Chapter 21
21
brAIDEN
S amantha’s face is streaked with tears. Her neck is marked with scarlet fingerprints, and her jaw too. Her top is pulled out of her trousers.
I was a fool to let her leave home this morning. I should have locked her in our bedroom. Tied her to our bed. Poured sugar into the Bentley’s petrol tank.
It’s my job to protect her. I’ll give my life to keep her safe. And if that means driving all the way from Philly to knock Antonio Russo’s too-white teeth down his feckin’ throat, I’m ready, willing, and able.
“Braiden!” Samantha says, her voice high and tight. She looks as guilty as a nun caught with her lips around a priest’s prick. Refusing to meet my furious gaze, she staggers back a few feet.
Good girl. She’s given me room to shoulder between her and the goombah shite who’s shrugging his jacket back into place. As Russo shoots his cuffs with careful precision, I see Samantha wipe the back of one hand across her lips. If that shitehawk forced his tongue down her throat, I’ll rip out his diamond cufflinks and jam the metal posts through his eyes.
Better yet, I’ll slice his throat open, and spit down his windpipe while he bleeds out on the freeport floor. Executing the shitehawk now just seems like efficient time management. I know I’ll have to finish the job one day or another.
Samantha tweaks the waistband of her trousers, straightening the seams that animal twisted, and I actually see scarlet.
“Braiden,” she says again, and this time I catch a hint of warning in her tone. I twitch her tentative fingers off my arm, using the motion to better block Russo from so much as glancing at her.
The gobshite is smart enough to notice my balled-up fists. But he’s fool enough to say, “Giovanna was just welcoming me to the freeport.”
“I’m sure Samantha was doing her job.”
“It is fascinating, the things a girl can be paid to do these days.”
He’s calling my wife a whore, and I barely keep from smashing the shite-eating grin from his face. But Samantha has a plan. Samantha has a goal. If I can manage not to murder the fecker, she’ll see Russo in jail for a very long time, stripped of his money and his power.
I won’t be satisfied until he’s feeding catfish at the bottom of the Schuylkill River. Preferably after every joint in his body is broken and he’s been carved into bite-size pieces.
But I promised Samantha I’d try her way first. Forcing myself to relax my hands, I cast a quick glance over my shoulder. “Ready to go home, piscín ?”
Samantha is wary, like a cat in a room full of strangers. She says, “I need some files from my office.”
“I’ll wait for you here.” I won’t let Russo follow her out of this room.
She leaves the door open, probably thinking that will keep me from murdering the goombah prick. She should know better than that by now.
I try to sound like I’m talking about the weather when I say, “Touch my wife again, and I’ll have your hands for paperweights.”
“Which wife is that?” Russo asks, his voice like the slick of oil on top of bad pizza. “You already killed the madwoman in your attic. I hear you mean to wed the Boston girl, the one who broke your coglioni at the Rittenhouse. Or are you talking about my Giovanna?”
“Her name’s Samantha Kelly. And she’s mine.”
“Are you sure she knows that?”
His smug smile makes my knuckles itch. But I answer with words instead of the haymaker I’d love to plant on his cleft chin. “ She chose me . A concept you might understand if you ever had a woman you didn’t need to buy or shame or terrify to get into your bed.”
Russo clicks his tongue like he’s talking to a naughty child. “Always about the sex with you. A woman can be good for more than tickling that pisellino between your legs.”
“Don’t pretend you know anything about what a woman’s good for.”
“Some women are very good at telling stories,” he says. “My Giovanna, for example. Once upon a time, the worst story Giovanna knew was about the laws she broke. But now she tells me more. Much more. She tells me about laws you have broken.”
Samantha told him about Krakower—that was our plan.
But Russo wants me to believe she’s told him more than that. She’s babbled about the Fishtown Boys, about deals we’ve made, jobs we’ve pulled. But I know Samantha better than that. She won’t betray me. This gobshite can’t break that bond between us.
“She was not willing to speak at first,” Russo says, as if he’s read my mind. “But after she found out about your first wife, the one in the attic… And then that Boston bitch… Let us just say my sweet Giovanna has found a whole new use for her pretty little mouth. Asking for help from a real man.”
The sound that rips my throat isn’t human. I forget why I’m not allowed to destroy this piece of shite, why I can’t shove my fist through his fucking sternum and squeeze his heart until he screams for mercy.
Russo’s not an eejit. He put a chair between us before he yanked my chain, but I’m mad enough to think I can hurdle over the leather to reach him.
“What the fuck is going on here!” The cry comes from the doorway, deeper and louder than anything I’m expecting.
I wheel by reflex, arm already pulling back to land a blow. As soon as I get rid of the intruder, I can get back to my true enemy. But I recognize the voice even as I’m shifting my weight. I can’t fight Trap Prince in his own conference room, inside the freeport he owns.
“Back it up, motherfucker,” he roars at me, shouldering past. “That’s right.” He growls, pointing to the foot of the table, behind me. “Over there.”
I stalk across the room like it’s my own idea.
Prince rounds on Russo before I can change my mind. “You too, cocksucker,” he says to Russo, pointing to the other end of the table. And when Russo doesn’t move fast enough: “Now, asshole!”
