Chapter 25 #3
"No," I say, and rip the dress seam up the rest of the way, exposing the impossible length of her legs.
"But I like you better mouthy than obedient.
" I shuck my pants, my cock is already hard as rebar, and I line myself up over her. She’s already rubbing her clit through the drenched panties, eyes locked on mine.
"Impatient," she taunts.
"Desperate," I correct.
She sits bolt upright, grabs my cock, and strokes it hard and rough. "Then shut up and fuck me, Conti."
The first thrust has her gasping, making her eyes go wide.
She’s so tight, so wet, I grit my teeth to keep control.
I don’t go slow, not for a second. I pin her wrists above her head with one hand, the other at her jaw, thumb circling the pulse at her throat.
Her head kicks back, exposing the line of her neck for me.
I slam into her, again and again, and the slap of skin against skin echoes off the cabin walls.
She yells, guttural, Russian curses threading with my name. She wants it brutal and gets it. I fuck her like she’s the only thing holding me to this earth, like if I let up for a second, I’d float into the sun. The bed slams against the wall.
"Who do you belong to?" I growl in her ear.
She bites down on my hand, hard. "No one."
I pound her viciously until she chokes. "Try again."
Her hands break free, claw down my back, nails scoring deep. I hiss but don’t stop, don’t let up. Her face twists, desperate for air, desperate for me.
"Say it," I demand. "Tell me."
She spits in my mouth, jade green eyes locked on mine. "I belong to myself," she cries, every syllable shattering. "But you—fuck, you own my goddamn soul."
I come so hard my vision goes black around the edges. Oksana is right there with me, clenching around my cock like an iron vice, then trembling, boneless, beneath me. I collapse on her, nose buried in her tangle of hair, lungs seizing for air.
Minutes pass. Maybe years. When I finally roll off, I’m still half inside her, and her hand never leaves my wrist. She kisses my jaw, gently, a counterpoint to the savagery of just moments ago.
"Promise me you’ll haunt me if you die first," she whispers, voice raw.
"Not a chance," I say. "We go out together."
She laughs, head on my chest, and I swear I could stay in this bed, inside this woman, for the rest of my life. Even if the world ends around us, maybe especially.
The sky outside glows an unreal peach, morning or dusk, impossible to tell at this altitude.
Beside me, Oksana purrs, already plotting her next move.
I know there’ll be more blood, more betrayals, maybe more pain than either of us can bear.
But for right now, it’s only this: her skin stuck to mine, her wild heart caged against my ribs, her breath warm and alive in my ear.
Let the world burn. I’m bringing her with me, wherever we land.
A couple of hours, a shower, and a light dinner later, the jet dips. Mexico City’s dark seam is opening beneath us, oceans of light interrupted by the black teeth of mountains. I watch it come, my pulse holds steady, while my father calls again.
I powered through the last thirty in silence. I intend for number thirty-one to get the same treatment.
"Put it on speaker," Oksana says.
"No."
"Steph." Her voice lands low, steel wrapped in velvet. "Let me hear the enemy."
"He’s my father."
"Exactly."
I set the phone face-up and take the call.
"What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?
" Gustave’s voice detonates in the cabin.
The old Conti thunder, polished in boardrooms and back rooms, now frayed.
"You drag my soldiers out of New York like thieves in the night. You point our guns south. You force Edoardo’s hand.
Do you want a war with Caracas? With Edoardo? With me?"
"I'm going to finish what you started three years ago when you put my brother into Don Silvestre's hands like he was nothing." I press out.
There’s a short, stunned quiet, the kind you get when a man misses the obvious step on a staircase.
"What is done is done, let's move on," he grits.
"You keep saying that." I glance at Oksana. She’s watching me, unreadable and very much the reason I’m not breaking the phone right now. "But the ledger in Caracas says otherwise. Your payments say otherwise."
"Careful," Gustave warns, and there’s the other voice, cool and lethal. "You walk a fine line, Ragazzo."
"Then get off the other end of it," I say, and end the call.
The silence afterward isn’t peace. It’s a held breath. Oksana reaches into the seat pocket and takes out a black case.
"My men at the hospital checked in," she says, opening it. Inside, there’s a minimalist pistol, a line of spare mags, two micro radios, a stack of crisp pesos, and paperwork. "They have your brother on a quiet floor. Private guard rotation.
