Corrupt Vows (Vicious Mafia Kings #1)

Chapter 5

Serenity Vivaldi

I mash the clay into a pancake with my palm, destroying hours of meticulous molding, and huff in frustration.

One day. Only twenty-four hours before group critiques start, and I’m nowhere near ready to share my piece. No one expects our work to be gallery ready, but I’m not even halfway through constructing the base.

It’s embarrassing, especially when I was so optimistic last week.

Maybe if I could get a halfway decent night of sleep, my muse would return, but rest and relaxation is not happening, not with the future hanging over my head.

Three days. My parents will announce my engagement to Nico Russo in three days. I’ll move out of my childhood home to live with an egotistical, ruthless asshole. And in four months, I’ll walk down the aisle and take that insufferable jerk as my husband.

I jump as my cell vibrates in my apron pocket. With a curse, I wipe my left hand, which is relatively cleaner than my right, on my apron and fish my phone out of the pocket. After checking the caller ID and seeing Alfonso’s name, I pause with my thumb over the end call button and tell myself not to be a coward.

I won’t have the strength to talk to him after my peers verbally eviscerate my pathetic attempt at art tomorrow, and I’m not cruel enough to let him hear the news from someone else, so I answer the call.

“Hey, Alfie.”

My attempt at sounding cheerful falls flat even to my ears.

“That good, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Not ready for tomorrow, I take it?”

“Not at all, but… there’s something else, too. Hang on, let me wash up and go somewhere quieter,” I say.

The frantic bustling of students in the studio won’t calm until next week, after group critiques end.

He hums his understanding, so I press mute and drop the phone back into my apron before heading to the sink at the back of the classroom.

Weaving through the chaos, I dodge Calvin as he steps out of his station with his arms overflowing with a dozen different materials, barely miss a collision with Becca as she stretches, and clip Donald’s shoulder when he unexpectedly turns around. I bounce off his much taller frame and knock into the nearby table.

Hissing in pain, I reach for my hip, knowing it’ll bruise, but curse and dart forward as Ralf’s sculpture wobbles. He turns. We both reach for it, but I get there a millisecond before he does. His massive hands wrap around mine and guide the piece upright.

Unease creeps down my spine as his hands linger on mine. I swallow and scoot away from him, but he’s so close his body heat seeps into my side.

“I’m so sorry, Ralf,” I say, truly apologetic.

With shoulders as broad as a mountain, eyes as blue as a clear summer sky, and hair as blonde as the golden halos drawn over angel’s heads, Ralf is the school’s only exchange student from Russia. He’s gathered a fan base—groupies, if you will—who follow him around outside of class, but I’ve always kept my distance. He has an edge of menace in his aura, something I learned to recognize at an early age, and the scowl he wears when he thinks no one is watching unsettles me.

I pull my hands out from under his and wipe them on my thighs. The motion reminds me of Nico’s warning, and I blush.

Leave it to that asshole to embarrass me in front of my entire class without even being here.

“It was accident, da ? No bad thing happen, so is okay,” Ralf says in his accented English.

I open my mouth to thank him, but the mess my dirty hands left on his sculpture catches my attention.

“Oh god, I’m sorry!” I say as I push past him and grab the roll of paper towels off his desk. “I’ll be right back.”

I tear off a big wad, rush to the sink, rinse my hands, and wet the paper towels. After wringing them out, I hurry back to his station and plop half of the towels into his hand before gently wiping the biggest clump of clay off his work.

“I didn’t mean to. Don’t worry, I’ll get it all off before—”

I freeze as his thick fingers close around my wrist, directly over where Nico grabbed me a few days ago. After heat flashes through me at the memory, worms crawl in my belly. His grip covers more of my arm, and a surge of panic rushes through me. I don’t like it. At all.

I drop the wet paper towels with a plop and push on his arm. For a horrible moment, he squeezes hard enough to make my bones ache, but he releases me and steps away with his hands at shoulder height in the universal gesture of surrender.

“I am sorry, but I do not want you to touch again,” he says.

Embarrassment streaks through me.

“Oh, well… actually, I don’t blame you, so—”

“You misunderstand. Is better this way. I like,” he explains with a gesture toward his sculpture. His lopsided smirk doesn’t match the intensity in his eyes, but I follow his motion and study his artwork. I tilt my head, wondering if a different angle will reveal whatever he likes about it, but my clay-colored handprints clash with the different shades of black and grey.

“Is…” He turns his attention skyward, as though he’s struggling to translate a word, but the hard glint in his eye fills me with skepticism. “Enticing. Alluring. Erotic.”

