ONE
LUCIE
The first time I met Toma Kovac, I thought he was a handsome, but cocky prick.
Now, as he rams his fat cock into my pussy from behind, I still think he’s a cocky prick.
And he canabsolutelyback it up.
An alarm seems to ring in my ear, but I ignore it.
“Keep going,” I moan, gripping the rough sheets chafing my knees.
His breath caresses the sensitive skin at the juncture of my neck and shoulder, his voice a dreamy balm to my heated flesh. “Wake up, beautiful.”
I jump up in bed, very much alone, before flopping back down. My phone blares its wakeup call in. I fumble to switch it off and sigh. Morning lights filters through my window, assaulting my eyes and already pissing me off.
I press the pillow over my face. Then groan into it.
It’s going to be a long day.
I don’t wake up pissed off. From sunrise to sundown, I’m fresh as a daisy, ready to charm my way through life, as I’ve always done. That’s who I am, that’s what I do. Ever since I wastwelve and being pissed off had dire consequences. Life-altering ones.
But this was all too real.
It’s the third time this week that I’ve dreamt of the Croatian hacker and his beast of a body. And his crooked nose that should make him look like a caricature but accentuates his hard brow and squared jaw. And that slutty little moustache.Oh, what I would do with that slutty little moustache.
My hand starts a slow descent towards my soaked knickers. I imagine how his dark hair would feel when I’d grip it as he…
Nope.We’re not going there.
I’ve fucked too many men and women who were bad for me. I’ve learnt my lesson. Stay away from anyone involved with crime syndicates and any wannabe mobsters.
With his baggage, Toma screams ‘trouble’. Not in a ‘he’s going to use me and break my heart’ kind of trouble—like my exes and my friends back at home—but in a ‘my life would be in danger for getting involved with him because his brother is a psychopath called ‘The Butcher’ who just entered the skin trade with the Russian mafia’ kind of way.
I stare at the ceiling of my room in the flat I shared with Aleksei while we were still married. Located in the centre of London, high above the busy streets of the Financial District, it’s a state-of-the-art, modern place.
Soul-less.
And more importantly, spotless. Not even a tiny spider in sight. My mind has nothing to focus on but the dread filling my every pore at the prospect of packing my suitcases.
I should be ecstatic. This is all I’ve ever wanted. I’m moving to a place of my own to study psychology—a topic I’m passionate about—in a city I know will enchant me. Far from mafia business, whether on the French side or British-Italian side. Farfrom death and threats, and loss. But it’s my second move in six months and my emotions are all over the place.
First, I had to move from sunny south of France to this grey and busy city at Dante’s behest. Of course, when my cousin called on me, I didn’t hesitate to help my family and sacrifice my freedom to marry a man I didn’t love, and who didn’t love me back, just so we could expand our territory. Hell, I didn’t even know the man.
I prioritised the Ventura name. As my adoptive father trained me to. As has been ingrained in me from the moment I could understand words. Dante would have done the same for me. Our family motto demands it.Lealtà, dovere, coraggio.Loyalty, duty, courage. These words are inked onto our skins and beaten into our hearts. I live by them.
One thing I didn’t realise when I agreed to this arranged marriage was the loneliness that would strike me right in the chest. I’d been avoiding it quite brilliantly for eight years, partying, surrounding myself with people all the time. It was the perfect distraction to my roiling emotions. I made myself into the life of the party, the sunshine girl.
But as I signed the marriage papers to solidify the pact between Aleksei and Dante, I lost my freedom and found myself alone and with no purpose.
The friends I thought I had disappeared very quickly. No one asked if my husband was kind to me, if I was okay or needed a friend to talk to. I disappeared from the scene, and became an after-thought, until I wasn’t even that.
I pick up my phone from the night-stand and open my favourite social media app to distract myself from negative thinking. The first video is one of my friends—I should say ex-friends but I don’t because it makes me feel like a loser—as they party on a yacht along the coast of Marbella, Spain. The pang of disappointment is familiar by now.
They didn’t matter. Not really.
But this unbearable loneliness reminds me that the true family I found here could also disappear in a heartbeat. I’ll move to Edinburgh and could lose it all, all over again.
