Chapter 1 #3
I move back over to him and slide my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek against the front of his emerald green jacket.
Alexei enfolds me in his arms, content to stand there in perfect silence for several minutes while Nisha waits nearby, my girls (and Bastian) double and triple check the outside, and Bohnes watches intently.
“Tell me about the letters in your room.” I can’t resist. It just pops out.
“Love letters, between Mama and Papa,” Alexei replies, his voice wistful and dreamy and determined. I can see in his expression that he’s committing himself to handwriting letters to me over the course of our relationship. This is the person I chose to marry, someone like this. Score.
My eyes meet Kellin’s as he stands close enough to me and Alexei to touch.
Not a group hug, no. But close to it. The bottom of Kellin’s sweatshirt is touching the edge of Alexei’s suit jacket.
Hiring my Nightmare was the right choice.
Alexei made the correct decision after he witnessed what happened to his dad.
Today is proof of that.
“Come. It’s cruel to leave Widow and Ash in the dark.” Alexei runs his fingers through my hair, gazing at my face longingly. Ooooh. Dang. That is…that is romantic.
I swallow and carefully disentangle myself from his strong arms, aware that Nisha is glaring at me with narrowed eyes.
The corner of her lip is curled in disgust and all of that extra respect from earlier has melted.
Alexei releases me easily, sparing me the trouble of having to dominate him the way Bohnes would do.
Alexei isn’t wrong though. If my boys are upstairs hiding with the lights off, with no idea of what’s going on down here, then that’s torture. I can’t leave ‘em like that.
“Queen, you better hurry up and explain shit to me,” Nisha grumbles, glancing protectively over her shoulder in the direction of some furious typing sounds.
Her fuckgirl, and our resident hacker Hype, must be sitting somewhere else in the vast maze that is the first floor of my new digs. “This place makes me feel uneasy.”
“It makes you feel uneasy because it’s haunted.
Shall we throw a seance to attract a few more ghosts?
” Bohnes jests, flipping her off with a black fingernail and anatomically correct bone tattoos.
Nisha returns the favor and the two of them give each other tight, bitchy smiles that smell like budding friendship to me.
Adorable.
“Kellin.” I give him a look as I grab onto the hem of his sweatshirt, tickling his bare skin underneath with my fingers.
Bohnes drops cool blue eyes to me. “If this place is haunted, then the ghosts it already has are more than enough. Although I do agree with you that ghosts are sick as hell.” I lower my voice, trying to disguise this next bit.
“Be extra nice to Alexei today. His Papa could be a ghost…”
“I’m fine,” Alexei says crisply, unbuttoning and rebuttoning his suit jacket without even realizing he’s doing it.
Damn it. Of course he heard me. “It’s only right that I resume Papa’s place in…
everything. Crying about it would only disgrace him.
He would tell me to protect my lovers at all costs, myself second, and grieve only when it was safe to do so. Today was nothing to me. I’m fine.”
He said ‘I’m fine’ twice. Doesn’t that mean that he isn’t fine? I can’t decide. I have more to learn about Alexei.
“Considering what might’ve been today, we should be counting our lucky stars.” Bohnes kisses the tip of his ring finger as he winks at me, dark makeup smudged around his eyes. “Alexei is fine. Ash and Widow will be, too. But I think it’s cute how much you worry about us, my vicious obsession.”
“Vicious obsession? These nicknames are getting ridiculous. Get your ass to the second floor.” I point at the roof with my middle finger and raise a brow. “If you misbehave, I’ll have a sleepover with my girls and leave you with blue balls.”
“You’d do that to me? After everything I’ve done?” Kellin puts a wounded hand to his chest before grabbing the banister and hopping it. He lands on the third stair and jogs the rest of the way up without waiting for me.
“I’m expecting a full, detailed update on everything that happened today!
” Nisha shouts as Alexei and I start up the stairs.
I’m a bit jazzed, like a little kid. Sure, my fuckboy burned my grandma’s house down after he murdered my backstabbing sister, leaving me homeless.
But now? This place has style—and security.
I pause near the top of the stairs, one hand on the railing as I lean down and call back to Nisha with a cheeky grin.
“Ash blew Alexei—innuendo intended—and that’s that. I’ll—” I’m interrupted by a shriek.