"Two local cops on Valverde’s payroll tried to get past the door. They lost the desire."
"How quiet?"
"Quiet enough for a saint to sleep. Too quiet for me." She tucks one radio into my palm. "We will not go straight to the hotel."
The jet kisses down and rolls. Heat fogs the window when the door opens; the first breath tastes like jet fuel and dust and a city that’s always awake. We move fast—no customs line, no eyes that we can’t buy—down the stairs and into the armored Suburban waiting beyond the wing.
I climb in, slide the phone into the cup holder, and it starts vibrating again like a trapped insect.
"Give," Oksana says.
I hand it over. She taps it on and leaves the call open to air. My father’s voice fills the car in Italian, a storm of You don’t know what you’re touching, and This is bigger than your pride, and, softest of all, Son, please—
Oksana lets it ride for a beat. Then she speaks fluent, crisp, aristocratic Italian, the kind you learn in ballrooms. "Signor Conti, this is the woman your son married."
There is a silence you can taste.
"You have no idea what you’ve done," he breathes.
"That makes three of us," she replies. "But I do know what we are about to do. We’re going to make it legal."
She kills the call, pulls a slim folder from the door pocket, and drops it in my lap. Two passports. A set of forms stamped by someone’s cousin. A tiny red velvet box.
I look at her. "What are you up to?"
She tilts her head. "You tell everyone I'm your zhena in front of men who gossip like a salon filled with debutantes. You put a line in the sand, and I’m sealing it."
For a moment, I just blink at her. Because my emotions don’t know which order to fight in—they all launch at once. I want to laugh. I want to kiss her. I want to put my hand around her throat and demand that she understand what she’s doing to me.
This woman is going to be the death of me.
Her timing, her audacity, her on my schedule certainty, she turns my entire world sideways every time she opens her mouth. And the worst part? The very best part?
I fucking love it.
I wouldn’t want her any other way.
Somewhere between the lair, the blood, the lies, and the war my father built out of our bones, this woman walked in, turned everything upside down, and made it feel like the first thing in my life that wasn’t a duty.
I look at the passports, the folder, the ring.
I realize—clean and terrifying—that I love this woman.
"You think we can do this tonight?" I ask, voice rougher than I intend.
Her eyes glint. "Dear Marito, this is Mexico City. Everything is possible with cash, a signature, and a notary who owes me his life."
The driver threads the Suburban into the arterial chaos known as traffic here.
Oksana texts with her thumbs the way men set charges: decisive and merciless.
We pass luminous taquerías, shuttered tiendas, and a procession of street dogs trotting like they own the night.
It is almost pretty, if you don’t know what kind of ghosts walk here.
The Registro Civil is a block of old stone and fluorescent light trapped in a dream.
Inside, behind a bullet-scratched window, a clerk looks up with eyes that have seen every story people tell at midnight.
Oksana lays down the folder, a wad of pesos, and a single sentence in Russian asking for a judge . Two doors open.
We go through the second door.
The chapel is a room with a Mexican flag, a crucifix hung slightly askew, and a plastic bouquet that has outlived governments. A judge in a cream suit sleeps behind a desk, his tie loosened, a half-eaten concha perched on a plate like a surrendered moon. He stirs, sees Oksana, and wakes completely.
"Senora," he says with grave warmth in English. "You look lovely when you come to threaten my retirement."
"You look terrible when you fall asleep on the Constitution," she replies sweetly. "Judge Molina, this is my marito. We just need the ink to make it legal."
He stands, shakes my hand, and studies my face with the alertness of a man who names the wolves in his city. "And you must be Senor Conti, a pleasure to meet you. You must be someone really special to have won the heart of one…"
"So heartless?" Stephano winks at me. I make a face. Molina laughs nervously.
He nods, something like respect ghosting his mouth, and gestures to a line on a form.
"Here, here, and here."
Two city clerks slip in, trailing the scent of stale coffee. They sign with bored efficiency, the kind you only get from midnight bureaucracy in a country that has seen too much to care. Then the judge turns back to us, clearing his throat as though bracing for impact.
He asks for rings, and before I have a chance to say anything, Oksana reaches up, fingers brushing her collarbone, and unhooks a thin gold chain I’d noticed earlier—glimpses of metal against her throat when I was too busy driving into her to ask what it meant.
Two narrow bands slide free. One gold. One black tungsten.
Rings.
Our rings.