Chapter 8
Something was going on—somethingthat involved the man who’d followed me into the bathroom. Well, the bathroom he’d gone into. I’d pushed open the door and held it long enough to ease into the men’s room instead. As I predicted, he hurried into the lady’s room in search of me. But why? I was pretty certain that it wasn’t me he was after but Andrei. The moment I’d walked onto the casino floor, I’d felt eyes on me. A quick glance over my shoulder and I’d spotted him lurking in the shadows. I couldn’t get a clear view of his face, but based on his build, he was a big guy.
Now, hours later, I couldn’t get him out of my head. Shaking off the need to uncover his mystery, I focused on my current purpose. I’d overheard Lipovsky and Andrei discussing a key player, Oleg Drosky, set to meet them at the casino in the morning. As it turned out, his purpose was fronting the fighter scheduled to go against Ryker Nash. If my suspicions were correct, Lipovsky intended for Ryker to eliminate his prized fighter as a show of dominance. It was just one more way for Lipovsky to exert control over someone. Only… I was about to ruin his plans.
“You’re a sexy little thing, aren’t you?” Drosky’s voice washed over me as I stepped into his room. “You like playing with fire, don’t you? I’d love to see that bastard Sloski’s face when he finds out I fucked his woman.”
The words laced with Andrei’s name curled up at the edges of my mouth, a knowing smirk painting my lips. Drosky’s ignorance was almost pitiful—he had no idea that his last moments were ticking away, that his fate was sealed tighter than the snap of my dress.
“I don’t answer to Andrei,”I said, my voice steady and cool. “So, who I fuck isn’t his business.”
With a flick of my wrist, the snap gave way, and the fabric slipped from my body like a whispered secret, pooling silently at my feet. A pair of black stockings were held in place by a black lace garter belt. Beneath the belt, a black lace thong covered my core. His lecherous gaze traveled up my front, landing on the matching lace bra.
I stood confidently, a statue of flesh and shadow, my back pressed against the wall. It was crucial that he remained oblivious to the cold steel I had hidden, the blade that clung to my thigh like a dangerous secret.
In a display of feigned affection, I reached out my hand, fingers tracing the curve of Drosky’s ample midsection, my touch light against the fabric of his shirt. His eyes, wide with anticipation, followed my every move, yet revealed nothing of the thoughts racing behind them as I tugged the metal-free and popped the button to his trousers. Easing the zipper down, I pushed my hand inside his pants, rubbing the semi-hardened flesh still hidden beneath the boxers he wore.
“Fuck.” His response was primal, a guttural sound that filled the room as he thrust his hips toward me, a wordless command etched in his movements. “Take it out,” Drosky growled, the demand raw as he jerked his chin toward his waist. “I want to see those pretty little lips wrapped around my cock.” His gaze held a predatory gleam, his tongue flicking across his lips with a mix of anticipation and desire. Insistent fingers found their way to my hair, tangling in the strands with an unspoken assertion of control that he mistakenly thought he possessed.
Shoving the material down his legs, I dropped to my knees as I eased his cock out of the ill-fitting boxers. A moment of regret washed over me as I began moving my palm along his flesh. Drosky’s grunts of approval filled the room as I jerked his sorry excuse for manhood into a hardened state.
“Lick it,” he ordered, tugging on the strands of my hair. “Put it in your mouth, little girl.”
Sneering at his demands, I leaned forward and ran my tongue along the underside of his dick.
“Fuck.” His hips thrust forward again, his body demanding more. “Stop teasing me, bitch. Put it in your mouth and suck me off.”
Adjusting my position on the ground, I leaned forward and swirled my tongue around his crown. His fat dick pulsed with anticipation as I eased my free hand around my backside. Just as I took his disgusting cock in my mouth, I slipped the blade out of its hiding place. Drosky’s head lulled back as his eyes slammed shut. His grip tightened on my hair as he began thrusting his dick into my mouth. Letting go of my hold on his shaft, I pressed my palm against his portly gut. He groaned as his rhythm increased. I was nothing more than a wet hole for him to abuse.
“I can see why Andrei likes you.” He grunted. “Fuck I’m going to choke you with my cum.”
Yeah. That wasn’t happening. It was bad enough that his tiny prick was inside my mouth, but his shooting his load into my throat… that was not going to happen. Just as I felt his body tense, I pushed my blade between his legs and sat back on my heels. His eyes bulged in his head as the stark realization of what I’d done washed over him.
“What the fuck?” He muttered as I pulled the blade free, and he dropped to his knees. “You bitch…” he tried to lunge for me, but the blood caused him to slip onto his stomach. Groaning, he covered his nearly severed cock with his hands, “You fucking cut my dick off.”
