Chapter 10 #3
He's quiet for a beat, his thumb tapping the steering wheel in a slow rhythm I've come to recognize as him deciding how much to share.
"Luca's team found movement at your uncle's warehouse.
New shipment coming through the south side sometime this week.
We needed to adjust the surveillance timeline. "
"The warehouse I told you about?"
"Da." His dark eyes flick to mine. "Your intel was solid. We're using every piece of it."
The words settle in my chest with a weight I wasn't expecting. He's not just protecting me. He's acting on what I gave him. The information I traded isn't sitting in a folder gathering dust. It's being turned into a plan to take Seamus down.
"How close are you?" My journalist brain kicks in before I can stop it. "To moving on him?"
"Close." One word. Final. The kind of answer that means the conversation is over but the operation is very much in motion.
With that he pulls into traffic and lets the silence fill the space between us. I press my forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window and watch the city blur past, all sharp edges and hard lines, and wonder when everything I believed started dissolving.
My chest feels tight. My eyes burn. My hands are shaking in my lap and I fold them together, pressing my nails into my palms to stop the tremor.
I started investigating my family six months ago and that involved every mafia man in this city.
Six months of building a narrative that made sense of the violence and the power and the criminal empire that touches every corner of this city.
Monsters. That's what they were supposed to be.
Every last one of them. Clean, simple, unambiguous monsters who deserved everything I planned to bring down on their heads.
When I wrote my wish it was easy to see pitting one enemy against the other in the hopes they would tear each other down.
And now I've held a scone baked by a woman with violet hair and watched the most feared men in Chicago make airplane noises and kiss their wives and hold their daughters.
They've killed people. I know they have. But seeing them today told me they do so in order to protect those they love. I didn’t have to ask a single question. They showed me without using words.
My framework is in pieces and I have nothing to replace it with where the Syndicate is concerned.
We pull into The Foundry's garage and Kon kills the engine. We sit in silence for a few minutes until I can’t keep my emotion flicked away any longer.
“I grew up in a brutal household filled with violence. I’ve witnessed my uncle kill men for looking at him wrong. My father never stood up to defend anyone so that makes him just as bad as my uncle. What I saw today rewrites every last thing I thought I knew about mafia life.”
With that I slide out of the car and make my way to the elevator that will take us to the top floor. I keep my steps slow and steady but my heart and mind ar racing. My skin grows tight and the tears threatening to spill burn my eyes.
Kon is behind me, his footsteps measured, steady, the calm pace of a man who knows a storm is coming and is bracing for it. The ride up in the elevator is charged, the tension so damn dense you inhale the electric charges with every breath.
I step off the elevator and into the open living room before the last thread holding me together snaps.
"You could have warned me." I round on him, my voice cracking like a whip. "You could have told me what I was walking into."
He stops. Leans against the wall. Crosses his arms. "Warned you none of us are like your family? Would it have changed anything? Would you have believed me?"
"You set me up. Threw me into that perfect little domestic fantasy and expected me to, what? Melt? Fall in line? Stop asking questions?"
"I expected nothing." His voice is low, even, infuriatingly calm. "They wanted to meet you. I said yes. So did you."
I narrow my eyes on him. "Stop it."
"Stop what?"
"Looking at me like that." I step closer, my finger jabbing into his impossibly hard chest. "Like you know what I'm thinking. Like you can see inside my skull. Like you think I am perfect and want to throw me on the kitchen counter and devour me like I'm your last meal."
I didn’t mean to say that last part, but it’s true. I can see it written all over his heated expression and it’s infuriating to the max.
"You're thinking that everything you believed was wrong and that’s okay. It’s okay to be wrong.
" His voice doesn't rise or waver. Those dark eyes hold mine with a steadiness that makes me want to scream.
"You can not paint everyone with the same brush, malyshka. We are not all monsters to be slaughtered. I know what you are thinking and why you are here. I know you want to eliminate the ugliness that has controlled you your whole life. But you are wrong. We are not all like your uncle and father.”
He pauses.
“You're thinking that if they're not monsters, then what the hell are you doing here," he adds in a softer tone. “You wanted to use me against your uncle which I’m all for by the way.”
"Use you against my uncle? I've handed over everything I have and I'm still sitting on the sidelines while you and your brothers decide what happens to my family behind closed doors. This is MY fight, Kon. MY story. And you've turned me into a spectator."
"You're right." The words land flat, no defensiveness, no deflection.
"I've kept you out of the operational side because keeping you safe and keeping you informed are two different things.
