SEVENTEEN SET A FUCKING DATE ALREADY! #2
“That would be adequate time.” I grin at him, but it starts to fade as I let my hand trace along the strong line of his back. So many muscles… for a reason. A lot of people have wanted him dead. “Will me being a Veronian cause you more danger?”
“Breathing is dangerous,” he disregards.
“That’s no answer.”
“It’s the only answer I’ll give.”
“I’ll take it as a yes, then.”
“My world is dangerous, but so is your brothers-in-law’s. It’s life. We could walk outside right this second and a car could mow us down. Just a simple twist of fate. No malice, still death.” His eyes catch mine. “Do you wish to stop? The Veronians, I mean.”
“No, if anything, I want a full-scale takeover.”
“You’re young. You’ll be low down in the ranks. That might not—”
“I’m looking at literal proof that being on the bottom doesn’t mean you can’t make it to the top.” I tip my chin at him. “Am I wrong?”
His smile’s devious. “You’re not wrong.”
“And seeing as my business is your business…”
“…I’ll be your butcher. This is what you were thinking about yesterday?”
“Wynter and I discussed the need for a shake-up. Or do I mean shakedown?”
“Here I was, thinking you were feeling bad about killing some shit stain that refused to be wiped up.”
I peep at him. “I did a little. But I’m sick of women being the cows and men being the farmers.”
“Bizarre analogy but I’ll take it.”
“I know you’re a farmer, but I wouldn’t be a cow.”
“Back to hucows, are we?” At my glower, he smirks. “You know you wouldn’t.”
“Precisely. Wynter told me she’s friends with the girl Derek Dyers and his buddy attacked. I’m not happy that the Veronians cleared his name.”
“It’s the old boys’ club. That’s how it works. Favors for favors.”
“Perhaps right now. Are you telling me there’s no nepotism in this stupid secret society?
Are you telling me that Derek “My Brain is Puckshot and Needs to be Donated via Vivisection to Science” Dyers can bring more to their members than I could?
With my ties to both the Irish and the Russian Mobs?
If Shay gets into the White House…?” I tsk.
“No, no. The old way is immature. Typical male grandstanding.”
“Why, Victoria, it almost sounds like you crave a revolution.” He whispers that final word in Russian.
Because I can feel the full thickness of his dick pressing into the softness of my belly, I know he doesn’t hate my idea.
“Like any true Russian would.” My eyes shutter when he drops another kiss to my nose.
“So you’re Russian when you feel incendiary and American the rest of the time?”
I just smile.
When my eyes flicker open again, though, he starts talking. About what he learned from Harrington, who is in the dark as to what he did to piss off his brethren. About the nuances of falling out of favor within the Veronians. And, more importantly, about their modus operandi.
“There’s a council of ten. They run the show. You need to decide on a plan to catch their attention. You’ll be handicapped because I’ll let you do anything you want but you are mine, Victoria. No other—”
I press a finger to his lips. “I don’t want another.”
“Pussy is an easy method of controlling ugly bastards who only get a sniff of cunt because of their bank accounts.”
“Being better than anyone they have on board right now is another way.”
“And how do you intend on doing that?”
“Using my resources.” I flutter my lashes at him, but that doesn’t lessen his tension. “Maxim, I stayed a virgin. By choice. Nobody made me do it. You had more guards on me in school than some billionaires’ kids had, but there were ways to avoid them. I could have fucked anyone I wanted. I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I had this idea of you.” My smile makes an appearance.
I know it’s full of whimsy. This whole premise was.
“In a time where my entire world was unsafe, where someone got to me, you proved you would take down my enemies.
One by one. No matter who it was, how rich they were, how powerful they believed themselves to be—if they hurt me, you hurt them.
“Boys nowadays can’t get themselves together enough to agree they’re dating a girl. It’s all situationships and ooh, we’re just seeing each other. Hanging out. Bumping uglies.
“You staked a claim on me years ago and didn’t have to stick around to reinforce it. In a world of boys, milyy, you showed me what it is to have a man.”
The tension in him fades somewhat, but it’s still present. “They will try to use you.”
“I know.” I smirk. “Luckily for me, I have a shit ton of people who’ll have my back.”
“Having secrets won’t help. Keeping things cooped up won’t either.”
I hear the warning. “Then you had better get used to chatting with the O’Donnellys. The Veronians have power, but not like we do.”
He shakes his head. “I had to pick the crazy one.”
“Mean!”
“Ah, yes, I’m the mean one. You’re the crazy one. Fitting.” His change of subject is abrupt but he reiterates, “It might take years to do this, Victoria.”
“The joys of being young.”
“The joys of being overconfident,” he corrects.
“When we have a son, they can inherit my life’s work.”
His dick throbs against my hip. Again, we both ignore it.
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” he admits finally. “To be useful, to have a purpose, yes. That’s playing at it. You could pass on tips to the O’Donnellys easily. Curry favor for Seamus by making friends with the right people. Why this?”
“Because I was born of a girl discarded by a powerful man and raised by some of the strongest women on the planet. They taught me that being a woman is a sin in the eyes of the world. They taught me that my body isn’t mine, that my thoughts aren’t mine, that my rights aren’t even mine.
They taught me that the government wants me to breed but they resent me for that ability and they’ll hold all of their power over my head to control me.
That if I’m beaten or raped or abused, if my child is beaten, raped, or abused, the man still has all the power.
“The system is rigged, Maxim.
“The average woman can’t avoid that. We’re all cogs in a machine. But I have a position of power that I can exploit if I play the game. Oakwood’s administration covers shit up for the Veronians on the daily. In men’s favor. Never a woman’s. The rest of the country is the same. I’m sick of it.”
“You will need to keep your plan close to the vest, Victoria.”
It’s as much of a concession as I know he’ll give me. But I can hear in his voice that he knows I’m right.
“Wynter wants to help me. She said that we should use Dyers as an in if he vouched for her.”
“Does she know what danger she’ll put herself in if she follows through with it?”
“She knows. All women know. You don’t have to be toying with a secret society to be in danger when you’re a woman, Maxim.
Hell, you know that as well as I do because you’re the one who wastes millions a year protecting me with guards!
You don’t do that because you think I’ll catch measles one day and might faint in the street.
” I tut. “This is a way of gaining power—”
“It’s a way of getting yourself killed.”
“Luckily for me, I have my own butcher on speed dial and he’ll hack my enemies to pieces before they can hurt me.”
With a groan, he pushes his face into the pillow beside my head.
The weight of him atop me is heavy. Hard. But surprisingly pleasant. Maybe I’ll start wheezing in a little while. Not yet, though.
I’m surrounded by him. In ways that I’ve yearned for for a long time. He’s protected me from every man in the city, himself included, and I understand that my version of sticking it to the men goes directly against what he probably wanted out of a wife.
What are mob wives if not broodmares?
I don’t think he’ll stop me. He could have nixed this on its head when I came to him two nights ago. He didn’t.
“I want you to promise me that if any of them touch you, you’ll tell me,” he grinds out, startling me because I was lost in my thoughts for so long. “I want you to promise me that if you find yourself in a situation, you’ll call me.
“I want you to promise me that if things get out of hand and you find that none of our measures protect you… if they hurt you, that we agree I will kill them. No matter the political consequences. They will die.”
By hurt, we both know he means rape.
The ultimate power a man has over a woman.
Unless you have Maxim on your side.
“If that happens,” I whisper, “then I want his dick on a platter and his body in the Hudson.”
His smile’s feral. And just like that, I know he detests the plan I’ve concocted but he’ll help.
Because that’s what men, and not boys, do.