6. Damian
DAMIAN
I make it exactly three steps down the hallway before I have to stop and lean against the wall, my hands braced against the cool plaster as I try to get my breathing under control.
Christ.
The image of Sienna pulling her shirt over her head is burned into my retinas, seared there like a brand I can't escape.
The pale curve of her shoulders, the way her strawberry-blonde hair tumbled around her face, the delicate line of her collarbone disappearing beneath the lace straps of her bra.
Of course it was fucking lace. A soft peach that cupped her small breasts, thin enough that I could see her nipples peaking through it from the cold.
My cock throbs. I’m rock-hard, stiff and aching from the sight of her slender body in nothing but those damned cutoff jean shorts and her bra.
She had a sprinkling of freckles beneath her collarbones—my jaw tightens.
I can imagine running my tongue across them, tracing a line from dot to dot as she shuddered and trembled beneath me…
She’s so fucking beautiful .
She’s beautiful in a way that I don’t often encounter in my world.
Sweet and delicate and innocent, that soft, girl-next-door beauty that makes me think she’d taste like lemonade on a summer day and smell like the sweet scent of fresh grass and flowers.
She’s the kind of woman that a man like me shouldn’t touch… ever.
And she asked me to touch her.
I’m not a fool. She’s not as innocent as she appears—she was taken from a strip club, for fuck’s sake. She’s clearly not a virgin, since she has a child. I have no idea what her past is or how experienced she is, but I know she’s young, and I know she’s under my protection.
I have power over her. I’m a brutal man, a killer, a man who has wielded violence all his life.
I’ve done unspeakable things to other men, killed in horrific ways…
but I’ve never hurt a woman. I’ve never used my power or violence to compel a woman to do something she didn’t want to do.
I’ve never taken anything that wasn’t mine to have.
The law says Sienna is mine. But my conscience, what’s left of it, says that I shouldn’t touch her. No matter how badly I want to.
My cock is still hard, straining against the confines of my pants like a fucking teenager who's never seen a woman topless before.
The irony isn't lost on me. I've had plenty of women over the years—beautiful women, experienced women who knew exactly what they were getting into when they came to my bed.
Women who wanted the danger I represented, who got off on the violence that clings to me, that follows me wherever I go.
Women who wanted it rough, who wanted the beast. They got off on the fear.
On the knowledge that I could hurt them, would, even, if they begged for it.
Sienna isn’t that kind of woman. I don’t know her, but I can see that just from looking at her. And right now, I’m all that stands between her and death.
I’d be a monster if I took her into my bed, knowing she wouldn’t say no even if she wanted to.
I shove myself away from the wall, heading down the hallway three doors to my own room.
I’d wanted Sienna and Adam close, to keep an eye on them, but now I’m starting to think that I shouldn’t have done that.
That I should have had Mrs. Horvat take them to some other guest wing, somewhere further away, where I can’t think about the fact that Sienna is only a few doors down from where I’m sleeping, lying in bed, accessible, if not entirely willing.
It’s a temptation I don’t need, a pressure on my already blackened conscience to step over that one last line that makes me a man who, if not good, is decent, at least.
The last thing I need to think about is her, willing or not. What I need to be focusing on is what happened tonight. The Russos, one of two large Italian mafia families in Miami, just declared war on the Abramovs.
It’s not a complete surprise. The tension has been building between the Abramovs and the Russos since Victor died and Konstantin took over.
It has been among all the families, large and small, as they waited to see what changes Konstantin might make and how it might shift the balance of power in Miami’s criminal network.
Already, changes were happening before, when his wife, Valentina, took out two bosses in a double assassination as part of a plot to take down her old employer, a power broker in Miami named Nicholas Kane.
We thought that, despite the tension, things were going mostly smoothly.
Konstantin gave the Russos stakes in some of our less volatile businesses, the ones he wanted to build up to work on taking the Bratva more legitimate—and slowly phase out some of our more illegal dealings.
