Chapter 2Vasily
Vasily
I’m going to die in Flagstaff.
I don’t hear voices anymore. Not since I got the fuck out of Flagstaff. Or maybe the migraine medication silenced it.
But I still feel it in my bones. Right down to my soul. The pull of doom. The pull of mortality. The pull of this fucking curse that’s breathing down my neck. The pull of the goddamn nightmare that is Flagstaff.
I try to shake it, staring out the thirty-seventh floor window separating me from the Los Angeles skyline with such determination that my eyes start to water. If Benedetti asks, I’m just focused on fucking her as hard as possible, but she’s used to getting lies from me.
Maria Benedetti. A Mediterranean complexion, sleek black curls, and lipstick and eyeliner straight out of my Russian dedushka’s ancient contraband pin-up mags.
She had Mafia scum written all over her when she first showed up in my office in a curve-hugging black suit and cherry-red heels, peddling her services as a specialty 3D printer.
It was Janson, my security adviser, who convinced me to hear Benedetti out.
She immediately told me that she moved to Arizona from Italy as a child— something I have firsthand experience with as Russian diaspora— that her family was deeply enmeshed in the Mafia there, and that she was a cousin to and in business with Tony Lombardo.
Not exactly a glowing endorsement, as Tony the Bitch has been the dog shit stuck to the heel of my shoe for the last six years.
But Benedetti made it clear that her priority is to herself first, last, and always, and fuck the old men’s club that is the Mafia.
She’s not the first woman I’ve known who’s shared that sentiment, so I believed her on that account if nothing else.
Nothing else. Her background looked exactly how she said it would, but that six months she spent in Jacksonville learning the ins and outs of specialty 3D printing? Funny how she was only an hour away from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives training facility.
Janson was right about Benedetti as an asset, as right as he was about her being an undercover ATF agent.
When she first showed up, I’d just gambled everything I had on ghost guns and made my first million, and now I’m the pakhan of the entire Southwest. I am untouchable because of her.
Because the ATF apparently approves of how I handle things.
For now, at any rate. I’ve been keeping more secrets from her than usual lately, and if she finds out, she’s going to have to turn against either me or the ATF.
I don’t know who Benedetti is loyal to at the end of the day, but it’s not to Tony. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your enemy’s enemy who may or may not also be your enemy on your cock. Or however the expression goes.
“Did you take out another piercing?” Benedetti asks when I get so irritated with my scattered thoughts that I stop, reset myself, and slide back into her cunt more slowly.
“Not your fucking business,” I growl at her, my voice raw from exertion. Shit, I’m not even having a good time. Fucking Benedetti has become just another in a string of mindless chores, like I’m married to her instead of mixing business and pleasure.
Because there’s no pleasure anymore. There hasn’t been for a long time.
To Benedetti’s credit, she manages to roll herself over in the meager space she has between my body and the desk she’s bent over.
She lifts her right leg, snags her foot on the left side of my waist, and levers her whole body around to flop onto her back, sending half the contents of my desk flying across my cavernous C-Suite office.
While the tip of my cock is still inside her.
I groan as the rapid swirl whites out my vision and I have to lean down and brace my hands on either side of her. She wraps both legs around my waist and squeezes, forcing me to fill her.
“Last I checked, this is the only pussy your dick has touched in ages, so yeah, it is my fucking business,” she declares brazenly, and I respect her for that.
I fucking hate her. I hate that she’s Mafia. I hate that she’s ATF. I hate that she looks like the ghosts of all the women from my past, so much so that I try to only fuck her from behind when I can get away with it.
I hate that she’s really fucking clever, too, she takes what she wants and uses everything she has to grab it and she’s completely shameless with it .
But I respect her. And her athleticism. Fucking hell.
“Yeah, and everyone’s touched your cunt,” I counter. “I don’t owe sluts anything.”
“Ooh, big mean boss man,” she jeers, but the insult doesn’t land, not when she goes all breathless and whiny when I start pumping into her again.
I think I’ve quieted her attitude down, but then she wraps her arms around me, hugging me so she can whisper in my ear.
“I know you did it because it was the anniversary of his death.”
“Fucking cunt,” I snarl, peeling her off me to flip her back over to spank her hard.
