Chapter 4
RAFEAL
Iforce my hand to relax before I shatter the glass. I can’t move, can hardly breathe. She’s there. Ava. Ava, who is supposed to be dead, who drove off the rainy road before I reached out, to find her, to apologize. To claim her again.
My head is a mess, thoughts rushing as the rest of the hall slips away and it’s just us. Her and I like that one magical night almost a year ago, our eye contact like nothing I ever felt before.
She looks good. Better than good. Dressed professionally in a blazer and loose-fitting pants, hair tied up, but with a few disobedient strands here and there, giving her an artistic, sophisticated look. Even from here, I can see the flush in her cheeks.
And somehow, hell, she’s gotten curvier. Her hips are thicker. Her thighs look more tempting, which should be impossible. My cock twitches in my pants, entirely inappropriate. Because she’s not going to want to screw after the way I left her.
But she’s alive. Relief floods me along with confusion. Why would Nico lie to me? But it’s the bone-deep relief that hits first, immediate and overwhelming. I move across the hall, meaning to speak with her, but she turns and walks quickly away before I can reach her.
The door slams so loudly behind her that people turn. Faces I recognize. Legitimate art dealers. Illegitimate people like me. Those who skirt the edges.
Like the man who approaches me now. Adrian Kovacs, pale-eyed, of Hungarian descent, and a good friend of the consigliere of the Hungarian mob. He taps his manicured fingernail against his champagne glass. “What a pleasure to see you here, Mr. Bellini.”
I smile tightly, even as my world spins. “Likewise.”
“Is there any reason you scared my employee into abandoning her post?”
I swallow a ball of fury.
She’s alive!
“Your employee?”
“I saw you staring at her, doing that classic… what should I call it? Mob stare?”
“Ava Ward works for you,” I mutter stoically. “Since when?”
Adrian narrows his eyes. “I don’t see what business that is of yours.”
He’s too confident for a man without mob backing. Ava’s apartment was in Hungarian turf, and this man is a good friend to the Hungarian consigliere… did he have something personally to do with this mess? Is that why he’s acting so damn cocky?
I lean forward and lower my voice. “My business is none of your concern.”
“True,” he says, ice in his eyes. “Except when it comes to my employees.”
“You’re imagining things,” I grunt. “It’s probably best if you walk away.”
Fear flickers in his otherwise stone-cold expression. He inclines his head, then leaves, moving to a nearby group.
I take a sip of champagne and walk to the edge of the room. Take out my cellphone and call Nico. No answer. I leave a message, “You’ve got some fucking explaining to do.”
Did he forge the death certificate?
After a few minutes, Ava returns, head held high. My heart is a rampaging beast in my chest. I cross the room and block her path. She stops with a gasp, but immediately composes herself. Unfortunately, she can’t hide the flutter of her pulse in her throat.
She doesn’t look happy to see me.
But even so, I step forward, open my arms as if to hug her.
“Don’t you dare,” she hisses.
“You’re alive,” I say.
She shakes her head slowly. “Oh. My. God.”
“Ava, you’re—”
“Please, don’t tell me this is going to be your line.
I’m alive? What are you even babbling about?
I was alive when you snuck out like a… like a thief in the night!
” She lowers her voice, glancing at a passing couple.
“Why would it be any different now?” Before I can answer, she raises her hand.
“Don’t answer that. I don’t even care. I don’t want any more lines, Michael. ”
I open my mouth to explain when a man approaches, one of those in-between men who skirt the edges of the law. “Rafael, old friend!” he yells, clapping me on the arm.
“Look, sorry, I’m busy.”
“But later, yes? Later?”
Fate is having a field day.
Ava laughs as her eyes glitter, holding back tears. The mix of pain shielded behind the brave front she’s putting up guts me. “Rafael？”
“I gave you a fake name,” I admit.
“Of course you did, playboy.”
“I thought you were dead, Ava. And I’m not a goddamn playboy.”
I step forward and take her hand. She makes a small, broken noise. For a precious moment, she lets me hold her, then she quickly yanks her hand away. “If you do that again, I’ll scream. I mean it.”
My chest tightens at her words. “Ava, Christ. Who do you think I am?”
Another laugh, this one laced with acid. “I honestly have no clue who you are, Rafael.”
Right, stupid question.
Neither of us speaks for a long time. But she doesn’t run. I count that as a small victory. All I want is to pull her into a hug and hold her tight, feel her warmth pressed against me so I know she’s real, know she’s safe and breathing. To convince my thudding heart.
I almost tell her why I left her that night.
