Chapter 19
Vivi
After everything that has happened between our families, only a threat like Azrael has the power to bring us all together—all of us.
Including Ivan.
He was trained to operate by himself, to function on his own. He’s brilliant at it—cold and deadly and dispassionate when it comes to minor impediments like emotion.
He’s never had a second-in-command. Never formed an official alliance with any of the other families. I doubt that he has a single friend he can truly trust.
And yet, here he is, pausing to listen to me, allowing that rage within him to quiet itself when I touch his hand or arm.
I don’t expect our entire world to change because it’s been softened by love and kindness; I know better. This isn’t a fairytale.
But is it too much to hope that maybe I’m smoothing Ivan’s rough edges, encouraging him to see that there’s another way?
Whatever the case, whatever the reason…it seems to be getting the necessary results.
Unless the other families let Ivan down.
I chew on the inside of my cheek, nerves assailing me. Trust is a scarce commodity within this group, and I can only pray everyone upholds their part of the arrangement. This was my idea, after all, and while I know Ivan loves me, I don’t want to disappoint him.
I want him to see that he can trust someone, that he can depend on someone other than himself.
If no one else, he can depend on me.
“What about Vivi?” Enzo asks suddenly, interrupting the plans that are being discussed for Ivan’s entry to the Weir Greenhouse. “Do you want her to go back to the house with Rowan?”
That’s right. I don’t have a house to go home to.
Ivan is shaking his head before the question has fully crossed Enzo’s lips. “No.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t trust us?” Carina challenges him.
Ivan lifts a single eyebrow. “I trust you implicitly with regard to this plan. After all, it benefits you as well as me.” He lifts his gaze to me, where I sit across the room. “With regards to Vivi…I don’t trust a soul. She will come with me. We can guard her while she waits in the car.”
“I could just stay with Lulu,” I suggest, but the statement is half hearted. I actually like the idea of not being separated from Ivan just yet.
Ivan laughs, shaking his head. “After the stunt Damon Papparado pulled with your family, I wouldn’t trust him to watch a dog for me, let alone my wife.”
Damon had done with my father exactly what Brodie had done to Ivan—infiltrated his household and made himself indispensable. The only difference is that Damon was successful.
Well, successful in hiding his true self and in not getting caught. He failed in his original intent to exact revenge because he fell in love with my sister. His thoughts of vengeance died after that.
I guess it wasn’t really a failure.
“Vivi stays with me,” Ivan reiterates. With that, he pulls his gun free and checks the clip before replacing it at the small of his back. He turns to me. “Ready?”
I nod. “I’m ready.”
“Let’s move.”
With no further discussion, we leave, piling into our respective vehicles and heading toward Brooklyn. In the rearview mirror, I see some cars break off and take a different path. It’s a silent drive, with neither Ivan nor I interested in small talk. The limousine is gone, this time replaced by a silver sedan. Other cars follow us, keeping their distance.
I don’t know who’s in which vehicle, or what will happen when we arrive at the greenhouse.
Ivan grips my hand from his position on the seat next to me, his skin warm and reassuring against mine. He lounges in his seat, his legs sprawled wide and posture relaxed. The only indication that he’s not as relaxed as he appears are his eyes, trained without blinking on the head of the driver. All of his men who remain are survivors. They’ve emerged, still breathing, victorious over threats from Azrael and the burning of Ivan’s mansion. In my world, someone sticking around after all of that means something.
They’ve proven their loyalty, their willingness to die for us.
Ivan doesn’t look at it quite the same way, though. He is always watchful. Always waiting for the pet dog to suddenly bite.
I wonder if thinking that way is as exhausting as it sounds.
Darkness drops on the city before we ever reach Brooklyn. Ivan’s grip on my hand tightens. Despite his earlier statements, my presence here makes him nervous.
The driver pulls into a spot where we can just make out the greenhouse in the distance and the black iron gates of the Green-Wood Cemetery nearby.
Ivan flicks a glance at the driver. “Get out.” The driver obeys, leaving us alone. Ivan squeezes my hand. “The other families are sending their men. There will be guards around you while I am gone.”
