14. Nikola
NIKOLA
T he search for The Duchess and the woman who starred in Skye’s nightmares proved fruitless. In fact, the more I searched, the less results it seemed to produce. Almost as if someone were actively erasing any results related to Revelation or Skye’s foster care records as I was looking them up.
It left me feeling frustrated.
Or maybe I was missing Skye more than ever, because I kept catching myself counting down the days to when I’d see her again. It had been twelve days, twelve hours, thirty-three minutes, and forty-one seconds since I’d kissed her. It felt like a goddamned lifetime.
There was a reason I hadn’t gone after Skye sooner, and it had everything to do with Uncle Sasha’s warning and the change I began to notice in her. The hearts in her eyes. Discreet glances. Curiosity.
The little rabbit—zayka—would be up for anything I dished her way. She’d let me use her, devour her. She’d be irrevocably mine, and much like her passion for playing piano, she’d give me her all.
Not only that, but she’d demand it all in return too. It was just who she was.
That was what made Skye so dangerous and why I stayed the fuck away from her. That was, until her papa and my uncle decided to agree to a marriage contract with Marchetti.
Yeah, over my dead fucking body. And even then, I’d crawl out of my grave and make sure she was mine.
Through the years, I told myself I could and would resist her, but the reality was that I’d been in denial. One word of the possibility that someone else could get their filthy paws on her had me scheming fast and hard.
It didn’t help that her last two messages—received three days ago and sitting unanswered with the rest—had been the most brazen yet. Just recalling them had my dick stirring.
I pulled them up and re-read them again because it would seem I was a glutton for punishment when it came to Skye Leone.
Skye: Your phone must be broken. I’ll buy you a new one, malysh.
She’d called me baby in Russian.
Skye: Can I ask you something?
Honestly, she could ask me anything, to do anything, and I would. That was how much power she held over me.
Skye: Want to know a secret?
“Why do you keep looking at your watch?” my sister asked. She’d been floating in the heated pool for the past hour, wearing Gucci sunglasses that hid most of her face and sipping on a drink adorned with a paper umbrella.
“Timing your alcohol intake,” I said in place of the truth. “You know you shouldn’t be drinking.”
She waved me off with a nasally, “Yeah, yeah.” Then she huffed and said, “I can’t wait till I’m twenty-one and don’t have to listen to my big brother lecture me while I work on my tan.”
I rolled my eyes behind my sunglasses and spread out on my chaise lounge. This was a perk of visiting home from the East Coast: temperatures hit the mid-70s even in November, and it was warm enough for a swim almost all year round.
It was the reason my sister refused to study at D’Arc. She was a New Orleans native and would have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of this city. Our parents were more than good with it since she seemed prone to getting in trouble.
“I can see your life has reached a new low point.” Marietta’s physical features were a mirror image of our mother’s, but her personality—to Dad’s dismay—was all our aunt Tatiana. “I’ll buy you something to cheer you up.”
Poor Vasili. One day he’d get a brain hemorrhage. He’d hoped for an uptight son and timid daughter; instead he got two wildlings.
“Didn’t your therapist tell you that shopping is just a way to avoid problems?”
“Didn’t yours tell you that being an asshole is overrated?”
Ignoring her, I picked up my phone that just buzzed. When I saw it was a message from my group thread rather than Skye, the disappointment was too real. Why was she suddenly ignoring me?
Duh, because you haven’t answered any of her texts , my subconscious taunted. The problem was that I was scared—I know, hilarious—that one wrong move could put my whole plan at risk and Skye would slip through my fingers forever.
“Besides, I’m mentally preparing for our Thanksgiving dinner that’s kicking off in, hm… an hour ,” Marietta continued, unaware of my inner turmoil. “What’s with that look, Nikola?” She waved a hand around in front of her face.
My head snapped up so fast, I feared I might have given myself whiplash.
“I’m not wearing a look , sister.”
Okay, maybe it was that Skye hadn’t texted me in seventy-five hours. But there was no way in hell I’d admit that to my sister.
Her last message still weighed on me.
Skye: I’m stuck thinking about you. I want more.
My dick stirred every time I thought about that message, but I prevailed and ignored it. I had to play it carefully until the opportunity was right. Skye was making it increasingly harder with her messages though, openly admitting that she wanted me as much as I wanted her.
And just as I was tempted to cave in, the texts stopped coming.
