A wedding.
“You were at the chapel. The wedding.”The Baranova ButcheryorBaranovaMassacre, as it’s now known among inner circles. Ice floods my system, freezing me from the inside out. “But I didn’t see you among any of the guests. I haven’t forgotten a single face from that day.”
Or a single scream.
Rage’s eyes bore into mine. “I wasn’t exactly on the guest list.”
I blink up at his infuriating, handsome face.
He wasn’t on the guest list.
I struggle against him, pulling his hair, slamming my knee into his thighs, whimpering as he holds me down and grabs me with enough force to bruise.
“Celia,” he hisses, “calm down.”
“You were there!” I dig my nails into his scalp, hoping he bleeds. “You heard all of those screams! People were scared for their lives! How could you do nothing? Where were you?—”
Masks.There were at least a dozen men wearing armor, masks, and face shields rounding up the guests for interrogations, holding guns to people’s backs, shouting orders in both Russian and English. “You weren’t a guest,” I repeat, my body shaking as adrenaline courses through my veins. “You were on ajob.” I hurl the word at him, spitting flecks of saliva in his face. On a job just like Thanatos, another huge, muscled,angryman, waiting to take out his problems on the next unsuspecting victim. “You tortured innocent people.”
Rage’s expression goes eerily still. “None of them were innocent.”
I bark a laugh, my throat burning as it claws free. “Tell that to the children. The mothers. The wives. I spenthoursprotecting them from men like you—brutes who were scaring them to death!”
“Exactly!” he snarls, cutting off my airway with a twitch of his wrist. “You were theonlyone in there not losing her fucking mind once everything went to hell! Do you know how rare it is to find a woman tough as nails before she’s eighty? It’s fucking impossible. The old bats keep their cool because they’ve lived through shit, butyou, Celia Monrovia, youfight.You protected every single child in that church for hours, not letting up for a single second. You fuckingsnarledright at me, like you wanted to kill me.” A shudder courses through Rage’s entire body, easing his grip over me.
I wheeze for air, coughing from the burn. “Maybe I should have.”
Rage laughs, his dark eyes sparking with joy. “It’s too late for that, mama, because you’re fuckingmine.You gave your wordandyour body. Soon, you’ll lie beneath my brothers, too, all three of us pumping you so full of our cum, you’ll be pregnant every nine months.” He moves his hand from my breast to my stomach, scraping his nails along my ribs, making me hiss from the flash of heat, the sting of pain.
“I can still kill you.” I move my hands to his throat, and he doesn’t stop me. I squeeze as hard as I can, feeling his Adam’s apple bob beneath my palms. “Then none of you will have me.”
“I’ll always have you.” His voice scratches against my skin, burrowing in, latching on. “Because you’ll always have me. Righthere.” His fingertips dig into my abdomen, making me gasp. “I own you, mama, in this life and the every life after. Killing me won’t change that.”
Fury melts the ice freezing me in place. I squeeze harder, enjoying the way his eyelashes flutter. He could break free. He’s stronger than me. We both know it. Why isn’t he stopping me? Why isn’t he shoving me hard against the car so that I black out? Why isn’t he fighting back?
He smiles, lifting a hand to brush his bruised knuckles against my cheek. “You’re beautiful,krosotka.Have I ever told you that?”
I press my thumbs harder, deeper, closing his arteries, his windpipe, anything I can. My heart leaps in my chest, making my arms shake.Dammit.I can do this. I can kill a man.
I can kill Rage.
But when his body finally goes limp and he drops to the ground, I fall with him, a sob tearing through my throat as all the hope I had for the future—the tender smiles, the bubbling laughter, the children running up and down the halls—fades into smoke.
Chapter 19
Ruin
It’sunusual for Rage to be late.
One of his most prominent traits is punctuality, because he’s obsessive about keeping a schedule. When the schedule is kept, everything else that follows runs smoothly.
The fact that I’m standing at Jimmy Morrel’s doorstep with a bouquet of flowers in hand isnotan indication of things running smoothly.
He’s late.
And I’m the one suffering for it.
Mrs. Morrel is an older woman, well-known within the bratva for her husband’s accomplishments and her son’s failures. The former died a respectable enough death in a shoot-out that took half a dozen enemy lives, but the latter found himself tied to my chair while I ripped his tongue out with rusted pliers. The differences between the father and son duo could not be understated, and Mrs. Morrel, as a woman of average intelligence, understands this.