5. Nico
NICO
I push the office door open and find my best friend Anastasio in the guest's seat with his feet propped up on the desk, looking pleased with himself as he helps himself to my scotch. His dark hair falls loosely around his eyes to frame a brooding expression that hints at his capacity for violence.
"So," he says as soon as he hears the door close behind me. "Care to tell me why you’re back so soon instead of finalizing the peace terms with Slava Romanov? Or do I have to bribe Giorgia?"
I walk over and snatch the bottle out of his hand. "You know Giorgia can't be bribed.”
"Everyone can be bribed. Giorgia just prices herself out of the market." He studies me over the rim of the glass. "I’m guessing it has something to do with the unexpected guest you brought home?"
I don’t bother answering him as I pour myself a glass.
“Who is she, Nico?”
I look at my oldest friend, and test the lie on my tongue. She’s a nobody. A complication at best, and a loose end that I need to tie up.
But that’s not exactly true, is it? Because if she really were a complication and a loose end that needed tying up, there are far simpler solutions than what I proposed to her.
I trust Anastasio with my accounts and my life. He's bled for me twice over the years and has done more than his fair share through five years of war with the Russians.
But there are some secrets that I can’t trust anyone with. This one belongs to me and Lydia alone. Every additional set of ears will only become another gun pointed at both our heads.
"She's important," I say. "I’ll leave it at that."
His feet come off my desk and he sits up slowly at attention. The lazy humor drains out of his face. "Important how?"
"Important like I'm going to marry her."
The scotch stops halfway to his mouth. "Did you forget that you’re already engaged?"
“No, I haven’t.”
And that’s the real fucking rub of it all. Before my father’s death, he’d been negotiating a way to unite our family with the Diamandis Family of Athens. And the surest way he could get that is through the usual price: a marriage.
Seeing as how I’m the last living child left to him, he signed a contract with Don Thanasis and promised that I’d wed Thanasis’ oldest daughter Apollonia.
There’s just one minor problem.
I have no interest or desire to tie myself to a bunch of Greeks who make their money selling people. And when I wasn’t thinking about Lydia in the last ninety-one days, I was thinking about just how I might get out of that contract.
“Then you know as well as I do that Thanasis won’t take this breach of contract lying down.”
"My father signed that contract, and he’s dead." I lean back in my chair. "As the Don of the family, I have every right to rip it to shreds. I won’t tie myself to a family who built their fortune off selling women and children."
"The Greeks won't see principle.” Anastasio rakes a hand through his hair. “You jilt Apollonia Diamandis, and Thanasis will make you pay.”
“You know as well as I do the only interest Thanasis has in this marriage is a stake to my family fortune.” I shrug. “He would’ve slit my throat the moment Apollonia got pregnant. I know how this game is played.”
“And you think marrying this nobody will stop him from coming for this money?”
A dark and unwanted feeling slithers uncomfortably into my veins at the word nobody, and I shake my head to clear it before I grab Anastasio by his collar to beat seven shades of shit out of him.
He notices my agitation and slows his words. "He’ll start a war for her, and he’ll hurt her to get to you."
The feeling coils around my heart until it burns into a living thing. Blood rushes at my ears and I think about the cop who dared to put his dirty hands on Lydia earlier tonight. “People already tried to hurt her.”
“Care to explain what happened?” Anastasio leans back.
“No.”
“Cazzo,” he swears. “You’re really going to start a war for this girl.”
“That’s the idea.” I take a long sip of my scotch, but I can still taste Lydia on my tongue.
Before Anastasio can interrogate me any further, the office door opens. Giorgia comes in without knocking with her apron clutched in both hands.
"Nicolas,” she says. “Your guest has found a way out of her room."
“What?” I look at her in surprise. “How?”
“She apparently ripped the bedsheets into a makeshift rope, and is now somewhere on the grounds.”
I don’t know whether I should be pissed off or genuinely impressed.
I pull out my phone and pull up the security system’s video feed.
