Milana
I got more rattled as we drove deeper into a neighborhood, away from the main roads that lead to hospitals and proper medical care.
Now Luca guides me into a modest middle-class home.
Somehow, this doesn’t feel right, but it’s quiet in that hospital way.
A lone light is switched on, but it’s getting dark outside.
We’re in a foyer with several doors leading to rooms when a nurse appears through a door that seems to lead to a kitchen.
“She’s in here,” she says and gives a closed door a soft knock.
Luca nods, opens the door, and gestures for me to walk in.
In the dim light, I home in on Gabi on a hospital bed, surrounded by blinking machines, tubes everywhere, a drip by her side.
I have to do everything in my power not to burst out crying.
This sweet, innocent, pure-hearted woman is Chertnikov’s latest victim, even if I can’t understand how our worlds could have gotten entangled enough for this to have happened.
Ivan slowly stands from the seat by her side, and for the first time in weeks, I face my brother. He looks drained, the strain of the day etched in the lines carved on his face from thirty-seven years of living in the Bratva.
I rush around the bed to him and throw myself into his arms, hugging him close. He clings to me, and I feel the ripple of choked sobs against my chest.
“They were meant for me, malyshka,” he croaks into my hair. “The bullets Gabi took, she ran to protect me.” He swallows. “The bullets were meant for me.”
Oh, God. I recall Luca’s words, that someone in the Italian Mafia has sold out to Chertnikov’s Bratva.
How did we even get here? Who can we trust anymore?
I have no clue how Ivan got involved with Il Consiglio, but the Scalera brothers wouldn’t sacrifice their sister.
They seem as disconnected from this mess as we were six years ago.
And then along came Dimitri again. So welcome, as Ivan’s old school friend, but secretly Chertnikov’s puppet.
We didn’t suspect a thing, letting a venomous snake slither into our midst while nobody was watching.
I’ve never been closer to telling Ivan everything than I am now, but there’s a reason I’ve never opened up to him in the first place. He will burn the world down to avenge me, but my secret will kill us all. As long as he doesn’t know, he will be safe with his girls.
I hug him even closer, for it’s never been clearer: my path ends here. “She’ll pull through?”
“Yes.” He shifts away but holds onto my shoulders. “I owe her my life. And even worse, I’m in love with her. Besotted really.”
“Even worse?” I say with a sniff, but there’s a smile too, because I’ve known this for weeks. “Besotted?”
“Yes. And she with me, if you can believe it.”
We hug again, and this is the real reason why I won’t tell Ivan anything. After everything he’s been through, what Irisha and Katya went through, they deserve this life, this love, this chance at happiness.
When we let go, I turn to Gabi. She seems out of it, until she opens her eyes and blinks at me. She can’t talk, attached to a ventilator, and I reach for her hand and squeeze.
“Thank you,” I murmur, pressing down on the emotions that want to boil up. No words can ever tell her how grateful I am for what she’s done. When I coerced her into helping me get out of Ivan’s compound, neither of us envisioned this. It’s her life, and I never intended for it to be on the line.
Beside me, Luca briefly acknowledges Ivan, before reaching over to squeeze Gabi’s hand. He puts a hand on my back. “We won’t stay long. She needs to rest.”
“Yes. I’m staying with Gabi,” Ivan says. “Your brothers left half an hour ago. Yuri is on his way to Long Island to fetch Irisha and Katya. We’re going to figure things out. We’ll be in Boston for as long as it takes.”
Luca nods.
I touch Ivan’s hand. “We’ll be neighbors.”
In a way. I still need to figure out how to get from Luca’s apartment to Matteo’s and from there—
“Maybe. We might bunk down here until Gabi can go home. It’s a house with a kitchen and bathrooms, everything we need. Handy operating room on the side with medical staff.”
“But is it safe?” I ask.
“Nobody knows where we are. It’s as safe as it’s going to get.”
I nod, but we all know nobody is safe until Chertnikov is eliminated.
We stay a few more minutes, but then Luca nudges me and we leave. Gabi’s in the best hands, and Ivan is by her side.
The drive back to the apartment is quiet.
Luca isn’t breaking the tension with any jokes tonight.
I’m mulling over my options, but it’s clear I don’t have many.
With what happened with Gabi, I feel as if my entire life has become a time bomb.
I’m trapped in a dead-end. My only option is Luca Scalera.
I don’t know how to talk about something I’ve never talked about.
As we take the elevator, we don’t even try to make small talk.
Every twist and turn, the tension from the hospital, the tension from the shower this afternoon, squeezes the space between us.
All I recall is Luca’s teasing I showed you mine, princess! Can’t wait to see yours!
I can’t talk, but I can show him. Test my husband—a husband who runs porn sites for a living or hobby, whichever it really is. Let’s see how well he really knows a woman’s body.
