Chapter 26 Alik
ALIK
Iwalk Sera back to her room, my whole body buzzing.
She’s practically asleep on her feet, her head on my shoulder as I guide her through the silent house.
I can still hear the little gasps she made as she fell apart on my desk, her orgasm so powerful I came with her, my knees buckling and my cock pulsing as I cursed and growled her name.
Sera’s sexy, pleasured sounds have formed a new soundtrack in my brain, a melody I’ll be playing on repeat for the foreseeable future. Even now it’s distracting me, making it so hard to think straight I almost walk by her suite.
“Alik, stop. We’re here.” Sera gives my sweater a little tug, pulling my mind out of my very favorite gutter. She leans against the door frame, eyes already closed. “Come in with me?”
Fuck I want to, so much. I want to follow her into bed, curl myself around her, and keep her close until this whole monstrous thing is over.
I’m so close to saying yes when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye.
Dimitri is standing at the end of the hall.
From his expression it’s clear I’m not getting any sleep tonight.
I tell him with a nod that I’ll be right there, then turn back to Sera.
“I want to, moya voitelnitsa, but I can’t. You go, get some sleep. I’ll see you when you wake up.”
“Promise?” Her head lolls, already seeking a pillow, but the smile on her face is pure temptation.
“Da. Ya tebe obeshchayu.” I kiss her cheek, her neck, a patch of her chest that’s hidden behind her hoodie. “We’ll get the tattoo removed, too. As soon as we can.”
Sera’s eyes flutter open, the green fierce despite how exhausted she is. “We’ll do it when this is all over and we’ve put those men in the ground. We’ll make it a celebration, to mark the end to their rein of horror. Deal?”
I kiss her forehead to stop myself from kissing her mouth. To stop myself from dropping to my knees and worshiping her the way she deserves. Moya voitelnitsa. My warrior. “Deal,” I say, voice tight as it battles the constriction in my chest. “Now go before you fall asleep right here in the hall.”
Sera teases me with a mockingly obedient smile, drops a peck on my cheek, then vanishes behind the door.
I’m still standing there a few moments later, arms braced against the doorframe, head bowed as I try to come to terms with everything that’s happened in the last ten hours.
Seeing Sera get attacked in the club has unleashed something inside of me, a primitive creature that’s vicious and untamable and wants nothing more than to destroy anything that dares harm her.
But talking about Rina has unearthed memories and failings that are too strong to push aside.
I loved my sister from the day she was born.
She was sweet and joyous and mischievous and the reason I didn’t run away when my father beat me and broke me, adhering to our family’s long-standing tradition of sculpting the first-born male into the brutal pakhan he’s required to be.
I survived my father’s brutality so I could protect my baby sister, to keep her life untouched by violence, only to fail her in the worst way possible.
I was Rina’s protector. I failed. She died.
It’s a truth I’ve had to live with for two years, but one I’ve been able to keep buried deep beneath my single-minded pursuit for revenge.
Sera’s arrival has upended all that, unearthing too many unsettling feelings to count.
Protectiveness and unworthiness, yearning and love, and a near debilitating fear of loss.
That’s the one that makes it hard to breathe.
The one that makes me simultaneously want to send Sera to the far ends of the earth while never letting her out of my sight.
Which means traveling to the ends of the earth with her.
But I can’t leave.
Not yet.
Which is how I end up standing there, praying to a god I abandoned long ago, desperate for some divine assurance that I’ll be able to keep Sera safe.
Assurance that doesn’t come.
At the end of the hall, Dimitri clears his throat. “Boss?”
“What?” I fall into step beside him. “It’s almost six. I need to get some fucking sleep. Whatever it is, can it wait a few hours?”
“Sorry, boss. It definitely can’t.”
I follow Dimitri down to the mansion’s grand foyer. A few hours ago, I had Sera pressed to that door, my dick inside her gloriously tight body. Now, a man I don’t want to see is standing in practically the same spot.
I come to a dead stop in front of the Italian, entirely unsurprised that he’s wearing a custom-tailored suit before dawn. Such an aggressively classy fucker. “Marchetti. What do you want?”
“Bastardo. If you checked your fucking phone, you’d know. Instead, I have to come all the way out here, wasting precious fucking time while Pagano is leaking blood everywhere.”
“What?”
Gio is already on the move, halfway out the door as he barks over his shoulder, “Someone found your little prisoner and decided to elaborate on your handiwork. Cosenza asked me to pay Pagano the occasional visit while he’s out of town.
I went there early this morning just to make sure the cocksucker still has a pulse, only to find the guard dead and most of Pagano’s blood drained all over the floor.
It’s a fucking mess and if you need any more intel from him, you’re running out of time. ”
Outside, Dimitri’s already running to pull one of the cars around.
Gio jumps in his own car—some fancy fucking thing that’s so low to the ground he has to fold his legs to get in—and shouts that he’ll meet us there.
With Rem out of town, Marchetti has custody of Pagano.
If Rocco is about to die, Gio is going to be there when it happens.
The question of who attacked Rocco Pagano is running on a viscous loop as Dimitri tears across town. It’s early enough that rush hour traffic hasn’t clogged the city yet; we make it to the restaurant in record time.