In reply I lift his hand to my lips and press a kiss to the back of it. “Who is going to be with you?”
“The other Families will be there.”
There’s an odd note in his voice. “But you don’t trust them. You said you did, but you don’t trust them. Ivan—”
“I made a choice, my pet.”
Me. He was choosing me over himself. I reach for his face, pulling it down to mine, and I kiss him.
“They will support you. I will trust them for the both of us. And Ivan?”
He lifts that brow again. “Yes?”
“You’d better come back to me.”
Ivan smiles and kisses me back, his mouth hard and aggressive against mine. He pushes me against the seat, and I feel my skin prickle with heat and arousal. His lips move from my mouth to my jaw to the space just beneath my ear, and he groans deeply.
“You’d better be ready for me to come back to you.”
I nod, voiceless, and Ivan kisses me one more time before he gets out of the car. I watch him and his men through the window, his body language changing instantly when he gains distance from me. His eyes become angry, threatening. The way he holds his shoulders makes him look poised to pounce.
There is a side to him that he keeps from the world and only gives to me.
Ivan leaves the relative safety of the car, striding away alone in the dark toward the greenhouse in the distance. Several of his men mill around the car, their expressions alert and watchful as they settle into their positions.
And just like that, I go back inside my cage. It’s a different sort of cage, though, one designed to protect rather than hold me. I sink back into the cushion of the car’s seat and drum my fingers on the leather. Restlessness and a dull sense of anxiety linger on the edges of my senses.
The wait feels interminable. The lighting in this neighborhood isn’t as bright as in Manhattan proper, and the streets are dim with shadows and the flicker of neon going bad. Every movement of the men outside of my window makes me startle.
Eventually, though, my heart and stomach settle, and I get used to the bumps in the night.
It’ll be all right. He’ll be back in a few minutes, that stern mouth of his relaxed now because he accomplished his goal.
I lean my head against the window and stare up at the indigo sky, my gaze losing focus as my thoughts follow Ivan, wending his way through that darkened building.
And then it will all be over. We can begin living.
A little smile curves my lips. This world I live in is dangerous, and I know that it’s not the sort of fairytale kingdom where every dream that I wish will come true. Still…I can’t help the part of me that continues to search the city sky for a star to wish upon. I’m just a woman, and dreaming…hoping…feeling—they’re all part of the package.
Ivan is not a typical Prince Charming. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that he would happily chop Prince Charming into small pieces if he got on his bad side.
But he’s my Prince Charming. My ruthless, renegade, devil of a hero. And when he comes back…we’ll be uncomplicated together. Do simple married people stuff, like find a new house and pick out furniture for it.
Maybe we’ll begin talking about baby names sometime in the near future. I touch my belly, the idea doing something to me. I think I’d like a little baby. Ivan’s baby—
An explosive sound knocks me out of the daydream and makes me jump away from the door I was leaning against. Something large hits the side of the car, right beneath where I had been resting my forehead, and there’s another booming echo of sound—a gunshot.
My heart pumps viciously, the blood thumping my ears.
I don’t want to look. I really don’t want to look.
But I have to. It would be stupid to ignore—
I crawl across the seat and press my forehead against the window once again, this time straining to look at the ground below the door rather than the sky.
One of Ivan’s men is lying there, his gun in his hand. So very still. A pool of blood, black against the tarmac, collects around his head. Several feet away, another man lies in a similar position, and another just beyond him. They fell without me knowing they had been hit, struck down by a silenced bullet, no doubt.
Nonono … I press my trembling fist hard against my mouth to hold back a scream.
I look beyond the men on the ground, straining to find the threat, but I don’t see anything. I ease back against the seat, struggling to control my breath, and close my eyes.
Think, damnit, think! What do I do? Drive away? But what about Ivan, inside the building? I can’t leave him behind. When I open my eyes, looking forward through the windshield, I look straight into the eyes of another woman.