And even though I could guess the reason she’d stopped texting, the irrational side of my brain was starting to panic. Of course I knew she was just fine surrounded by her family in Italy.
Still, I stalked her fucking Instagram. I, Nikola Nikolaev, had to lower myself like some love-stricken loser and resort to social media to see what she was up to during her visit home.
There was a short reel of her playing the piano with her mama.
A selfie with her cousins who would one day rule the Yakuza.
A post of her shopping with her aunt Reina, surrounded by piles of pink material.
It didn’t seem she followed through with her boyfriend search since she mostly hung out with her cousins. Good fucking thing.
My phone buzzed again and I swiped my phone open, finding the legacies group chat.
Gabriel: Happy Thanksgiving, motherfuckers. I located an organ smuggler in Miami.
Matteo: Hope you ended him.
Me: Question him first.
Matteo: Wow, Nikola being reasonable? Must be the spirit of the day.
Kostya: I doubt it. He’s probably hoping to torture the fucker himself.
Me: If we don’t get a handle on this shit soon, we’ll have a big problem on our hands.
Gabriel: I questioned him, but only learned he was part of the organization.
Meaning he was part of the Belles and Mobsters Agreements, where unknown threats worked to bring back the whole fucking ordeal, but instead of matching belles to ruthless, sick men, they were ripping out their organs and selling them on the black market.
It was ironic that the very thing our parents fought to eliminate decades ago had returned to haunt them, now threatening us in a whole different way.
Matteo: Don’t let Hannah catch wind of that or she might leave Ireland and have a go at him herself.
Kostya: How is she?
Dominico, her brother, answered.
Dominico: She’s still recovering. She won’t talk about what happened during her captivity, but she sure as fuck liked torturing Marco King’s offspring. The fucker should’ve thought twice before messing with her.
Initially, we thought that he was the one running the organization, but speculation now was that there were a lot more leaders to consider here since the operation was still ongoing and threats lurked all over the world.
Me: Gabriel, did this guy you captured say who’s running it?
Gabriel: He didn’t have much information.
Me: I captured one useless organ trafficker on my territory about a month ago and another a week ago, but they didn’t give me anything useful either.
Kostya: And you didn’t call me, cousin?
Me: Slipped my mind.
For more than one reason, and they all revolved around Skye. Fuck, would I ever be able to think rationally again? I’d been spiraling out since our encounter on Halloween.
Kostya: Funny. It slipped my mind to let you know I’m having lunch with Skye tomorrow.
That couldn’t be right.
Me: You mean Thanksgiving dinner tonight?
Kostya: No, I mean lunch tomorrow.
Something about that didn’t sit well with me. A volatile feeling spread through me, filling me with fury and jealousy, and for the first time in my life, I found myself contemplating torturing a member of my family.
“Hello? What the fuck are you typing on that phone that’s so important? I want in on whatever’s going on.” Marietta’s voice brought me back from disturbing images filled with blood, of Kostya with Skye. Fuck! “Hey, hey… Earth to Nikola.”
“What?” I snapped.
“I asked you a question, brother.”
She was still bobbing around, unbothered by the world.
“None of your business,” I muttered. “And get out of the fucking pool. You’re not greeting our guests wearing that skimpy bathing suit.”
She scoffed, not even attempting to move. “Coming from someone who’s usually going around shirtless. Sexist much?”
She slurped from her nearly empty drink, looking at me pointedly. Yeah, she was trying to piss me off. And failing.
For the most part.
Upon hearing familiar voices, Marietta waded through the heated water and lifted herself up on the edge of the pool as I strode across the patio.
“Thanksgiving is about to start,” I muttered under my breath. When the Nikolaev family was about to be all in one place, you needed to be fucking ready. “May the odds be in our favor.”
Thanksgiving at my family’s estate was a loud affair. My aunts and uncles always came to the Nikolaev compound in New Orleans for the celebrations. This year more so than normal because lo and behold, the Leone family was joining us for the first time ever and were due to arrive in a few hours.
Dante Leone, traditional Italian that he was, insisted Thanksgiving wasn’t a holiday they celebrated, hence the family’s refusal to join us in the past. Everyone knew the real reason was the old bastard hated sharing his wife and daughter.
But this year, they’d ganged up on his patriarchal ass, and a little birdy told me his wife put her foot down: she would have Thanksgiving weekend with the Nikolaevs.