Inside, it smells of death. The air is sour, heavy. Rocco is laid out by one of the abandoned kitchen appliances, his body flayed open like one giant wound. How he’s still breathing, I have no clue, but his loud, wet rattle fills the room.
Gio is standing near Rocco, but not so close that he’ll get blood on his bespoke Italian shoes. “He’ll be dead in minutes, Russian. Ask what you’re going to ask.”
I crouch near Pagano’s head, try to ignore how much blood has pooled around his body. “Who did this to you?”
Rocco struggles to open his eyes. When he does they’re full of hatred. “What do you care?”
“I don’t. Not about you. But who found you and how—I care about that very much.
” Because other than me, Gio, Rem, and a few of our men, no one knows Rocco Pagano is here.
No one who would gut him like a fish without explicit permission from the Cerretis.
The attack on Rocco is a warning sign to us, but fuck if I know who from.
“You should,” he answers with a cough. “You have no idea the monster you’re dealing with.”
“Shkodra?”
Eyes dim, Rocco starts to laugh. At least that’s what I think he’s doing, but it quickly turns to spasms. Pink-tinged saliva drips down his chin when he can finally talk.
“That fucker? He has specific tastes in women and violence, but he hates getting his hands truly dirty. No. He’s not the one you need to be worried about. ”
Pagano is moments from dying and even now he’s goading me. I lean in, gripping his jaw, squeeze hard. “Tell me.”
Rocco groans, his face contorted in pain. “How the hell do you think I got my hands on her? His own fucking daughter. Only a man that twisted would find a way to cash in on someone so ugly and useless.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I rattle his head against the ground, keeping him conscious.
“My niece, you fuck. It was his idea. To sell her to Shkodra.” Rocco spasms, spit flying everywhere.
I squeeze his face harder. “I-I had a woman lined up for him. Straight from Italy. Pure mafioso blood. Virgin. Entirely fuckable. Everything Shkodra wanted. She was supposed to arrive with a shipment of girls from Europe but somehow the delivery got fucked up. They all escaped. We didn’t have anyone for the Albanian.
S-so we had to come up with a new plan. And my brother-in-law, he decided we’d sell his daughter.
Fuck…” Rocco trails off in a fit of bloody coughing.
A high-pitched ringing fills my head as the weight of what he’s saying sinks in.
The trafficked women I helped escape not long after I infiltrated Pagano’s operation—one had been specially selected for the Albanian.
With her gone, Pagano and his brother-in-law needed to find a replacement: Rocco’s niece.
Sera.
Rocco is coughing blood all over my sleeves, but that’s not what’s threatening to make me vomit.
I’m the one who helped those women escape, which means I’m the one who created the void that needed to be filled.
No matter how I run and rerun Rocco’s words, the answer comes back the same: I’m the reason this asshole and his brother-in-law kidnapped Sera, locked her in a cell, and sentenced her to be sold.
Furious with myself, with Rocco, with the world, I shove his head aside and jump to my feet. Gio gives me a questioning look, which I ignore. I stab a foot into Rocco’s ribs. “Your brother-in-law, he’s the monster you’re talking about? The one who did this?”
Rocco garbles out curses before managing to nod yes.
His skin has faded from pale to a sick gray color.
Gio crowds my peripheral vision; he’s staring at the dying man on the floor, monitoring for the moment his heart finally gives out.
He barely glances at me when I jab Rocco again.
“Who the fuck is he?” In all the time I was part of the Pagano organization, no one ever mentioned Rocco’s brother-in-law.
“And why does he suddenly want you dead?”
“Be-because I’m not useful anymore,” Rocco stutters, his breaths getting shallower by the second. “Renzo always gets rid of things when they stop being useful. And h-he was tired of waiting for you fuckers to do it for him.”
Renzo. This time I actually gag, my stomach rebelling against Rocco’s statement. “Renzo di Salvo? He’s your brother-in-law?”
Rocco is done answering my questions, strangled sentences just falling out of his mouth as he lets go.
“I fucked up and he wanted me to know it. Wanted me to know he’s going to clean up my mess.
As always. Sa-san-sanctimonious fuck. He wanted to make sure I knew I’d screwed up.
That he’s the one calling the shots. That he was the one killing me. And he-he-he’s—”
Rocco sputters and flails, his body finally falling into shock. I lurch at him and Gio grabs my shoulders, holds me back. “What, WHAT?!” I yell. “What’s he going to do?”
Rocco’s eyes close, but I swear he’s grinning as he lands his last blow. “He’s going to get her too.”
Pagano delivers the threat with his dying breath. I stare at his lifeless body, momentarily numb.
Sera is di Salvo’s daughter. The implications ping-pong inside my skull.
The fact that her blood intimately ties her to the man who as good as murdered my sister. A man even more monstrous than Rocco.
The fact that he saw her in the club.
The fact that he knows she’s alive, and in the city, and within his reach. And he’s going after her.
Every instinct tells me he won’t let her escape. He’ll sell her or kill her. Either way, Renzo di Salvo saw Sera leave with me last night, which means he knows where to start hunting.
I yank away from Gio and start barking orders to Dimitri.
“No, no, don’t worry, Russian. I’ve got this,” Gio says sarcastically. “I’ll dispose of the body. No need to stay to help.”
I run for the door. Let him deal with the trash. I’ve got to get to Sera.