Page 87 of Wild Ace

My eyes are on regular guy as he takes another few steps towards me when a car pulls up and screeches to a halt at the curb.

“Lexi.” My name is spoken in a low and angry growl, and my shoulders relax on my next exhale.

Vinny.

I take my eyes off the man who continues to approach me, my sole focus on my man coming to my rescue just when I need him.

Vinny’s eyes are on me, covering every inch of me in a matter of seconds to make sure I’m okay. When he’s satisfied, he turns his gaze to the man approaching me. “If you take one more fucking step towards her, I’ll put another bullet in you, and it won’t be in your goddamn leg.”

“She stole from me.”

“I don’t give a fuck. If you don’t get the fuck out of here, I’m going to finish what they started. You get one chance to make the right choice.”

“Do we have a problem out here?” The same man who walked me out asks in his thick Russian accent.

“No. Just picking up my girl,” Vinny replies in a cool tone despite the anger I see simmering in him.

“You send her in here to cause trouble, Carfano?”

They know each other?

“Is that what she did?” Vinny raises his eyebrows in feigned surprise. “She won’t be back. I can assure you of that.”

“She already knows she’s not welcome back. Ponimat?”

“Understood.” Vinny places his hand on my lower back and my body momentarily relaxes before tensing again when I feel his anger flowing through me.

“Get in the car, Alexis,” he says in my ear so only I can hear.

Chapter 31

Vinny

I open the passenger door for Lexi and she gets in without looking at me and without saying a word.

I’m fucking fuming, and it takes a lot to get me this angry.

I walk around the car to my door, making sure I keep an eye on the Russians. I took off from the house a minute before my brother and cousins, so now their SUVs pull up and I raise my chin and tilt my head to my car to tell them I have her.

I don’t linger. I don’t want to be around the Bychkovs any more than I need to be. Their branch of the bratva took over the southside of Chinatown’s gambling operations after we took out the Chen brothers a year and a half ago. While the Triads were fighting over who was next in line, the Bychkovs were able to step in and take over part of their business with little resistance

I peel away from the curb and look in my rearview mirror to see the three black SUVs following me. One makes the first turn to get Lexi’s car, and after a few blocks with the others still behind me, I peel away from them and weave in and out of traffic, needing to get out of the city as fast as I can.

Neither of us says anything as the minutes stretch on. I drive like I’m in the fucking Indy 500, and she clutches her briefcase of money. It looks a lot like the one I put her money in when she hustled me.

“My car,” she says quietly, but in the thick, tense air, it’s deafening. “I drove here.”

“Someone’s got it.”

“How?”

“My cousin can hack anything, remember? But that’s not what we need to talk about.”

My hands tighten on the steering wheel when she falls silent again.

“You’re mad.”

“That’s stating the fucking obvious, Lexi.”

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