Page 51 of Vows in Violence

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 skinprickle 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.

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