Pushing him to his back, I straddled his body. My thighs pinned his arms to his sides, keeping him immobile. “Men like you deserve far worse than this.” I pressed the tip of my blade against his throat.
“Who are you?” He stuttered out, his body slowly giving out to the blood loss.
Leaning close to his ear, I whispered, “Some call me the Angel of Mercy—but I give no mercy to pigs like you. I’m the harbinger of death. The judge, the jury, and the executioner. Your death is for every woman you’ve bought and abused.”
His eyes widened just before I pushed the metal into his neck. Drosky gurgled as he took his last breath beneath me. Slipping the knife from his throat, I slid off his now still frame. Hurrying to gather my dress, I wiped the blood from my legs and tossed the towel to the ground beside his vacant stare. I should’ve been worried about being tracked, but I was near the end of my mission—once Lipovsky was eliminated, I didn’t care if I was found. I knew going after Aleski Lipovsky could end in death—his and mine. I’d made peace with that long ago… knowing I’d at least be reunited with the man he stole from me.
Easing open the door, I glanced into the hallway, ensuring no other patrons were milling around. At the seedy hotel, where Drosky agreed to meet me, I wasn’t too concerned about anyone noticing me leave.
I’d just stepped out from the shadows of the building and stood beside my motorcycle when my past collided with my present.
“Not exactly the place I’d expect to find you.”
His voice washed over me, freezing me in place. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I spoke over my shoulder, refusing to look him in the eyes. If I looked at him, I couldn’t pretend he was standing behind me.
“You see… I doubted myself before, but then I learned the Angel of Mercy was here… in Vegas. Then I learned this elusive woman was on a vendetta mission—a mission to seek retribution for the torment he’d cause her. It was then that I knew the chance meeting with a woman I thought was just a stranger was something more.”
I started to climb onto my bike, but his hand wrapped around my arm, halting me.
“Why?”
The agony in his voice nearly brought me to my knees.
“Why what?” I jerked out of his grasp as if his touch burned.
His grunt of disgust seemed to echo off the alleyway.
“For months, we’ve mourned you. No, that’s wrong.” He took a deep breath. “We blamed ourselves, Carmela. We’d been right there and lost you— Fuck.” The sound of my brother’s voice cracking tore at the fiber of my soul. “You should have come home to us… let us help you.”
“You can’t help me, Vincenzo. No one can.”
“You’re wrong, Carmela. We understand what he’s taken from you, from all of us. We want him dead just as much as you do.”
I turned to face the man I hadn’t seen in nearly a year. Vincenzo was everything I strived to be—a man I molded myself after to become the woman standing in front of him now.
“You have no idea what I’m feeling. Lipovsky took everything from me. It wasn’t just my soul he robbed me of—he ripped my fucking heart out and obliterated it. Lipovsky didn’t destroy me; he decimated me. All that’s left is a black hole where my heart used to be. An empty void that’s filled with so much rage it changed the girl you remember. Death isn’t enough for him. I want to rip apart the man who took my reason for holding on to hope when I shouldn’t have had any.” I swiped at the tears gathering in my lashes.
“But I did, Vin. I had hope. Hope when I was locked in a cage barely big enough to move around in. Hope when I was strung up and beaten just because they could. Hope even when he strapped a chain around my neck like I was a fucking dog—because I knew you would come for me… I knew that he would come for me.” I took a step closer to my bike. “And when I watched the man I love more than myself fall to his death, I knew hope wasn’t real. So, don’t stand there and tell me you understand what Lipovsky’s taken from me… because you have no fucking idea.”
Swinging my leg over the bike, I settled into the saddle of my motorcycle. The rumble of the engine under me was like a growl of anticipation, a prelude to the escape I was about to make. A fleeting glance at my brother Vincenzo was enough to catch the raw, unguarded pain on his face. It was like a punch to the gut—a feeling I’d become too familiar with.
“The sister you love is dead,” I called out to him over the noise, my voice cold, a stark contrast to the chaos of emotions inside me. “She’s not coming back.”
With that, I kicked the bike into gear, gravel spitting from under the tires as I sped out of the parking lot. I left behind more than a cloud of dust—I left behind the person I used to be. Carmela Anastasi was a name that belonged to a life filled with family warmth and safety, not this husk of vengeance that now bore her face. As the casino’s lights began to appear on the horizon, my resolve hardened. I had to act fast—Vincenzo’s discovery of my whereabouts in Vegas would soon ripple through the family. Alone, he might not attempt to hinder me, but if the family united against me, that was a different story.
Undoubtedly, they would act under the guise of protection, believing they were saving me from my own disastrous path. They’d cut the threads of my ambition, believing it mercy, before I could weave them into completion. My brothers, with their stern resolve and conviction, held not just the power to dismantle my plans—they held the power to destroy what little was left of me.