now, after the bratva, felt every single thing. She felt her pain. She felt her reign. She felt everything. She felt the weight of this damn city and it was a heavy one.
Yet, the numbness in her gaze and the way her hands didn’t shake meant something had driven her back to the hole she couldn’t be in anymore. She needed to feel, she needed to know her power.
She couldn’t shut down again.
“Okay. Let’s talk about what happened then.”
She shook her head and walked past me, past the throngs of people mingling and getting lost in one another, to the bar. She asked the bartender for a water and when one was handed to her, she took two gulps before turning to me and asking, “Do you think the monster is in you or in me? Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever wondered about whether or not I’m too far gone to come back? Because I do. I wonder if I’ve been wronged so much that I’ve forgotten my dad’s love.”
“What are you talking about Katalina?” I knew exactly what she was talking about. I just knew it wasn’t true. She had to be stronger than all of us. We needed her to be better than we could ever be. “Tell me what the fuck happened. I’m going to find out anyway.”
She fisted her hand, but I took it and pried her fingers open to thread them through mine.
“I just don’t know how I can do that, lead the bratva and be a mother. I don’t know how I can kill and still love. I’m furious and I feel it down to my bones. Am I supposed to turn around and love a daughter after something like that?”
I shook my head at her. “Did you kill for love? That’s what families do, that’s what any family would do for someone they love. “
“Is that what keeps you going? Knowing that we’re doing all this for the family, for people that we love? Seems like everybody does it for pride or for money and greed. “
“Is that what you think of Bastian, Cade, and me? You think I took Mario… No, let’s go way back. You think Marvin was for that?”
She tilted her head, her hair falling like a smooth waterfall down her shoulders as she thought about it. I wanted to drag her out of there, tend to her needs, tear her from the line of fire. If she’d done what I thought she had, word would spread and the exclusive members of this club would be judging her by the end of the night. It was the last thing we needed.
“Did you love me then?” she whispered.
“I loved some part of you since the moment I met you, Cleo,” I admitted. “I was chained to you since day one.”
“How do we chain everyone together then?”
“We have to gain their trust, Katalina. Or you reign in fear and power alone. That doesn’t last.”
She hummed low and murmured, “Maybe it’ll last long enough for me.”
The music pulsed through our veins and swayed the crowds and their extracurricular activities. Katalina spun on her bloody red-bottomed shoes and stalked away.
“Goddamnit,” I grumbled into my drink and shoved away from the bar. I made my way to where she had disappeared. It looked like she was about to enter the fitting room areas but had been stopped by Bastian, Cade, and Dante walking in. She pushed past them.
“Did you check your phone?” Cade asked me, his stare piercing me instead of his own cell in that moment.
I didn’t answer him, but pulled my phone from my suit pant pocket. His text read “Vladimir is dead. Trafficking. She did it herself and made a show of it.”
There’s something deep inside you that grows and morphs into something ugly when the people you love are in danger. “Was she protected? What happened?”
“Her men lost control of the situation.” Bastian pulled at the collar of his shirt. “Or they let him loose on her.”
The beast, the monster, the demons in me roared. “Who had eyes on her while I was at the club today? That was supposed to be you, Cade.”
“She handled it,” Cade said without even a damn hitch in his voice. “We have to trust her to handle it.”
Bastian clamped a hand on my shoulder but I shrugged it off as he said, “She’s one of us now. It’s our job to handle it, Rome, but we have to let her handle it too or she won’t ever really lead them.”
“She has my baby in her belly,” I rasped like any one of them would understand, but the oxygen had been stolen from me. It was replaced by suffocating animosity toward everyone. “Don’t any of you get that? One innocent life between all of us. We got one.”
They all looked every which way except into my eyes.
“I don’t have to explain the gravity of this. I won’t because you all know. If we don’t protect my baby, I will drag this city to hell. I don’t give a fuck if she’s a queen or a damn god. We protect that innocent life in her by intervening every single time there’s a risk.”
“We can’t do—”
I grabbed Cade by his shirt collar. “Don’t tell me what we can and can’t do.”
He didn’t even flinch. We all saw Cade as the quiet, good-natured tech geek but I saw the screw that was loose there sometimes. At that very moment, he laughed hard in my face as I pulled him close. The tattoos on his hands were stark black against the strobe lights and I read that chaos on them as he pried my fingers from his shirt. He laughed crazily the whole time.
When he’d freed himself, his laugh died abruptly. “Remember I watch every single movement everyone makes. I study you all. She was safe. I care just as much about her as I do any of you. So fuck off.”
I shoved past all of them while Dante and Bastian tried to tell me to calm down.
My body, my soul, my monster was on a new mission. My tyrant had been in danger and I needed to know that she hadn’t been harmed.
As I walked past the tall podium where hosts were dressed in skimpy costumes ushering people in and out of the fitting rooms, I told them to lock it down.
