Chapter Seventeen
Ash In My Veins
Rafe
B lood stains my hands as I stride through the mansion and try not to get shot.
No strange, uniformed men assist me, and I remain unaccosted by suspicious potted plants.
After killing the man whose life I came here to end I figure being taken out by a stray bullet will put a damper on my evening and transform my wife into a psychotic mess.
A smile spreads across my face at the thought of Willow turning rabid. She’s sexy as hell at the best of times and utterly fuckable when she’s pissed off. More so with a gun in her hand. Or a blade. My steps quicken at the thought. It’s been too long without her in my arms.
Suddenly the mansion is too big, too packed and too empty all at once.
I round the next corner, my head full of what I’ll do to her pretty pair of tits when I catch her for wearing a set of gold manacles that don’t belong to me and run face first into a pair of nipples that definitely don’t belong to her.
I look up—and up—and keep looking up.
Right into the face of the biggest man I’ve ever met.
I know this because he’s wearing Kirrill’s mark and colors. I clear my throat as I step back to give his bare nipples the space required to return to reality.
“Sorry about that.”
“Where is Kirrill?” his gaze roams above my head by at least a solid foot’s height.
“Not much for chatting.” I rub the back of my neck with the borrowed gun, wishing I checked it for rounds, because this bastard is going to take more than one shot to put down.
“Where is Kirrill? ” he roars in my face.
Both of my ears pop. I wince and work my jaw. “What are you, his brother?”
“Yes . ”
“Ah, fuck.”
I draw the weapon and fire at the same time as the giant lump of a man twigs on that all is not well, and lumbers at me.
Part of his ear flies off with the missed shot, blood spraying backward before he slams into me and knocks me through the wall to our side that feels like it used to be made of cement.
Used to be, because it’s not there anymore.
The entire building swims before me. Dust coats the inside of my lungs and settles on my face, though no air manages to make it where it needs to go.
I cough up a mouthful of blood and hope it isn’t mine.
The body on top of mine stirs, a groan emitting from the behemoth that bleeds freely from more than one place.
“Did he take down the wall with his face?” Dom appears through the haze as I realize the gunfire has stopped for the moment.
“I think so.” I shove ineffectually at the mountain squashing my favorite bodily organs and cough up more blood. “Christ. Get this beast off me.”
“Gonna need a crane.” Even Dom strains to grip the man’s shoulder and heave him upward. His hands slip, and the mountain slams back into me.
“Fuck.” I groan, and I’m not the only one.
“Kirrill.” The Russian’s eyes open, and he stares into my face. “ Moy mladshiy brat ?”
“Your little brother was a brat, all right.” I shake my head, feeling for my liberated gun and come up empty. My gaze finds Dom. “Do the honors?”
“It’ll be my pleasure.”
A point hits my ribs none too gently. I grit my teeth, my attention forced back to the mountain pummeling my lungs into submission.
So this is how I go out. Stabbed by the older brother of a sex trafficker.
Makes sense. My run had to end some time.
A serene smile creases my lips as I lean my head back and don’t bother to fight it, waiting for the blade to slam through my ribs and into my heart.
At this range, and with his strength, he’ll probably take the offensive, sin-filled organ straight out my back and stake me to the floor of his brother’s house. A fitting end.
A hollow breath leaves me, emptying my lungs as a sense of numbness spreads over me.
Heels click on the floor and warmth splatters my face a fraction of a second before the gunshot reaches me, and once again the man’s blood is in my mouth.
I peel sticky eyes open to find Dom’s face replaced with Willow’s, though right now her gold dress is tinted red in my vision.
I blink and try to swipe at my eyes but my hands are trapped.
Not my end after all.
“Thank you.”
She smiles that feral smile I love. “You’re welcome.”
“Good.” I shift, my cock hardening at the thought of her killing for me again, but getting a hard-on under this lump isn’t my idea of fun times. “Now someone get this mountainous cunt off me so I can fuck my wife.”
Dom laughs and finally manages, with Willow’s help, to roll the carcass of Kirrill Singleton’s brother off me while I spit his blood onto the floor.
