Lena’s necklace glints from its place between her breasts. I rub my thumb across the pendant. The gold is smooth, warm. The sight of it stirs the turmoil in my gut, forcing tension back into my limbs.
Lena senses the shift. She cracks her lids, peeking at me through her post-orgasm haze. “What’s wrong? Reality didn’t live up to expectations?”
Merda.I kiss her forehead, her mouth. “Fuck no. Reality blew all fantasies out of the water. Sex with you…” I trace a finger around her lips, pushing all other thoughts away. “It’s insanely good. Addictively good. Brain-meltingly good.”
Lena grins, tucking her head against my chest. “I know English is your second language, so I’ll help you with this one— ‘brain-meltingly’ isn’t a word.”
“It is now.” Gathering her mass of hair in one hand, I cup Lena’s cheek with the other, kissing her until she’s melted against me, her legs twined with mine. There’s no urgency, no rush to get off. We lay twisted together, kissing for countless minutes. My heart thuds against my chest, matching the pattern of her’s.
“Stop, stop,” Lena eventually says, pushing me away. “I have to pee.”
“Go, go.” I give her ass a playful swat as she hops out of bed, barely recognizing the man I’ve become in the last hour, let alone the smile that’s splitting my face.
Lena’s wearing a matching smile when she comes back to bed, but it falters when a gash on my face catches her attention. She twists a sheet around her chest as she sits back down, her fingers tracing a line on my cheekbone. “What happened today?”
I wince, the cut still stings. “Ah…”
“No.” Lena straightens her shoulders, expression serious. “No avoiding the question. Spill.” She jabs me in the ribs. “What the hell happened?”
“Explosion. Car bomb.”
Lena’s eyes widen but she otherwise stays calm. “Whose car?”
“Mine. Well, one of them.”
Lena scoots closer, her hand finding mine. She laces our fingers together. “Are you going to make me wheedle every answer out of you, or do you want to just speed this along and tell me what happened?”
“Honestly…I have no fucking clue.” I scrub my jaw with my free hand. “I’ve been over it a million times in my head. Ari, Johnny, Bruce and I wrapped our meeting with the head of our casinos. We always keep security tight, but since the war with the Paganos started we’ve been extra vigilant. Changing up vehicles. Randomly switching between secure parking locations. Never creating a pattern that can be tracked. Always sweeping the cars. For someone to get close enough to wire one of them with a bomb, let alone one of mine…”
I hate that the taste of fear intensifies as I mentally run through the possible scenarios. No fortress is impenetrable, but I’ve spent years fortifying the walls around me and my family. For someone to break through and successfully wire one of my cars with a bomb, it’s one of two possibilities: sheer fucking luck or an inside job.
“What?” Lena’s question pulls me out of my head. Her brow is pinched in concern. “Tell me, Rem. What are you thinking?”
“To get close enough to plant a bomb in one of my cars, for someone to get close enough to actually blow me and Ari up—it only makes sense if it’s an inside job.”
Lena blinks, her expression shifting from surprised to angry in a flutter of lashes. “You think one of your own men betrayed you?”
“I can’t rule it out.” I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, relishing the soft slide of it against my skin. “Our family is in the middle of a war. A fight to the death. Our rivals want us weak. And someone wants you dead. I can’t ignore that while those things might not be connected, the fact that I’m focusing so much time on locating the threat against you means I’m not always as focused on our enemies as I would be otherwise. Maybe I’ve missed something. Maybe the Paganos have turned one of my soldiers against me. Maybe they’ve hidden a mole in our midst. Maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention.”
It’s not lost on me that I’m explaining this to the very woman Aldo believes to be our enemy.
The woman who is looking at me with a mixture of concern and guilt. “It’s my fault. That you’re distracted and working so hard and not able to focus on what you need to. Jesus, I’m so sor?—”
“No.” I stop her with a kiss. “It’s not your fault. None of it. The only people I blame for the explosion today are the ones who planted the bomb, and me for not being quick enough to realize what was happening before it detonated. Even then, if a few bruises and a black eye are the price I have to pay to having you here, with me, I’ll pay it every day, no questions asked.”
“How hard did you hit your head when the car exploded? Because that’s insane.”
“It’s the truth.” I wouldn’t trade her for anything, and that’s the very crux of my problem.
Exhaustion hits me like a brick to the head. I close my eyes,pulling Lena closer as I relax against the pillow. I feel her lips ghost across my bruised cheek before she snuggles against my chest.
“Are you in pain? Do you need me to get you anything?”
“I’m alright,piccola. Whoever planted the bomb was sloppy. Any quality hitman would’ve wired it to explode when we turned on the ignition, after we’d already gotten in the car. This idiot wired it to the locking mechanism so the whole fucking thing wentboomwhile we were still yards away. It knocked us to the ground, but no permanent damage done.”
Lena releases a shaky sigh, her relief audible. “God, Rem. That’s so close. Too close.”
She’s right. It was too fucking close. No amount of post-orgasmic high can temper the rage gripping me right now. I can’t hunt down Lena’s would-be killers from inside my penthouse, but I also can’t protect her if I’m dead.
