With This Kiss (Love And War #1)

Prologue

JAMIE

Beep… beep… beep… The sound of the monitor rang incessantly in my ears.

I briefly closed my tired eyes. I couldn’t even remember how long it had been since I last slept.

I had been staying by her bedside since the moment the doctors allowed me to, and I didn’t give a damn about what anyone had to say about it—I wasn’t leaving her side.

Please wake up.

Nothing.

The doctor said she would wake up when she was ready. I let my eyes roam over her bruised and battered face, feeling nausea rise in my throat. My eyes shifted downward to her bandage-covered wrist, my hand hovering above for a few long seconds before I moved it away.

I was afraid to touch her.

Never had Etta looked so… broken. So fragile.

He did this.

I clenched my fists as a fresh wave of anger washed over me.

He fucking destroyed her. It was bad enough that he played with her feelings, but this? I should have fucking known something was wrong. I should have seen this coming.

I should have protected her better.

I closed my eyes.

Soft touches moved over my face. I looked up and saw Etta’s blue eyes filled with tears, showcasing her heartbreak and exhaustion.

Tears sprang to my own. I tried to fight them. I tried to be strong for her, but it was useless. The tears would not stop. If anything, more came out as I took in her battered face.

She wiped my tears away, her fingers cold on my face.

“It’s okay, Jamie. I’m okay,” she said.

I shook my head. “I’m supposed to be the one comforting you, not the other way around.”

She let out a small, hoarse laugh, then winced.

“Let me call the nurse,” I said, reaching for the call button. She stopped me.

“I’m a nurse.”

I shot her a look. “You know better than anyone that you shouldn’t be self-diagnosing.”

“It’s not like the diagnosis isn’t obvious.”

“Etta.”

She let out a small sigh. “How bad is it?”

“A lot of facial swelling. A fractured rib, you’re going to be feeling it for a while. A lot of bruises, cuts, and abrasions.”

My lower lip trembled.

She patted my hand. “I’m okay. Really.”

“What happened?”

She sucked in a sharp inhale and looked away from me. It didn’t look like she wanted to tell me.

I made my voice firm when I said, “Etta.”

She took in a deep inhale before letting it out slowly. “He was jealous that a guy at the bar had bought me a drink. Granted, I didn’t even accept it. It didn’t help that he had a bad day.”

A bad day?

He sent her to the fucking hospital over a bad day?

A bad fucking day?

I took a deep breath and tried not to show my anger in front of her. That was the last thing she needed from me right now.

I squeezed her hand. She looked back at me with a smile that nearly broke my heart into a million little pieces.

“I know that doesn’t excuse what he did to me. I’m not trying to excuse it. I was just saying that it didn’t help.”

“A real man wouldn’t have taken his anger out on you just because he had a bad day.”

“I know,” she said softly.

I shook my head. “Etta, you can’t see him anymore.”

I knew I didn’t have any right to tell her who she could or couldn’t see, but—

Hell, I would probably break apart if she continued seeing him after this.

I had never liked him, even in the beginning, when she first told me about him, looking so in love, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

It was obvious he had put on the full force of his charm, trying to lure her into his trap.

I hadn’t met him. I barely remembered what he looked like from the few pictures she had shown me.

She had been reluctant to share much about him, but every time she did talk about him, an unpleasant feeling would settle deep in the pit of my stomach.

I should have gone with my gut and voiced my concerns to her sooner. There was just something… oily about him that made all my hackles rise, and now this?

“Etta.” They hadn’t seen each other for that long a time. It couldn’t be that serious, could it? Etta didn’t even tell me she was seeing someone. Not until I questioned her about it. I only suspected something was up when I realized she was acting strange.

She grabbed my hand, offering a small smile that didn’t look quite right from the swelling on her face. “I won’t see him again.”

“Promise?” I whispered. Would it really be that easy?

“I promise,” she said, her lips trembling.

