HowIregard her doesn’t matter. WhatIsee as attractive in a woman.
All this forms the noise in my head. I’m stuck when she tilts her head, despite realizing how close we are. I really need to back the fuck up.
Right now.
“You think I’m pretty?”
I think you’re gorgeous. But highly forbidden and on a path much different than the one I’m walking.
She’ll never see the inside of a prison, while I’ve been numerous times.
She’ll never know what it’s like to take a life, while I’ve taken many.
She’ll never need to use a weapon, while I use multiple.
She’s a Cosa Nostraprintessa, and I’m a Bratva Elite, a device meant to be used and discarded. Never protected. Never alleviated for someone like her.
“You know you are,” I reply gruffly, hoping to shift the attention from me to her. “Isn’t the saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder or something?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
You asked me the impossible.
My head thumps faster—harder. As does my heart.
Something about her not only affects my senses, butmeas a whole. My obsessions are far and few: computers, networks, anything with technology. I’m never drawn by things I don’t want. Things I don’t knowhowto want.
Things I also can’t want.
Ignoring her, I climb onto her bed and easily unhook the lights before passing them down. The sun falls at an angle that catches on the lighter strands of her hair, making her glow.
Ignoring the jolt that has on my stomach, I jump from her bed and stride for the door. “Let me know if you need any more help.”
A few minutes later, Vanessa enters with a large smile and an announcement to match.
We head to Ostia first so Serafina can say goodbye to her mother and grab anything else from her room she’ll want, being that she’ll no longer be a short trip away.
When we pull up, Zeno twists around. “Give me a few to break the news to her. That way, when she worries—which she will—she’ll have the space to get it out. She’s particular about appearances and won’t want you to witness.”
“He’s not wrong,” Serafina comments from beside me once he’s gone.
“I’ll stay in the car. It’s probably a bad idea for me to go in.” Vanessa worries her bottom lip, casting me a look.
As the daughter of the man who once raped Gabriella Mancini, Zeno and Serafina’s mother, in this, even I’m not so numb to not understand her apprehension.
Serafina leans forward, nestling herself between the two front seats. “Madre will want to meet the woman who convinced Zeno to take the stick out of his ass. Trust me, she’ll be okay.”
In the side mirror’s reflection, I watch my Pakhan, someone who puts on such an infallible front, glare at the small house in trepidation. “I don’t want to cause her nightmares.”
“You’re the woman giving her son sweet dreams. She’ll love you for that. You don’t know what Z was like before you came along, Vanessa. I’d hear her talking to herself sometimes, and she worried he’d end up like his father and so many Cosa Nostra men before them—cold-hearted and unloved by the woman they end up wed to.”
Vanessa isn’t given a chance to reply, because Zeno returns, opening her door. “As suspected, she isn’t thrilled about Serafinaleaving Italy, but she is happy she’ll be staying with you in Moscow.”
“Seriously?” both Vanessa and Serafina chime, their surprise too high-pitched for my ears.
“She understands it’ll be safer.”
He gestures for us to all climb out, practically pulling Vanessa out of the vehicle. Serafina skips ahead with Zeno while Vanessa falls back beside me. Her shoulder brushes mine when she leans close enough to hiss in my ear. “Invent some security break on our networks to get me the hell out of this. That’s an order from your Pakhan.”