All three of us are breathing like rutting bulls, but Russo follows orders. Prince plants his hands on the polished mahogany, making a wall out of his body. “I’m only saying this once,” he snarls at both of us. “Your investments in Diamond Freeport can make us all a lot of money. And your membership in the Diamond Ring can be a benefit to you, to me, and the ten other men in the group. But I’ve had bodies carried out of this place before. And I’m not afraid to do it again.”
I’ve been present for two of those corpse removals. I don’t know if there’ve been more, and I don’t actually want to find out.
Prince goes on. “Sam Mott is one of the smartest women I know. She says she can work with both of you, and she says the two of you can work together. Don’t make her a liar.”
I want to correct him—her name’s Samantha Kelly. And from the look on Russo’s face, he’s getting ready to test Prince himself, to call her Giovanna.
But neither of us gets a chance to make his point. Instead, Prince says, “I don’t trust either one of you to do what’s fucking right. So let me give you both a little motivation even you dickheads can’t ignore. Whoever lands the first blow is out of the freeport forever. I’ll lose out on some income, but you’ll be paying tax consequences a hell of a lot longer.”
He glares at Russo first, then at me. “Questions?”
When neither of us responds, he says in a louder voice, “Do either of you have any fucking questions?”
“No,” I say, feeling like I’ve been whacked on the palms with a ruler.
“Not one,” Russo says, his eyes narrowed and his lips tight.
“Good,” Prince says. “Now get the fuck out of here, Kelly. And Russo, I was just coming down to see if you’d like a tour of the garage and the racetrack.”
I stride out of the room before Russo can accept his feckin’ engraved invitation.
I could find my way to Samantha’s office wearing a blindfold. Liam stands as I approach, stepping forward like he’s about to give a report. As I slam my hand down on the knob to the office door, Samantha’s assistant calls out: “Excuse me! She’s on the phone!”
I compromise, closing the door behind me softly, instead of slamming it. I can be reasonable.
Samantha takes one look at my face and says, “Alix, I’ll call you back.” She cradles the phone as I close the distance between us.
I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to strategize. I don’t want to think about the ugly purple marks on her neck.
“Did he hurt you?” The question burns my lips like paint thinner.
“No,” she lies, and I hate myself because I know she’s lying, and I know why she’s lying, and I have to admit that I’d lie too, if it was me answering the question.
“Did you tell him about Krakower?”
She nods like she’s afraid of me, like I might make her pay for what I once gave freely.
“And what else?” I demand. “What else did you give him?”
“Nothing,” she says.
This is my one true wife, paperwork and priests aside. This is the woman I love. I need to protect her. I’ll shelter her with my body, with my bones, even if it costs me every penny I’ve ever invested in the freeport.
So I have to test. “Russo says?—”
“Russo lies.”
“He—”
She cuts me off with her lips on mine.
I pull away, because my body still thrums with all the adrenaline I need to kill a man. “He says,” I get out, but this time her tongue tangles with mine.
My cock is ready to be done talking. My bollocks ache. But Samantha doesn’t make the rules between us. She doesn’t get to decide when we’re through talking.
I hold her fast, my arms tight around her biceps. “Russo says you gave him dirt on the Fishtown Boys.”
“I didn’t. I promise. I swear.”
I believe her, but I still want to kill someone. I settle for swiping my hand across her desk, sending documents flying. Pens and paper clips hit the floor, and a computer keyboard clatters after. Samantha’s spluttering for words when I force her to lean over the edge of the desk.
“Braiden, no, you can’t?—”
But she’s wrong. I can. I can shove my hand beneath her and tear open the button at her waist. I can force her zipper down and slide her trousers over her rounded arse.
And even as she protests, my piscín raises her hips for me. She braces her arms for me. She waits for me to take her, so hot and ready I can smell the honey between her thighs.
I lower my own zip and free my raging cock. “I can,” I tell her, sinking deep enough and hard enough and fast enough that she groans. “You’re my wife,” I say, setting a punishing pace. “Say it.”
“I’m your wife,” she whispers.
“Louder,” I demand, picking up speed, because I might be a grown man, but she strips away every last shred of my restraint.
“I’m your wife,” she says again.
“I can’t hear you.”
“I’m your wife,” she repeats, but she’s not any louder because her voice is shaking too much. She’s as close to breaking as I am.
I reach around and catch the hot button of her clit between my forefinger and my thumb. I squeeze, hard enough to make her cry out, and then without my ordering her again she chants as she shatters: “I’m your wife I’m your wife I’m your wife I’m your wife I’m your wife.”
I crash into her one last time, before I start to spasm in time to her promise, her prayer. I clutch her hips until I’m empty, and then I collapse on top of her, wanting to pin her, to splay her, to melt into her forever.
“I’m your wife,” she whispers one more time.
I kiss her neck, softly now, gentle where Russo left his marks. I smooth her hair to one side. I help her up, and then I guide us both behind her desk, to her mesh-and-metal executive chair. I pull her onto my lap, folding my arms around her and holding her close enough to feel her heartbeat.
I whisper that I need her. I whisper that I love her. I whisper that she’s mine. And I close my eyes to offer up a prayer that we both stay safe from the predator we’ve unleashed inside the freeport.