“Are we burning the place?” Dom asks quietly, his hand under my elbow as he helps me rise, his brow dipped, though he says nothing as I walk away on my own two legs.
Thalia watches me from a gilded corner of the room, not having helped or said a word. Not that I expect her to take any part. Her attention is directed elsewhere and I know Willow has achieved the goal she set out to finish.
“It’s done.” I stop before her, unwilling to offer a hug in my state.
My tiny healer, my best friend’s love, doesn’t seem to care. She takes my hand and kneels before me, kissing my fingers. Tears coat her face as I stare at her in utter shock, a sight I never expected to see or wanted.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I link my hands beneath her armpits and pull her back to her feet, bending a knee to her instead. “Never do you have to kneel to me, Thalia. It is you we honor.”
Behind me, Dom makes an approving sound, and her eyes fill with tears. Nails scratch the back of my neck, drawing my attention and tilting my head back, and then Willow’s hot mouth is latched to mine.
And all the world drops away.
****
T he Bratva take care of cleaning up in a haze of smoke and flame.
I’ll owe them a favor later but for tonight, with the sun almost peeking above the horizon by the time I borrowed a dead man’s toothpaste and hacked up a lung’s worth of dust, I really don’t give a fuck.
I have my wife, my best friend, his girl and our houses intact, each of us ready to head home together.
It’s more than I should ask for, and I’m grateful. There’s only one thing outstanding.
Willow stands beside me, watching Kirrill Singleton’s property burn. The inferno’s fury reflects in her eyes, the blood of her last kills still marring her skin. Her beautiful clothes are in tatters, her golden manacles stained and broken.
She’s perfect.
“Though not quite perfect enough.” I stand behind her and slide a hand up her body, into the gaping fabric of her top to capture one breast, twisting her nipple. Her breath hitches, and she moans, though her body remains rigid. I freeze, and pinch a little harder. Nothing. “Tell me,” I say softly.
“Another man touched me. I offered myself as bait in order to kill him. To find Hope and to get to Singleton.” She doesn’t look at me, stares at the blaze encompassing the sins of our enemy.
I tweak her nipple thoughtfully, not bothering to hide my rage at the thought of another man touching her without my permission. Or hers. Under duress... I pinch her nipple until I know she’s in agony and release her, then lower my lips to her throat, licking and sucking gently.
“How many shots did it take?” She isn’t covered in sufficient blood for it to be a knife job. I know my wife, and she bathes in the blood of her kills when it’s at close quarters. No, this was by necessity only. And she’s hurting for what she perceives as a betrayal.
“Four. Five?” She’s hesitant, and I hate that. Willow takes pride in her kills.
“I’ll find you an enemy to carve up at home.
” I suckle on her pulse point until she moans.
“Tie him to a meat hook. You can carve your name in his flesh.” She shudders in my arms as I make a necklace out of my fingers and restrict her throat until her knees buckle and I follow her to the ground.
My other hand works my pants quickly, knowing we have little time left before we need to leave, but this is important.
She is important.
“I’ll flood all of Rhode Island and the coast in blood if that’s what it takes to make you happy, Willow. Fuck you in it. Claim every inch as ours. Just like you are mine.” I squeeze her throat hard, then tip her head back and kiss her roughly as I sink my cock into her weeping cunt.
She’s hot and dripping and ready for me as I pound my need out into my wife, searing our names on her insides until she’s gasping and clawing and panting at me.
As she falls and the air fills with the ash of another man’s transgressions, I fuck her on the ground and fill her with my cum, whispering her name with reverence.
A sin filled prayer for bringing her back to me safely. Every day from now will be lived without regret. Without fear. Without what ifs.
Every day with her for the rest of my life. My wife.
My Willow.
Everything, for her.
When she’s shaking, her thighs painted with my seed, I gather her in my arms and walk her down the hill to the waiting car, kissing her all the way to the airport.
One enemy is in ashes. Another waits at home. I’ll face that threat with my family. Once I thought we were divided, but now I know better. We are stronger together.
We are the Gallo Empire.