Chapter 9 Reign
REIGN
Iwas in a bad fucking mood.
Or at least, I had been.
Until I saw her, and now I was just feeling…
Fuck if I knew.
I only knew that with her, things weren’t so loud in my head. The voices had finally quieted.
We drove out of the city.
I snuck glances at her every once in a while to see her reaction, but she was nothing but a picture of calm.
Was her sense of self-preservation off?
We were essentially strangers to each other. I could have taken her up to my cabin in the woods, where there was absolutely no signal, and no one would be the wiser. I shook my head.
I was at least a foot taller than her and outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds. No matter how resourceful she thought she was, she couldn’t run from me if I truly wanted to hurt her. She wouldn’t be able to fight me off.
I shook my head.
Her innocent trust shouldn’t have annoyed me as much as it did.
We didn’t talk during the drive.
I liked that at least.
She seemed to sense when I just needed peace and quiet. When I needed nothing more than her presence and that was all.
We stopped once for gas, but otherwise I kept driving, neither of us saying a word to each other.
And before I knew it, the sun was setting over the horizon, and I must have driven through a good portion of New York already.
I looked over at her when I came to a stoplight.
Her head was leaning against the window, her eyes closed.
She was asleep.
Even sleeping, there was a slight indent between her eyebrows, forming a small frown. I reached over and smoothed out the line, wondering what troubles, what monsters seemed to be haunting her and wouldn’t leave her alone, even in sleep.
And I wondered why I fucking cared.
I shouldn’t care about anything that had to do with a Caparelli.
The light turned green, and I stepped on the gas, moving the car forward.
I came to a stop in front of a cliff overlooking the mountains. It wasn’t like we could see much in the dark sky. But I liked it here.
I liked the quiet… and the calm of everything.
We were about three hours away from the city. There wasn’t another living soul around, at least, not one I could see, and I didn’t know what had prompted me to bring her here in the first place.
I let her sleep as I looked ahead.
There was a streetlight a little distance away that provided just enough lighting for me to make out the outline of her features, and that was all.
It was about ten minutes after I pulled the car up here that she finally roused.
I watched as her eyes opened, and she looked around in confusion.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Somewhere in the Catskill Mountains.”
She seemed surprised at the answer. “That’s far away from home?”
I shot a small smile I didn’t feel. “That’s right. We’re away from everyone and everything. I could do anything to you, and no one would be around to stop it.”
She rolled her eyes. “I doubt it.”
“You do?” I asked, wondering how she could sound so confident about that.
“I do. Rape’s not really your thing, is it?”
I pulled away, taken aback.
She smiled. “No. You can have almost any woman you want, so why would you need to force it? Besides, rape’s not really about sex but power. And power’s not really something you lack in your life.”
I didn’t say anything to that. Perhaps in terms of money and influence, she was right. I didn’t lack those things. But there were many times when I had felt powerless. Helpless.
Not that I would have resorted to rape.
There was a special place in hell for men who hurt those weaker and smaller than themselves.
She waved her hand in front of my face to get my attention. I looked over.
“Want to talk about what’s got you in such a bad mood?”
“Was it that obvious?” I asked. I wasn’t the kind of man who would easily let any strong emotions I might feel show outwardly. I thought I had curbed my anger well.
“Not really,” she answered. “Just something about you felt different today, is all.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She nodded. “Then we can just sit here and look out into the… darkness?”
I turned on the car’s headlights, illuminating the empty space in front of us.
She gasped. “Are we parked in front of a cliff?”
I chuckled. “Yeah. I wanted to get here before sunset. But that didn’t happen.”
“Who knew you could be romantic?”
“Oh, I’m a lot of things, baby. And I can be all of those things for you if you ask me nicely.”
I didn’t need to look at her to know she was rolling her eyes at me. I smiled. Perhaps that was why I was so fucking fascinated with her.
She seemed immune to my charms.
She leaned back against her seat and faced forward. I turned off the headlights, not wanting to draw much attention to us, bathing us once more in darkness, save for the small streetlamp.
“Do you ever just want to leave?” she asked suddenly.
“Leave? You mean the city?”
She shrugged. “The state. The country. Just leave everything behind.”
“No,” I answered honestly. I knew my place was here in New York. While I still had my doubts about my position once Kingston takes over, I had already committed my life to the Bratva.
I was born in this life, and I will die in this life.
There would be no other alternative for me.
“Do you want to leave?”
“Sometimes I fantasize about it. About going somewhere no one knows anything about me. I like the idea of that freedom.”
“Freedom’s an illusion.”
“Says the six-foot-three man. How nice it must be for you to just walk around feeling safe.”
“I’m actually six foot five of pure muscles and steel, and all yours if you want it.”
She scoffed.
I grinned. She was fun to fuck with.
“There are still restrictions in my life,” I said seriously. “Freedom is nothing more than an illusion we tell ourselves to feel better about our surroundings. We’re always weighed down by everyone’s expectations of us. And any commitments we make toward other people.”
And it was laughable that she thought I felt safe and invincible walking out on the street. Sure, not many bastards would come at me just based on my size alone, but the Mahankov name carried its own weight. I was certain there was a bounty on my head.
“Aren’t you tired?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t really think about it. But you sound tired.” I leaned in closer to her. She surprised me when she didn’t move away. “How about this? If you ever feel tired, just come to me and rest a little. I’ll keep all the monsters away for a bit so you can rest. Yeah?”
I could hear her breath catching. She didn’t answer me, but I knew she heard every word because her eyes were focused intently on me.
“You’ll really keep all the monsters away?”
I nodded. “I’ll keep all the monsters away.”
Much like our drive away from the city, our drive back home was made in silence.
But something had shifted between us—something had shifted with her, and I didn’t know what or why that was.
She only spoke enough to give me her address, and I typed it into the GPS, pretending I didn’t already know it.
The drive back to her place felt shorter somehow, and there was a part of me that didn’t want to let her get out of the car.
So I parked and turned off the engine. She looked over at me questioningly.
“I’ll walk you up,” I said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know. But what sort of gentleman would I be if I didn’t walk you up?”
“You’re not a gentleman,” she said matter-of-factly.
I chuckled. “You seem to have a pretty poor opinion of me.”
I was met with silence. If I was expecting her to refute that, I would have been disappointed. I let out another laugh and pushed the door open. She was already out of the car when I made my way over to her side.
We walked up to her apartment in silence. She lived in the better part of New York City. Not exactly filled with the most affluent people of New York, but it wasn’t bad either. And I knew that the rent here could get pretty high.
Her apartment building was old but well-maintained. And it looked like there had been some renovation work done on it recently. A little digging, and I knew Caine gifted her this apartment building on her twenty-first birthday.
We took the elevator up to the seventh floor—the top floor.
She seemed to have the entire floor to herself.
She turned to me when we reached her door.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” I asked.
She shot me a look that said it all. She would not be inviting me in.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“Good night, Reign.”
“Night, sweetheart.”
She turned and unlocked the door to her apartment, heading inside and closing the door behind her without another word.
I stayed standing where I was, still reeling from the night. Jamie Caparelli was a dangerous woman.
She was just good at keeping up the facade and making me think about everything from a different perspective.
If I wasn’t careful, I would foolishly fall into her trap that I already knew existed.
I turned and was about to head into the elevator when her front door opened once more.
“Change your mind?” I asked with a smile.
She shook her head, and I felt a slight tinge of disappointment in my chest. Then she said something that took me by surprise.
“Can I… Can I stay with you tonight?”