Page 138 of The Ripper

We were both panting as if we’d run the marathon, and slowly lost ourselves in our embrace when a knock on the door interrupted our moment of euphoria.

“If you two are done, father would like a word with the Russian gangster,” Julio’s amused voice made me slap my forehead.

Grimm only grinned, then took a piece of gauze and dampened it before coming back to clean me up.

I watched with utter fascination as he licked his lips, his hand gently gliding over my skin, totally contradicting the downright barbaric way in which he’d claimed me only a few minutes prior.

“Are you ready to meet the devil?” I giggled.

His eyes bore into mine, then he bent down to pick up my robe and helped me into it.

“Someone once told me I’m theonly being in all of hell that Satan himself refuses to have a confrontation with,” he said with a smile that weakened my knees.

“I thought you didn’t want to associate yourself with the Biblical meaning of your name,” I whispered as he kissed my shoulders before covering them with the robe, tying it around my waist.

“Not only do I associate myself with it, baby, but for you I’m capable of becoming that demon of absolute destruction, because I’ll bring the world to ruin before anyone takes you away from me again.”

He turned me around and hugged me from behind, his arms hanging over my shoulders as something golden dangled from his wrist, and I shivered when I noticed it was my necklace.

My heart twisted and turned when he put it around my neck, letting the cross fall over my chest. I looked down at it and brushed my fingers over the metal, then turned to face him, my eyes welling with tears.

“You kept it with you?”

He nodded, a bittersweet smile curving his lips.

“Every day,Snezhinka,” he whispered. “Every day I prayed that I’d get to hold you again, and my prayers have been answered, because you’re back in my arms.”

“I’m back where I belong,moya lyubov’[24].”

EPILOGUE

TRUCE FOR THE WOMAN IN WHITE

GRIMM

Every day, I looked at her as if it was the first time, and every day, I kissed her as if it was the last.

After we left Colombia together and came back to Chicago, a plethora of meetings followed, with her father and members of the cartel for the renewal of the truce between them and Cosa Nostra, plus a new one between them and the Bratva.

Not that I cared much about what happened to the Voltas, and Arella didn’t even want to meet Damiano, which was also the reason she never attended a meeting where she knew he would be present, even though she knew he was the one who gave us the address to find her.

They bored me to death, mostly because the only thing I wanted to do was be next to her, at all times, glued to her, if possible, preferably buried deep inside her.

AlejandroSánchez still hated me, but I didn’t care much about that either.

Honestly, I slept like a baby most nights.

I knew he didn’t approve of my heritage, or the fact that the Bratva had an upstanding deal with the people responsible for his wife’s death, but he gave up his grudge against the Italians in order for his daughter to be happy, and the fact that he now had a granddaughter via the fucking Russian gangster’ certainly sweetened the pot.

He… tolerated me, because I knew he would never fully accept me, even though Arella kept telling me he would come around at some point, begging me to put myself in his shoes. Not to mention the motherfucker refused to admit that our daughter looked like me more than her.

Athena Grace Abaddonwas born twenty-three days ago, named after the goddess of wisdom and war, because Arella had developed a passion for Greek Mythology during her pregnancy, and said it suited a child born out of us perfectly.

She waswisdom, and I waswar, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

When I first held her in my arms, I was afraid I would hurt her and I was trembling like fucking gelatin, because my hands had no business touching something so clean, so pure, so fucking beautiful it melted the remaining ice surrounding my heart, and I knew then that I was going to be much worse than Arella’s father.

~ Are you sure? You’re so fucking docile lately.

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