I let out a small sigh of relief. “I’m going to let you rest soon, okay? I just need to ask you one more thing.”

She tensed. I ignored her reaction.

“What is it?” she asked, looking down at her lap.

“What’s his name?”

Because while we had grown up together and had told each other every little thing there was to know about each other, the one thing she hadn’t told me was who she was dating, and I knew that was intentional.

“Jamie…”

I shook my head, cutting off whatever excuse she was about to feed me that would allow her to keep this secret. I tilted my chin up stubbornly. I wasn’t fucking leaving here without a name.

“Kingston Mahankov,” she whispered.

I didn’t react, but I could feel my heart dropping to the floor. She couldn’t be serious.

“Mahankov?” I whispered, feeling lightheaded. Everyone on the East Coast knew the name Mahankov.

But not in the same way I had grown up knowing that name.

And I knew a lot more about them than most people. And the information I had was given to me unwittingly.

“Etta. How did you even meet him?”

“At Blooms.”

“Blooms?” The nightclub… owned by the Bratva?

She nodded.

I leaned back against the uncomfortable hospital chair. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from saying anything to her that I might regret later on. Of all the men in New York, she picked that one.

She shook her head. “I didn’t know. Not at first. We weren’t that serious to begin with, and I… I didn’t know his surname either. And Kingston is a common enough name—”

“Not in this part of town,” I said, trying to keep the anger from my voice. Some of the emotion must have seeped through anyway because she flinched.

I closed my eyes.

She was seeing Kingston Mahankov. Kingston fucking Mahankov.

The fucking heir to the Mahankov Bratva, and also the sworn enemies of the Caparelli Famiglia.

If my brother knew about this…

He would find a way to brand Etta as a traitor to the family, even if she and I weren’t a part of the Caparelli Famiglia.

It wouldn’t matter.

And her dad was captain, serving under my dad… the capo dei capi of the Caparelli Famiglia. What a fucking mess.

I let out a long exhale.

“Don’t tell my father,” she said.

I shot her a sharp look. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

She moved back a little, and I instantly regretted snapping at her. Most of my anger had evaporated, and I grabbed her hand.

“Thanks for telling me. Get some rest, okay?”

Her bottom lip trembled, tugging at my heartstrings. “I’m really sorry.”

I closed my eyes briefly. I wanted to tell her there was nothing to be sorry about. It wasn’t her fucking fault that the heir to the Mahankov Bratva was a fucking monster, living up to his name.

I nodded. “Just rest. Don’t worry about anything, okay?”

“Okay,” she said softly.

I pressed the button to lean her bed back, pulling the thin hospital blanket over her shoulders.

I stayed where I was seated for a while, thinking.

There was no way to keep Etta’s hospital stay from either of our fathers.

They would want to know the man responsible for doing this to her. The tenuous peace between the two clashing crime organizations would come to a head. And we had just gotten out of the war with the Mahankov Bratva a few years prior, but it wasn’t without loss… from both sides.

Another war…

A wave of helplessness moved through me as I quietly stood up, feeling so fucking beat down, it was a miracle I could even move.

What was I supposed to do?

My feet felt like lead. It was as if something was stopping me from walking further, as if…

I looked back at Etta’s sleeping form just as I reached the door. Her eyes were closed, but I knew she wasn’t sleeping.

There was a perpetual crease between her brows. She was anything but at peace.

I took in a deep breath.

Then I crossed over the threshold, and it felt like my stomach had dropped all the way down to the basement of the hospital.

A deep feeling of foreboding hit me sharply, strongly, so much so that for one brief, minuscule moment, it felt like there was no oxygen left on earth, and I was left…

Helplessly gasping for the nonexistent air, just mere seconds from my own demise.

I ignored that feeling and continued down the hall.

I wished I hadn’t.

I wished I had stayed by her side the entire night. The entire week.

Wished I had attached myself so securely beside her, there would be no way for her to leave me.

How could I have known this would be the last time I ever saw her alive?