The Russo don, Giovanni, was meant to have men working with the guys running a handful of our clubs to build up business, handle marketing, and add additional girls to the roster.
A joint venture that would line both the Russos' and the Abramovs' pockets, and build trust between the two families.
Now, it seems that trust has been broken.
I step into my bedroom, closing the door firmly behind me, as if those few inches of wood are the barrier I need between me and my wife sleeping a few yards down the hall.
My wife . I scrub my hands across my face, exhaustion rippling through me as the significance of what I’ve done hits me all over again.
Marriage went out the window for me a long time ago. The thought of a family has long since died. But in one night, all of that has been turned upside down .
Temporarily, I remind myself, as I start to strip out of my clothes.
My decisions tonight were impetuous, but they don’t have to be permanent.
Tonight was about keeping Sienna safe, but the Russo threat won’t last forever.
Konstantin and I will make sure of that, that this is all dealt with and put to bed.
It was supposed to have been stopped already.
The don approached Konstantin with his proposal to use some of the girls for a pornography business—more than just the cam work they apparently already did at the club.
A lot of the girls there aren’t opposed to doing side work, even fucking for the streams, but Giovanni wanted to start a full-on company, using as many of the girls as he could to film all kinds of videos.
Konstantin was willing to consider it, employing only the girls who wanted to take part, until Giovanni revealed the other half of his plan.
He wanted to take the girls without partners or close friends to miss them, use them for filming until the audience got tired of them and their videos stopped making sales, and then traffick them to buyers in other countries. That was where Konstantin drew the line.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him so angry over business before. He all but threw the Russo don out, threatening him with complete removal from the businesses and a dissolution of the partnership between the families if Russo ever spoke a word of that idea again.
We’d thought it was finished. But clearly, it wasn’t.
Apparently, Giovanni’s men have been quietly moving a few girls out of the clubs at a time for over a month now, doing exactly what Konstantin warned him not to do.
We would have found out, sooner or later, but we found out when we did because one of the camera crew finally grew a goddamned conscience and threw us a tip.
Tonight was a declaration of war. Violence is imminent now—more of it—and I don’t know how Konstantin is going to respond.
Victor might have agreed to Giovanni’s offer—but if he hadn’t, and Giovanni had gone behind his back, it’d be a matter of days before the don’s pieces were scattered all over Miami, sent to the other families as a warning.
He would have sent a clear message about what happens when you disrespect the Abramov name .
But Konstantin isn't his father. He's trying to run the organization differently, with less bloodshed and more diplomacy.
It's a noble goal, and one I respect in theory. In practice, I worry that it makes us look weak to families like the Russos, who only understand strength. And I had a feeling, when Konstantin dismissed Giovanni’s proposal but let him keep his part in the clubs, that something like this might happen.
Giovanni had outwardly apologized for his ideas, for how abhorrent Konstantin had found them. But men like the Russos don't apologize and mean it. They bide their time, regroup, and come back harder than before.
Tonight proved me right.
But what I felt when I saw Sienna startled me.
I saw that the other girls—we were told three had been taken that night—were dead before I ever got to the room where Sienna was.
I’d assumed that the third, whoever she was, was dead somewhere as well.
But when I saw Sienna, when I saw those men who clearly were there to fuck her, when I saw her fear and her shock and the confusion on her face, the clinical detachment that I’d headed into the raid with had disappeared, replaced by a rage so pure and all-consuming it scared me.
I've killed more men than I can count over the years. Some deserved it, some didn't, but all of them were just business. Obstacles to be removed, problems to be solved. I never took pleasure in it, never felt anything beyond professional satisfaction when a job was done. I’ve never been the kind of man who loved killing or torture, but I’ve always been willing to do it.
It’s always been in service of the Abramov Bratva, the organization that gave me a life when mine was taking a bad turn.
But tonight, when I put bullets in the men who would have hurt her, I felt something different. Something that felt like vengeance, like satisfaction. Killing those men felt good . And what I felt when I grabbed her as she ran, when I pulled her up against my body…