“Shit,” Dario mutters, already signaling security. We both slide off our stools, moving toward the trouble.
One biker knocks a tray from a waitress’s hands. Glass shatters. The sound echoes through the suddenly quiet casino like a starting gun.
“Hey sweetness,” another biker calls to a different waitress. “How about some beers for me and my friends?”
The Bratva asshole makes eye contact with me across the room. His grin says everything:We’re here to fuck with you. What are you going to do about it?
Security moves in, but these aren’t tourists who got too rowdy. These are killers looking for blood.
The fight explodes like someone lit a match in a room full of gasoline.
I take the nearest Bratva soldier, my fists connecting with his jaw in a satisfying crunch. He’s good, trained, but I’m angry and just drunk enough to be reckless.
His fist catches my ribs—tomorrow’s going to hurt—but I get him on the ground and introduce his ribs to my boot until something cracks.
Chaos erupts around us as security tangles with bikers while Dario destroys the other Russian with methodical precision.
I haul my guy to his feet and shove him toward security. “Get him the fuck out.”
The knife comes from nowhere.
One second I’m turning around, the next there’s a biker two feet away with steel glinting in his hand.
Too close to dodge.
Too fast to block.
So this is how I die. In our own casino, probably bleeding out on some tacky carpet?—
Matteo materializes like an avenging angel, snapping the biker’s arm with a wet crack that makes everyone in a ten-foot radius flinch. The knife clatters across the floor.
My heart pounds against my ribs. Not from the fight, but from what almost happened. What it would have meant.
I have a son who’d grow up without knowing his father. Nina would?—
Christ. Nina.
“I need to go.” The words come out rough. “Dario, drive me to my woman’s place.”
His grin is all knowing satisfaction. “Finally pulled your head out of your ass?”
“Something like that.”
As we head for the exit, I can’t shake the image of that knife. Four inches of steel that almost robbed me of the chance to get to know my son.
I’m done running from this. From them. From whatever Nina makes me feel.
My father was a coward who ran when things got hard.
I’m not my father.
25
NINA
My heart slamsagainst my ribs at the violent pounding on my door.
At eleven p.m., nobody knocks like that unless they’re bringing trouble.