Not because she likes it but because I am fucking pissed, actually.
We both know shit about each other that we shouldn’t.
She really doesn’t need to know why I’ve removed a piercing from my dick every year, definitely not why on the same date— yesterday, technically, which is probably why I’m so uneasy today— and there’s no fucking way I’m letting her poke at me about it.
Since she’s so hot to put her nose in other people’s business, I grab her by the base of her ponytail and force her face-down into my desk as I slam into her, ignoring her cries as I fuck her until my body finally gives up its protests of ennui and recognizes its baser instinct, ejaculating hard enough my brain crackles like I’ve dumped fizzy candy on it.
I allow myself a breath to screw my head back on before I pull out and snap the condom off my dick. “Get the fuck out of here, Benedetti.”
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t even straighten up.
She lifts herself enough to prop her cheek on her hand, shooting me a wry look as she observes me with rich, frustratingly amused brown eyes.
In another time line, she would have been a good match for me.
A political alliance. She would have given me a run for my money .
“God save us all from emotionally constipated men. We still have business. A little birdie told me Tony’s got a mole in your organization.”
“You?” I snort. I have no delusions about the confidentiality between us; we act like no one knows she’s undercover ATF, but there’s no secret that she divides her time between Los Angeles Bratva and Phoenix Mafia.
I trust that she uses good judgment in what she leaks to her family, and I’m not so bold to assume I don’t have cracks in my infrastructure.
I am the Hoover Dam. I am too big to not have minor leaks.
“I’m serious! Watch yourself. Tony’s been cagier than usual. People are thinking he’s making a play for something, and you know you’re always in his sights.”
Yeah, sounds right. But Tony’s known for two things: blowing obscene amounts of money at underground sex clubs and gross incompetence. Even if he does have a mole and is plotting something, he’ll fuck it up or run out of money before he can see it through.
“IRA boys were spotted cruising by the Flagstaff print shop yesterday.”
The crackling in my brain this time isn’t nearly so sweet. Melting plastic and sulfur. Meth. Quit that shit years ago now, along with everything else. Traded it all in for a medicine cabinet. But hearing those words coming out of her mouth, today of all days, triggers all kinds of nasty sensations.
All roads lead back to goddamn Flagstaff.
I glance at my reflection in the glass door of the liquor cabinet, well stocked but rarely touched. My tie is slightly skewed, so I adjust it with a quick tug before smoothing a hand over my pale hair. “If you don’t get the fuck out—”
Before I can finish my empty threat, there’s a rapid knock on my door as it’s being opened. Benedetti stands and fixes her clothes but not before Janson gets an eyeful of the handprint on her ass.
He shakes his head as she shimmies her panties up.
“You want a piece of that?” I offer him. “She’s kosher.”
The bland look he gives me speaks volumes.
I didn’t have a lot of leverage when I came to LA, worming my way into the pakhan’s inner circle and ultimately taking his spot when he died under circumstances I was absolutely not responsible for, despite the rumors that flew around about my quick ascent to the throne, but I had enough to convince Janson to come with me.
The way he tells it, I blackmailed him, but I was doing him a favor.
An FBI agent embedded in a skinhead gang?
Lame. A rogue FBI agent making bank running security for the Bratva? That’s cool as shit.
And Benedetti is kosher. She’s not a cop. She’s a pseudo-cop. She’s turkey bacon. She’s bacon bits.
I snort, and they both look at me. Fuck them. I own them, at least for now.
“This isn’t a problem that’s going to fix itself,” Benedetti says brusquely as she cleans herself up and packs her suitcase, leaving the mess she made of my desk on the Turkish rug, the only pop of color in the otherwise black wood and matte steel.
Even the array of pills tucked into the second drawer of my desk has been transferred into nondescript black jars, discreet labels identifying them as alprazolam, bupropion, clozapine.
Benedetti slides that drawer out as though it’s her own personal property and pops open the case at the back of it.
“No one’s got a good hold in Flagstaff anymore.
You’ve got a skeleton crew there. The Calaveras are dying off.
Blazing Hell’s distracted. Take hold. It’s supposed to be your turf, and if you can’t get it back under control, I gotta pull my equipment there. ”