My stomach tightens. I clear my throat and tilt my head the other way.

“It’s your artwork, so I won’t argue,” I say, attempting to defuse the tension between us.

Ralf chuckles and leans down as though to tell me a secret.

“My lines are stark. Bold. Your hands are soft. Fragile.”

I swallow and step away, both uncomfortable with his nearness and his tone, but the juxtaposition between the outline of his sculpture—which vaguely resembles a half-burnt tree with exposed roots—and the delicate shape of my fingers registers, and my queasiness grows as I agree with him.

My touch turned his artwork from bleak and tragic to sexy and thought provoking.

“I think is happy accident, nyet ?” he says with a shrug. He crosses his arms in what would be a casual movement on a normal man, but he gives off too much of a sinister vibe for me to see anything but danger.

I’m most likely blowing this way out of proportion, but I’m not willing to risk being wrong, not with my safety, so I tuck my wariness away and offer him a small smile.

“I’m glad it worked out, and I’m sorry again for causing a scene. I’ll be more careful,” I say.

He tilts his head and lifts his brow. Without taking his eyes off mine, he murmurs, “Maybe you should not. Sometimes best things in life come from mistakes. I would like if you made more with me.”

And now I know the real reason he has groupies. My heart skips a beat, even though I’d rather jump out the window than touch him again.

“For art, of course,” he adds.

“Of course,” I parrot back, because otherwise the moment is just too fucking awkward. Needing to get the hell away as fast as possible, I give a polite farewell and head into the hall.

My phone buzzes, reminding me I’m still on a call. I curse and pull it out of my apron pocket.

“Sorry, Alfie, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging.”

“Are you okay? You sound—”

“I’m fine. Kind of. It’s been a really long day. A long week, actually,” I manage as my adrenaline fades and my bones shake.

“Is it because Camilla came home yesterday? I heard she stayed at the hospital longer than expected. Is she okay?”

“She’s…” I don’t know how to answer the question.

I sigh as Sebastian rises from the chair in the hall and follows me around the corner.

“She’ll be okay, eventually. Stop asking questions and let me say what I need to say.”

If he keeps lobbing words at me, I may never tell him. His hesitant okay scares the shit out of me. I take a deep breath and blow it out, but my heart continues to race.

With a warning glance at Sebastian, I step into the bathroom and check each stall is empty before giving my bodyguard a thumbs up and shutting the door between us.

I stare at my haggard reflection for a moment, trying to figure out what to say, but in the end, I blurt out the words before I lose my nerve.

“I’m marrying Nico Russo in four months. They’ll announce our engagement in three days.”

Water drips from the faucet. The fluorescent lights hum with electricity. Air rushes through the vent. A toilet in the adjacent men’s restroom flushes. I hold my breath as the silence continues.

“Are you pregnant?”

His question stabs me in the heart.

“What? No!”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m still a fucking virgin, and you know it, you ass.”

My voice bounces off the ceiling and walls, shocking me out of my tailspin. I think of all the times we could’ve snuck around and all the creative ways he stopped it from happening. Several seconds tick by before Alfonso responds.

“Well, thank fuck you are. You’d better stay one until you’re married, too.”

I stare at my slack-jawed reflection as my best friend throws away our years of friendship.

“Nico Russo? The heir of the Russo family? Fuckin’ hell, Serenity, don’t bring that demon to my doorstep. Just stay a goddamn virgin so he doesn’t have a reason to come visit my father.”

He hangs up, but I can’t move. The line goes dead. My phone beeps in my ear and the screen turns off. I stare at my reflection and wonder if any part of my life has ever been real.

Nico Russo isn’t even officially part of my life yet, and he’s already isolated me from the entire world. Just the mention of his name destroyed a lifelong friendship.

It hurts.

I drop my arm and let my phone hang at my side as I walk toward the mirror on wooden legs. In a moment of weakness, I consider blaming Camilla for dumping her responsibility on me, but I can’t. She’s as much a victim as I am.

And cursing my parents is just a waste of energy. I’m too terrified to stand up to my father, and mamma would put me in my place before I lifted my heel from the ground.

I blink back tears as the most pathetic realization hits me.

In a world of online hook-ups, clubs on every street corner, and one-night stands as prevalent as alcohol, I’m a twenty-five-year-old virgin about to be sacrificed to a brutal, ruthless mafia boss. But that isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is knowing Alfonso was right. I can’t risk having sex with anyone else.

Nico Russo will be the one to take my virginity.