The less you know about how we move against Seamus, the less he can extract from you if he ever gets his hands on you again.
" His jaw tightens, the muscle jumping beneath the stubble.
"That's not me sidelining you. That's me making sure you survive long enough to write your story. "
He pauses, letting that settle, his dark eyes reading the fury still burning across my face.
"But that's not what this is really about, is it.
" It's not a question. His voice drops, the accent thickening.
"You walked into that penthouse today and saw something you weren't prepared for.
Now you're having second thoughts about me and my family and that terrifies you because you can't be the cold, detached journalist when real people with real lives and real babies are involved.
You can't write us off as monsters when you've held our children and eaten at our table. "
My palm connects with his cheek before I register the decision to swing. “How dare you accuse me of being as cold hearted as my father!”
The crack echoes through the entryway. His head turns with the impact, the red print of my hand blooming across his jaw. He stays perfectly still for one breath. Two. Then he turns back to face me, those black eyes burning, and catches my wrist before I can pull it back.
His grip is firm. Not painful. Controlled. Always controlled.
"Feel better?" His voice is gravel.
"No." The word comes out ragged, broken, but honest.
"Then let me help."
He pulls me forward by the wrist and crushes his mouth against mine.
I taste salt, my own tears on my lips, and underneath, coffee and the smoky bite of vodka.
I kiss him back with fury and confusion and the desperate need to force this back into a framework I understand.
Physical. Transactional. A battle with clear lines and a winner. Me.
He lifts me and I wrap my legs around his waist, my back slamming against the nearest wall hard enough to rattle nearby shelves. His hips pin me in place, his hands grip my thighs, and his mouth devours mine with a hunger that matches my own desperation.
"This doesn't mean anything." I gasp the words against his lips, yanking at his belt. "This is just sex."
"Whatever you need it to be." He tears at my jeans, shoving them down my thighs. His fingers find me already wet, already aching, and he groans against my throat. "Whatever you need."
He grips my bare ass and I tilt my hips just right so that his hard shaft finds my entrance.
He enters me in one hard thrust and I cry out, my nails raking down his shoulders through the fabric of his shirt, my back scraping against the door. He sets a brutal rhythm, each stroke driving the air from my lungs, each impact jarring my spine against the wall.
It's angry. Desperate. Exactly what I need.
I come with a sob that wrenches itself from somewhere deep in my chest.
And then I can't stop crying.
The orgasm dissolves into sobs that shake my entire body, raw and ugly and completely beyond my control. Six months of fear and loneliness and the crushing weight of fighting a war no one asked me to fight, it all comes pouring out against this man's shoulder while he's still buried inside me.
He stills. Doesn't pull out. Doesn't pull away. His arms wrap around me, one hand cradling the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair, and he holds me against the wall while I shatter.
"I'm sorry." I choke the words out between sobs. "I don't... I can't..."
"Shh." His lips press against my temple. "You don't have to explain."
"Everything I thought I knew..." Another sob wracks through me. "They're not... you're not..."
"I know." His voice is low, rough, vibrating through his chest and into mine. "Ya znayu, огонёк."
I want to ask what those words mean, but I don’t have the energy in me right now or the brain power.
When the sobs finally ease into trembling, hiccupping breaths, he pulls out gently and carries me down the hallway, my face buried in his neck, my tears soaking into the collar of his shirt.
He lays me on his bed. Pulls a blanket over us both.
Wraps his arms around me and tucks my head beneath his chin.
"I'm fine," I try, my voice wrecked and unconvincing.
"Nyet."
"I don't need..."
"Sleep, Onyx." His arms tighten around me, his heartbeat steady against my cheek, his warmth seeping through the blanket and into my shaking bones. "I've got you."
I should argue and push him away and walk to my own room and rebuild every wall he just watched me demolish. I should be stronger than this.
Instead, I close my eyes and let the Beast hold me while the last of my defenses crumble to dust.
I hate how safe it feels.
I hate how much I don't want him to let go.
Hours later, I surface from a dreamless dark. The room is dim, moonlight filtering through curtains. I'm still in his arms, still pressed against the solid wall of his chest, still wrapped in warmth and the scent of him.
"You’re still here?" The whisper barely makes it past my lips.
His response comes immediately, low and certain, as if he's been awake the entire time.
"Why would I leave?"
I don't have an answer. I press closer to him, curling my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, and let the steady rhythm of his heartbeat fill the silence.
That scares me more than anything.