As we enter the apartment, he reaches for my hand. I wasn’t sure where I was heading, how to tackle this show versus tell that’s the only way to get to the other side.
“Play something for me, please. On the piano.”
The fucking piano. The calm in the constant chaos of my life. I can’t do it. Not for lack of trying. The last thing I played was a requiem for Ivan, and now it seems as if I’ve lured death to our family with it.
But if my husband wants me to play, I’ll play. Let him hear my pain, feel it vibrate through his bones.
“Sure.” I toss my phone to the sofa as I walk up to the piano. “Such joyous times to make music.”
I sit.
I open the keyboard and glance at the gleaming white keys. I raise my hands, stretch my fingers, take a deep breath, trying to find my equilibrium. Composed, ready.
And then I bang down on the keys, brutalizing the Steinway so hard I could wince. But I have nothing to give except this violence and cacophony that sounds through the room with its terrible echoing acoustics, making everything ring twice as loud, twice as rebellious.
And I don’t stop. My rage has had nowhere to go for months.
Then Luca is beside me, pulling me up by the arms, twisting me around, kicking the seat away and pressing me against the piano. My hands grapple for purchase and my butt hits the keys, the crash of discordant notes vibrating through my body. He is so fast, it chills me.
His face is in mine, peering down, his eyes so close, I see the amber flecks in them.
“If you want to make fucking noise on this piano, princess,” he hisses, “let me show you how.”
He lifts me up, spreading my legs, and notes ring out as I shift my butt on the keys, his groin flush with mine, his growing erection pressing against my sex.
He spreads my arms to cling to the raised fallboard behind me, widening my legs, rolling his hips, creating just the right amount of friction for me to gasp.
“Use your words, princess, before I make assumptions here.”
I freeze as his hands spread over my knees, then run the length of my thighs. He dips his head to murmur into my ear, his warm breath sending a rush of goosebumps over my chest.
“Stunned speechless. But fucking talks through the piano. My sweet little bewitching wife. My guess would be someone needs to decompress.”
“More like detonate,” I breathe, knowing there’s no going back. Not to Russia, not to the past, not to a time before Luca.
And I don’t want to go back. Everything these past weeks has built up to this, and my need vibrates through my body, thirsting for him and him alone.
But it’s more than that. Everything else fades into the background as he grinds against me.
I need him. I want him. For the first time in my life, a man has stirred pure, undiluted lust in me.
It might be the need to forget everything else in a moment of passion, but there’s something about Luca beyond this intense desire to give in to him—to give in to myself—and I don’t know what it is.
His hands slide over my hips and underneath my sweater, touching my skin.
For all that he’s been forceful in handling me up to this point, he is so tender now, so sensual as he runs his fingertips along my sides, closer to my breasts, underneath the underwire of my bra, that I sink into him and drop my head back.
“Fuck, Milana,” he murmurs as his lips run over the shell of my ear, down to my neck, delivering soft kisses that make me shift on the keys. Jarring chords ring out as I rake my hands into his hair. “Do you want this, princess?”
“Yes,” I beg. “But not on the piano. And not in the lounge with all the cameras everywhere.”
He pulls away, and I stare at him, drugged with lust.
“Nobody’s watching.”
“How do I know that? Nobody trusts anybody,” I counter. “How do you know?”
He drops his forehead to mine. “Because I cut the wires. You’re too fucking tempting, and I’m many things but I’m not a voyeur.
In fact, I don’t get to see at all.” He slips a hand from my sweater and lifts it to my chin and makes me look at him.
“Except, with you, I want to see everything. I haven’t—” He breaks off, hisses in a breath.
“I’m pretty fucked up, princess. And obsessed, because I want to lick, touch, finger, and fuck every part of you. ”
For a few seconds, we just stare at each other, our mutual need laid bare. Honesty at last.
“Not on the piano,” I murmur as I press into him, soft notes sounding. “It is, after all, a Steinway concert grand.”
He smirks. “My wife deserves the best.”
His mouth comes down on mine, and it’s a desperate collision of desire, but soon, we’re kissing as if we’ve been yearning for each other for years, not a few weeks.
Slow, deep, tender… he is the drug I’ve always wanted to try, scared of the highs it will take me to, knowing I won’t get it again, but God, I can’t stop.
I want it all, every day. Like this. Playful.
Easy. With a sensuality he walks around with as if it’s his birthright.
When he lifts me off the keyboard, I circle his hips with my legs, my arms going around his neck, kissing him again, refusing to let go.
He carries me all the way to my—our—bedroom as I drown in his words.
Obsessed. Touch. Finger and fuck every part of you.
A girl can dream.
This woman doubts we’re going to get that far.