Page 55 of Claimed By Desire

“One of ours,” he confirms.

Rico’s eyes widen. He says nothing for a beat. Then he pretends to get indignant. “I bought that myself. Fuck you two. Do you have any idea what’ll happen when Adriano hears about this?”

I whip the baton into his cheek. He gasps in agony as it cracks a tooth loose and rips skin along his lip. He turns sideways and spits blood.

“Here’s the thing. You stole from us. You burned our shop to the girl. You wasted millions of our dollars. And now we’re going to make you pay.”

“Fuck you,” Rico says, seething, but there’s fear in his eyes. “It wasn’t only me, okay? I wasn’t fucking alone. It wasn’t even my idea.”

“Tell me who was with you.”

“I can’t,” he moans.

Lev kneels down and jabs the tip of his knife into Rico’s hand.

The kid moans in agony as Lev rips it back out.

“Talk,” Lev says. There’s no light in his eyes. No levity, no joy. This is Lev on the job. A stone-cold psychopath killer.

The real Lev hiding beneath the smile.

Rico talks. He spills his guts. We get more names than we could’ve ever wanted. “They’re gonna kill you,” Rico says, laughing wildly, eyes jumping between us. “They’re going for thegirl too. You think she’s fucking safe? That Russian bitch left Adriano at the altar, and there’s no way we can let her keep breathing. You’re so fucked. You’re both so fucked!”

I grab Rico’s hair and wrench his chin back. Lev cuts his throat from ear to ear. The blood flows into the gaps between the paving stones and pools in a low-lying depressing in the middle of the stinking alleyway.

We leave his corpse for the rats.

Chapter 21

Natalya

Idon’t know who invented heated pools, but they deserve a medal.

No, they deserve a parade and an ice cream flavor named after them.

Any other circumstance and it would be way too cold to be out here right now, but this is absolutely dream-like perfect.

I float on my back for a while, staring up at the stars. It makes me feel small, but in sort of a good way.

Most of the time, feeling small means feeling like I’m all alone in the world. But for some reason, the cold, uncaring reaches of space is weirdly comforting.

Maybe I’m just bizarre like that.

But knowing that everyone is stuck under the same sky looking at the same stars and dreaming the same dreams is comforting. Especially since there’s nothing else out in the vast darkness.

Well, except for aliens, obviously.

But the water is exceedingly comfortable, and the view out over the river is immaculate. The good vibes from my piano session earlier in the day are still lingering, and I feel halfway decent for the first time in a while.

I flip around and lean forward on the edge, elbows on the rim and kick my legs out behind me, my butt raised slightly. I like the contrast between the chilly air and the warm water.

It’s almost like relaxing in a bathtub. Like a bathtub with an incredible view.

This, right here, is the life. I could seriously get used to this. For the first time, I’m starting to think that living with Alex won’t be so bad.

Until the sliding door opens and his boots stomp on the balcony.

“You need to get inside,” he snarls at me.

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