It’s the woman from the video feed, but she doesn’t look docile and unthreatening as she did in the church. She lifts her hand, the one with the gun, and fires.
Click. It doesn’t fire, something apparently wrong with it. She pulls the trigger again. Click. Clickclickclick.
An hysterical laugh wells up inside me. Salvation? She looks at it with an almost comical expression of disbelief before and throws it to the pavement.
As my heart climbs into my throat, the woman goes to the man on the ground and retrieves his weapon. She raises his gun and points it at me.
Can’t stay here. GO. NOW. This one won’t misfire…that would be too easy.
I duck just as the weapon reports and the first bullet flies. Wriggling on my stomach to the opposite side of the car, I open the opposite door.
I stumble out of the car and onto my knees, pick myself up, and run.
Behind me, beneath the sound of my thudding footsteps, I hear a low laugh and more footfalls on the pavement. A gun sounds, and a bullet strikes the pavement at my feet…once…twice. It spurs me on.
I hear a metallic clatter as the gun hits the pavement, and I’m struck by the sense that she’s playing with me, but I can’t look back.
The greenhouse. Even if that is the hornet’s nest, Ivan went to the greenhouse. He will know what to do. He will save me.
If I can get there. The woman hits me with a tackle from behind, and the scream I’ve been choking back escapes, shrill and full of panic. I tumble to the ground, and the woman descends, flipping me onto my back and straddling my torso as she pulls a knife from the vicinity of her thigh.
“Don’t…please—” The raspy plea is all I can manage.
The woman runs the knife down my cheek in response, her eyes glittering with victory. This is Azrael. “Even the beautiful die,” she says.
But I don’t want to die. I buck futilely against her. I’m not ready.
The knife presses against my throat, making me go still. I close my eyes, waiting for the steel to slide against my skin. I hope it’s fast… I hope it doesn’t hurt—
The weight on my stomach is suddenly gone, and my eyes spring open in time to see Eduardo dragging the woman away.
He yells, his voice thick with effort and desperation. “Run, amore ! Run!”
I obey, scurrying to my feet with a strength and energy I didn’t know I had. My legs and arms pump as though slogging through mud, pushing my body with agonizing slowness toward the greenhouse.
I get to the metal door, but it is old and rusty. I tug and tug, but it won’t budge. Whatever door Ivan used, it wasn’t this one. I look back frantically and see Eduardo sprinting toward me, Azrael in pursuit. I don’t know what to do. There isn’t time. The woman is on us—
Eduardo is there. He pushes past me and rips open the door. Even in the dim light, I can see the metal flakes of rust fly into the air.
He pushes me into the greenhouse and slams the door behind me.
It is cruel how time slows down during our greatest moments of pain. Happiness is fleeting, gone in a lightning flash or a breath on the breeze. Pain is the chill that remains after a long storm, or the smoking of charred trees after a fire.
When Eduardo closed the door, he didn’t have time to turn and face his attacker.
He was looking at me, the same way he looked at me every time he picked me up from elementary school, every time I handed him a drawing of his horses for him, every time I cried in front of him for some stupid reason. I know he’s not seeing me as I am; he’s seeing the girl I used to be, the child who was ignorant of the cruelty of this world.
Behind him, Azrael’s face is a mask of fury. I watch as her hand lifts and falls, the knife glinting in the flickering neon light of a nearby sign. Eduardo’s eyes widen, his face spasming in a moment of pained awareness.
The attack is so vicious that blood splatters on the glass as the woman draws the knife out and plunges it back in. Up and down, her arm raises and lowers, the motion accompanied by a squelching sound and Eduardo’s shuddering groan.
“No! No, stop! Damn you to hell—” I don’t even know half the words pouring from my lips. They’re all the same.
No.
For a brief moment, Eduardo’s voice is strong and firm through the windowpanes that separate us. “Go, amore ! Run!” A second later it is soundless, his mouth open in a noiseless echo of the same command.
Run.
I turn and run before the light leaves his eyes. I don’t want to see that. I turn away from his light and flee into the darkness of the greenhouse.