Sadly, I couldn’t even ridicule the man because I’d forgotten—or thrown to the wind—every rule when it came to Skye.
Thank fucking God nobody knew about our kisses and promiscuous incidents. Nobody would ever know until my ring was on her finger. If my uncle Sasha found out, he would go berserk. Albeit, I could take him down and eventually get him on my side.
Dante Leone, I feared, would be a tougher nut to crack.
But hey, I’d always been up for a challenge.
It didn’t take long for my sister to catch up, working on tightening the towel around herself, and we made our way through the large terrace.
When we arrived at the main foyer, we were greeted by the Brady Bunch, otherwise known as the Konstantin family.
“I certainly hope you’re not joining us for Thanksgiving dinner wearing that ,” my aunt drawled snobbishly.
“Aunt Tatiana,” Marietta exclaimed and ran over to her, throwing herself at Mom’s best friend. “Of course not. I’m wearing the Chanel dress you sent me last month.”
Just beyond them, Dad shook hands with Illias Konstantin, exchanging a few words.
“God forbid you put on normal jeans and a blouse,” Mom muttered, rolling her eyes while hugging her three godchildren—Astor, Anushka, and Adrik Konstantin.
Aunt Tati shot her a horrified look. “I certainly hope a blouse is not what you plan on wearing.”
She narrowed her eyes. “In fact it is.”
“I think you’ll look great,” Anushka said, beaming at my mom. She paused, looking excited. That one should have been Mom’s child. “Can I go with you if you get called, Aunt Bella?”
My twenty-one-year-old cousins Astor and Anushka were every parent’s dream. Sensible. Responsible. And boring as fuck. Everything my sister and I weren’t—and that was okay. We’d made our peace with being the rowdy, wild kids in the family long ago.
“I don’t know why you’d want to go. Blood makes you squeamish,” Adrik said, cocking his brow. “Remember when I came back home with blood splattered on my?—”
I cut him off. “You mean that time you ripped flesh from that asshole's body the way I taught you?”
“Shut up, you two.” Anushka glared at us, her complexion turning pale.
“Make us,” Adrik challenged, his pale blue eyes gleaming.
Now he was definitely a Nikolaev. He’d terrorized the entire West Coast, much to his father’s dismay, hence why the two of us got along great, despite him being younger than me.
Before Anushka could respond, Uncle Alexei strode in with his wife, Aunt Aurora, and their three children, and suddenly I was no longer interested in stirring shit up between siblings. I took long strides toward them and yanked Kostya by his silk black shirt.
“Aunt. Uncle. Cousins. Nice to see you,” I greeted them. “Kostya and I have some business to discuss.”
Their brows rose in unison while Kostya chuckled. “I didn’t realize you considered her business.”
“Who?” Aunt Aurora questioned curiously.
“Yes, who?” Aunt Tatiana chimed in, waggling her brows. “Is there someone special in your life?”
“There’s nobody special,” I retorted curtly, stepping over discarded shoes, my cousin Kostya trailing behind me.
Curious glances were shot our way, but we were already taking the stairs two at a time, beelining for my bedroom door.
“What is this shit about you having lunch with Skye?” I questioned as I shut the door.
“No shit, just two people sharing a meal,” he deadpanned.
“Cancel it.”
There weren’t too many people who knew what lurked behind Kostya’s standoffish image and control-freak facade. I knew, and while I didn’t judge, there was no way I’d allow Skye around that.
“No way.” He scratched at the scruff on his jaw. “It’ll hurt her feelings.”
I scoffed, then summoned my most threatening tone. “Better you hurt her feelings than I hurt you.”
He shrugged, like he didn’t have a worry in the world. “You can try, cousin. But then we’ll miss dinner and shit will hit the fan. Maybe we just schedule it for…” He paused, his expression turning pensive. “Day after tomorrow. I’m free then.”
“I’m not fucking playing with you,” I growled, getting in his face. I was quickly losing what little patience I had. “Skye is off-limits. She’s family , Kostya.”
Okay, I might have made a hypocrite out of myself. I touched Skye—more than touched her—but that didn’t cancel out the simple fact that she wasn’t right for him.
My bedroom door opened and Anushka’s blonde head slid in. “Our parents are demanding you get your asses downstairs in five seconds flat. Or else.”
I narrowed my eyes on my cousin. “This isn’t over.”
He just laughed. “Oh, but I think it is.”