I woke and found myself watching her, struck by how beautiful she looked in a deep, peaceful sleep, a soft smile resting on her face.
Then I went to her window. There I saw several men outside.
With guns. Intent on doing me harm. If I’d stayed, it would’ve meant putting her in danger. Dragging her into my hell.
“How…” I lick my lips. “How have you been?”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “So, what? You want to catch up, huh?”
The mafia king comes out. I can’t help it. “I fucked up, Ava. I wish I hadn’t left you like I did. But dammit, we can just talk…”
“I don’t know what world you’re in if you think you can show up suddenly and make demands.”
I take a step forward. Then another. She makes a breathy gasp, tilting her head to look up at me.
Behind the sass and the earned anger, there’s something else.
The same spark I saw in her the night we met.
The spark that finally, for the first time in my blood-red life, stopped the world from spinning so fast.
“I’m not lying to you, Ava. I thought you were dead.”
She rolls her eyes, then her gaze settles on me for a few moments. It’s as if the surrounding party has paused, no one else exists apart from us. This was what it felt like that night too, like it was just us. No one else mattered.
She looks like she might believe me, but then I see the shift in her beautiful eyes. Hardening. Distancing. She shakes her head slowly. “You know what, Mikey? It’s not really my problem tonight… or ever, actually. Whatever happened, it’s all in the past, and I don’t want to hear it.”
“Ava—”
“All I ask,” she cuts in, “is that you be professional. That’s all I want from you. Let’s forget about all that… stuff. And focus on the auction.”
“That stuff,” I snarl.
She flinches, which makes me feel like an ass. Because I don’t want to scare her. And because, God help me, my body is roaring at me even now. My heart tugs too. A monstrous mixture of emotional rawness and savage desire.
“That stuff,” I repeat, husky. “That stuff meant more to me—”
She waves her finger in my face. “I’m here for work.
You’re here for work too, presumably? Is that what you are, an art collector?
” She claps her hands suddenly, as if jolting herself from a dream.
“Don’t answer that. I don’t care. I can’t afford to…
Just, okay? Let’s just work around each other. Or whatever you’re doing.”
She turns and walks away, short heels clicking. I want to yell, to apologize, to do something other than stand here like a jackass. She leaves the hall again.
Across the room, Adrian is sneering at me openly in a blatant show of disrespect. I should know better than to let emotion rule me, but it’s like I go into autopilot, striding across the room, people parting like they know I’ll tear their goddamn faces off if they get in my way.
“I know what you did,” I snarl. “You and your.”
Adrian steps closer, head tilted, pale eyes watching. “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Janos Nagy,” I snap. “Are you going to pretend you don’t know him?”
“I know Janos,” he says evenly.
“Are you going to pretend he’s not the consigliere of the Hungarian mob?”
Adrian looks around, an anxious flicker in his otherwise annoyingly calm face. “That’s none of my business.”
“Are you going to pretend…” I step closer, chest heaving, causing Adrian to look up at me with pursed lips.
He’s not afraid. I know when men are, but he’s cautious.
“That you didn’t send those men after me?
That wasn’t when you spotted Ava? That you didn’t hire her to keep her close because you assumed she meant something to me? ”
Adrian’s eyes widen in shock. “Rafael,” he says slowly. “Hand on heart, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The Hungarian mob traffic in people. In hard drugs. They cut hands and faces off their enemies. They’re the lowest of the low, and if this was my city, every damn one of them would be lying at the bottom of the river.”
Adrian grinds his teeth. “Janos’s business has nothing to do with me.”
“Hand on heart?” I snap. “That only works if you have a heart, Kovacs.”
I’m this close to grabbing him by the front of the shirt and shaking him until his bones rattle.
I don’t like to plan or theorize when I’m angry, but doesn’t this make sense?
The Hungarians saw me on their turf at Ava’s apartment.
Then made their move, hiring their half-legit friend to keep an eye on her.
Perhaps they were behind the death certificate crap too. They could have somehow gotten to Nico.
“You need to back up,” Adrian grits out. “People are looking.”
“Maybe I don’t give a fuck.”
“You’ll get thrown out. That’s a waste of time for you and your business, no? That’s all this is, Bellini. An attempt to make just a little more money than the next man, right?”
My hand curls into a fist at my sides, my head aching, my world feeling like it’s changing shape and remaking itself.
She was dead, and the last time I saw her, she wanted me, liked me. Now she’s alive and hates my damn guts.
“Make the smart move,” Adrian whispers. “For both of us.”
Fuck.
I back up, turn away, and scan the hall.
An announcer calls from the front, “Ladies and gentlemen, the auction will commence shortly.”