“Ash blew Alexei?!” Bastian yelps, sprinting into the foyer from one of the other rooms. He’s panting. Red-faced like he was outside in the cold until a few seconds ago. “You can’t drop something like that without an explanation, Scarlett!”
“I’ll tell you everything. Pinky swear. First though, assign rooms in the guesthouse to the girls. We’re sleeping here from now on.” I hear Bastian cheering in Spanish as I draw back and finish the last few stairs, catching up with Alexei and Bohnes.
They were deep in conversation, their words dying down as I approach. I can hear Nisha cursing me out from the foyer.
“What? You two best not be keeping secrets again.” I slip my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket as I stroll between the pair of them. “Don’t think I missed the fact that our wedding invitation was sent out before I even said yes.”
“Wasn’t it poetic though? To staple it to your attempted-rapist’s chest?
” Bohnes sighs, like he’s appreciating a good piece of art.
He smells like dust from the attic, like burnt sugar and juniper.
He’s still looking at me like he plans to fuck me in the next five or ten minutes. Good. I want him to.
“In an ideal world, I would never have made such presumptions.” Alexei sighs and looks around the house like he’s never seen it before.
His mouth is tight. His eyes are a little wild.
He’s reliving more of those bad memories than he wants to.
I need to keep him distracted. “But I am glad that I did.”
Ooph. Another zinger. Shit is about to get emotional between me and these guys.
I pause in the center of the hallway, leading the way even though I have no clue where I’m going.
Look at all this woodwork, I think, eyes catching on the doorframes and the crown molding and all that fancy shit that rich people spend a ton of money on and then forget to ever be impressed by. This is the nicest house I’ve ever been in, and it’s mine.
No fuckin’ prenup.
“And the panic room would be…where?” I ask, tossing a coy look over my shoulder.
“Right this way, darling.” Alexei sweeps down the hall past me and into the last bedroom on the left.
“That’s the master,” Bohnes teases as he steps up beside me.
He’s been here plenty of times before to steal stuff.
To murder the mayor’s goon. That sort of thing.
This is my first time, and I’m a little bit excited about it.
Gram will be safe here…under the same roof as her granddaughter’s killer.
Ouch. “Could use a bit of redecorating. A dash of taxidermy. A can of black paint. View of a graveyard out the window.”
Bohnes saunters close to me, his hands twisted together behind his back, his boots loud against the floor in a way he only ever does intentionally. To let people know that he’s coming. He gets really fucking close to me.
“We’re not going to work for the mob for the rest of our lives,” I say softly and he blinks several times, like he expected almost any other response from me than that. “I don’t want to be a part of organized crime forever.”
“Scarlett.” Bohnes’ voice is soft, different.
This is my first time hearing this particular tone.
“This isn’t the sort of arrangement a person can easily back out of.
” He stops talking, moving around to stand in front of me and putting his huge hands on my shoulders.
“But if that’s what you want, then we’ll achieve the impossible together.
” He presses a kiss to my forehead that has me all sorts of messed up.
I’m blushing—what the actual hell?—as I slip around him and into the bedroom. Bohnes is the one to shut and lock the door behind us.
Alexei presses a button on a seemingly innocuous remote from the bedside table and I hear the sound of a door opening inside the walk-in closet.
It’s a deliciously large space, begging to be filled with designer dresses from the Prescott track.
Trophies from all the wins I’m going to get in order to clear that loss from my name.
The light from the closet falls in a gold rectangle against the metal floors inside the hidden room.
I see two pairs of Bohnes’ sneakers—borrowed by Ash and Widow respectively—sitting side by side in the light.
With a frown, I crouch low and move into the short opening, finding the pair of them asleep together.
Ash’s head is on Widow’s shoulder, and I have such an intense reaction to the sight that I almost fall backward on my ass.
“Hey.” Widow turns his head to look at me, voice low and heavy with concern. “They gone?”
“They’re gone,” I confirm, lifting a brow when Widow hands over his phone.
He got a text message with a video, just like I did.
Instead of sucking fuckboys, it’s the staff of Ash’s former home being systematically executed in order to force him to his knees.
Ash can’t stand the idea of other people getting hurt for the sake of keeping him safe.
It’s his personal version of hell. “I hate that I put you on Jonas’ radar, Adrian, but fuck, I’m glad you’re here. ”