They immediately jumped to get the area closed off, and I breezed past to find Katalina.
She stood in front of a mirror, wearing that dress from so long ago, the one with feathers curving around her breasts. She’d cut the waist and the skirt too. The fabric stretched tight across her tits and I eyed her flat stomach, wondering when it would grow like the other parts of her had started to.
“You’re not wearing that out there,” I said.
“I’m not in the mood to be bossed around, Rome.”
“I’m not in the mood to kill anyone tonight, either.”
“Neither was I, but here we are.”
“I heard.” When she didn’t say anything in response, I snaked my hand around her waist and ran my fingers over her stomach. “She’s an innocent bystander in all this.”
“Exactly. So I have to find a different way to keep her safe. What we’re doing isn’t working.”
“Building trust is going to take time.”
“We’re running out of time,” she shot back. I saw her mind working, saw her searching for a target. I knew I wasn’t going to like the bullseye she found.
“Dressing like this and flaunting yourself in front of these people isn’t going to help. I’ll end up tearing someone’s eyes out.”
“I don’t think anyone understands my commitment to you all. I think the bratva think they can sway me. They tried to scare me tonight. They wanted Bastian’s partnership eliminated, they wanted that contract gone. And some of them conspired to try to make it happen.”
“They’ll come to understand.”
“Or we make them. We can show them how bound we all are.”
“Katalina…” I said her name low in warning.
She spun to stare at me with fury in her eyes. “What?”
“When you fuck around in a sex club, you’re not in control. People let their demons out to play and get lost in fantasies. They keep their secrets close until they’re here and can act them out. This is a place where you see the most raw side of a human.”
“You may have more experience in a club, Rome. But I’ve been attuned to what sex does for a human for a very long time. I know how the sway of my hips can draw a man’s attention; I know the way I lick a finger can bring a man to his knees. Sexual desire is a pleasure and a weakness. What better way to connect with us all?”
I couldn’t control grabbing her hair and pulling her face close to mine. She needed to understand how serious this was, “If you open the box, I won’t be accountable for my actions after.”
A slow smile crept across her face. “That’s perfect, Rome. I’m not taking accountability either.” She leaned in and nipped my bottom lip. Then she kissed me hard and I met her bite for bite. We shared something between us right then. We’d always been equal but I tasted her anger and wanted whatever she did. I was going to support her tonight in any way I knew how.
I loved her. Every crazy, furious part of her.
Once we calmed a bit, she turned to grab a pair of black lace gloves off the small stool in the fitting room. She slid them on slowly and then pointed to her back. “Now tighten my bodice so we can get this show on the road.”
No further prompts were needed from either of us. I yanked the ribbon harder than necessary. I tied her in so tight, I hoped no one would be able to get her out. It was only a matter of time though.
Tonight, I knew as well as everyone else, the devil and all our demons were coming out. I wanted to show the bratva just who they thought they could have her forget, and she just wanted a show, period.
We’d succumbed to the darkness and were about to let it envelope us. That was the allure of a place like this. As we walked back out, I saw that they’d dropped the rings from the ceilings so that guests could start using them. People draped themselves across them, folded around them, and fucked around them too. We snaked through the crowd, Katie glancing at sex scene after sex scene. A woman let two men have her on a couch.
I nodded at her when she waved. “She’s opening her 10th spa downtown this month.”
Katie nodded and stayed close to me to talk. “She’s definitely celebrating the right way.”
“With both those men?”
“To each their own. You can’t really go wrong with more than one, right?” Katie shrugged.
I saw the way her eyes lingered, how she licked her lips. Katalina was contemplating it, and that was the allure of a place like this. It opened your eyes to possibilities you thought were impossible. A woman could have more than one man, you could dress the way you fantasized, you could tempt and punish however you wanted. There was a labyrinth of possibilities, and as the lights flashed and strobed over everyone, you caught glimpses of all that could be.
“You think more men would hit you harder than just me, Kate-Bait?”
She dragged her metal-colored eyes up and down my body. “The more, the merrier.” She swung her gaze to a velvet booth sequestered off in the corner where a celebrity was eating out her friend. She smirked at me and kept moving like what she’d said hadn’t fried every nerve in my body, hadn’t made me want to slap a leash on her and drag her home.
Katie needed to learn that she was the queen of the city and that I, along with everyone in this town, would bow to her, except when it came to us. Between her and me, I ruled. I could bring that woman to her knees with pleasure in seconds. She might fight me on it, she might act like other men would do just as well, but in the dark recesses of her mind, she needed to be sure.
Tonight, I had a feeling, we were going to see that happen. Everyone here, everyone that mattered, would understand that Katie was tied to the Armanelli Family in a way no one else could be. She held the hearts of all of us men in a way not even I wanted her to.
Tonight, we would worship our queen to make everyone understand that they bowed to her or we would destroy them.
Even if I wasn’t going to like it.
