That earns me a brutal scowl. Scorpion looks like he doesn’t know what he wants to do with me more, shoot me or strangle me.The feeling is mutual,zasranets.
“Nothing in the Andrianifamigliais shitty,” he snaps, “and that’s not all he’s done.”
I know very little about Misha’s dealings with the Mafia. I’ve been trying my best to focus on my career, praying that if I make it far enough, Misha’s pride will kick in, and I can leave the Bratva in the dust.
“So enlighten me, then,” I tell Andriani, leaning my hip against the counter and crossing my arms over my chest.
The action draws his attention to my tits. I watch his gaze dip and then linger, and I feel that same heat crawling through me, languid and forbidden. I don’t want this man, I tell myself, turning it into a litany in my head.I don’t want this man. I don’t want this man. I don’t?—
“He handcuffed my brother’s woman to his bed, naked,” Andriani finishes, rubbing a hand along his jaw, which is even darker with stubble now.
“Misha slept with your brother’s girlfriend?” I ask, shocked at the prospect.
My eldest brother never shows so much as a hint of interest in anyone romantically. He’s aloof and glacier-cold. I don’t think he even sleeps with anyone. Dmitri used to joke that in Russia, Misha fucked the snowbanks because they suited his icy heart.
“He didn’t sleep with her,” Andriani snaps. “She’s got better taste than that. He had Dmitri shoot up our guards and break in to my brother’s penthouse. Isla was there, and she was handcuffed and threatened. He used her to get to us. I’m just returning the favor.”
“But I have nothing to do with Misha.”
“Just like Isla doesn’t have anything to do with Andriani business. She should have been off-limits.”
Even criminals have a code of honor. Women and children are supposed to be granted protected status when it comes to these kinds of wars. As much as I try to keep out of this life, I was born into it. I’m no stranger to the ways of the Mafia and Bratva.
“Is she okay?”
“As okay as she’s going to be.”
“Then let me go.”
His response is instant and damning. “No.”
“Andriani—”
“Come here,” he interrupts my protest.
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Don’t make me shoot you.”
“Go ahead and put me out of my misery.”
He joins me in the bathroom, and I instantly wish I hadn’t been so stubborn. His proximity is alarming, and not because he threatened to shoot me, which I’m about seventy percent sure is a bluff anyway. It’s for other reasons entirely. Like his scent, which is wrapping around me like the duct tape he wound about my wrists last night. And the heat that seems to be radiatingoff him. I woke up cold, but now I’m practically sweating, heart racing.
Not from fear either.
Fuck my life, my nipples are hard and my clit is pulsing.
It’s because I’ve been remiss. I’ve thrown myself into ballet, and I haven’t left time for anything else. It’s plain that I need to get laid more often.
He startles me by suddenly and completely invading my space, aligning our bodies and pinning me to the vanity at my back. He grips my nape with one hand and presses the cold barrel of the Glock under my chin with the other.
“That can be arranged if it’s what you want, hellcat.”
I swallow hard. Maybe I underestimated him. Maybe Andriani is a bigger psychopath than I gave him credit for. A grave miscalculation on my part.
I hold his stare, unflinching. “Do you think this is the first gun I’ve ever had pointed at me, Andriani?”
I’m the one who is bluffing here. I’ve never been held at gunpoint before. This is the closest I’ve ever been drawn into the web of Bratva danger. Dmitri was always careful to insulate me, to protect me and keep me safe. But all that changed when Misha returned and became Pakhan.