Cycling through the cameras, it doesn’t take me long to find Lydia.
She’s running deeper onto the grounds of the mansion, probably thinking that there’s another way out without realizing that what’s there is almost two miles of thick woods.
Normally, I would let her run. But after tonight, I’m not willing to take that chance with her out in the dark.
I need to get her. Running my tongue over my teeth, I feel a dark excitement thrumming through my body at the thought of chasing Lydia down.
"Thank you, Giorgia,” I say. “Please prepare a new set of beddings. I have a fiancée to bring home."
Lydia is twenty feet ahead of me as I give chase. When she hears me, she runs faster, but I know it won’t matter.
I know this property in the dark better than I know my own face, and she doesn’t.
Blood rushes in my ear as I chase, and excitement fills my heart with every step. Yes, piccola, run. Run as far and as fast as you can. But it won't fucking matter, because I will catch you. And when I do, I'll never let you go.
She turns in time to see me closing the gap. That’s when her foot catches on a gnarled root and she falls back. My hand shoots out to grab her wrist.
It's enough to steady her, but not enough to prevent gravity from dragging both of us down to the ground.
We fall into the wet mud and a small sound of surprise punches from her throat. She looks up at me with those eyes, unmistakably green even in the dark. My weight settles between her legs and fire burns through my veins when I do.
Her face is flushed from running, and her hair is plastered to her forehead in messy strands. She parts her lips, and I catch sight of the pink tip of her tongue darting out for just a moment.
Even with hate and defiance in her eyes, she's impossible for me to look away from.
Maybe it's because of the hate in her eyes that I can't stop looking at her.
I become aware of just how little space there is between us, how completely my body covers hers, and how fucking hot everything feels right now.
“Get the fuck off me!”
Her hands reach up to claw my face, but I catch and pin them beside her head. She lets out a snarl of frustration, and struggles underneath me. But I refuse to let her go.
We lie there, face to face in the dark, breathing in the same air and staring into each other’s eyes.
I want to crush my lips against hers, slide my tongue into her mouth to swallow her moans, before I rip away her clothes right now and fuck her in the mud. After how wet she got for me earlier, I know that there is a part of her that not only will let me do it, but wants me to do it.
Hell, from the way she’s glaring at me, she's practically begging me to do it.
Which is all the more reason why I shouldn’t.
Reluctantly, I peel myself away from her inviting warmth, and pull her up by her arms from the ground. In that same motion, I undo my belt, and quickly bind her hands behind her back.
My fingers close around the nape of her neck and I march her back to the mansion.
There’s mud on both of us. Her blouse has come further loose at the shoulder, and I can see a streak of dark earth smeared near her collarbone. My thumb moves to brush it away.
Heat immediately moves up my arms from the point of contact, and she clenches her jaws at the same time as me.
When the mansion is within sight, she finds her voice again. "I won't marry you."
"Unfortunately for you, you never had a choice."
She stops and turns, green eyes flashing with anger in the dim light. "You're just like your father."
Anger flares in my throat at the comparison. "If I were like my father, I would've killed you with him."
"Maybe you should have."
I tighten my grip on the back of her neck, and my cock is already stirring in my pants. "Maybe, but then where’s the fun in that?"
By the time we arrive at the back entrance steps, my body is practically on fire and I have a hard-on that nobody could miss. My chest is burning and I’m just a little bit relieved that neither Giorgia nor Anastasio is here to see me like this.
This time, I march Lydia back up the stairs by her side. I don’t need to start staring at her ass again. I clench my jaw in annoyance as I walk her back into her room.
Giorgia has already laid out brand new bedsheets, and the window is now closed and bolted shut.
After I bring her over the threshold, I undo the belt at her wrists, and turn her by the shoulders so that she looks at me.
"Don't ever go running off into the dark again, piccola.” My voice drops to a tone that’s softer than I ever intend it to be as I wipe at the trace of mud on her collarbone. “There are worse monsters than me lurking out there."