Page 28 of Tempted to Rebel

Celia mutters something in the background.

“What’s that, baby?” I ask, smiling as I picture her sitting in the very seat we fucked in earlier. I bet she’s soaking her panties, remembering how good it felt to ride me.

“I said,” she huffs, “we’ll never make it withgrandpadriving, over here!”

“I’m keeping yousafe?—”

She growls in frustration. “This car isn’t meant to be safe! It’s meant todrive!”

“I am not risking your life?—”

“Let me drive!”

“No.”

Celia chuffs loudly. “This is exactly why Rebel gets laid before you.”

I cackle with glee at their banter, doubly satisfied when Ruin chuckles, too. “Don’t worry, baby, you can take me for a ride anytime.”

The call ends abruptly as they hang up, no doubt on account of Rage throwing a fit. I whistle as we drive down the city streets, feeling better than I have all week. Things aren’t perfect, but damn, they’re sure shaping up to be entertaining.

Chapter 10

Thanatos

My joints screamin protest as I haul my aching body up a fourth flight of stairs. This janky apartment complex has seen better days; dirt and rust seem to flurry in the open-air breezeways, mingling with the sound of aluminum cans shifting in the wind. This part of town is the worst—which means that it’s the one that gets the most criminal activity. Although our bratva isn’t directly affiliated with the police, we keep unofficial tabs on each other. My police scanner hasn’t picked up this particular incident yet, meaning that we have time to absorb the impact before it lands.

If news about a serial killer targeting the city’s prettiest women gets out, it will go one of two ways: the fat, balding men hoarding trophy wives will shell outbigand make a public show of finding the killer—or, more likely, every father who gives a damn about his family will lock up their households tight and hire the city’s underbelly to sniff out the knife-happy rat gutting their wives and burning their daughters.

It wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t have competition on the streets, but like all cities, if there’s a king ruling with an iron fist… then there’s an underground resistance movement scurrying through the shadows.

The movement isn’t large—it’s mostly comprised of people who are still miffed about how Valentina’s grandmother Katya Dolohov and all the other “old blood” leaders suddenly disappeared after their attempted coup—but it’s steady enough that when civilians go looking for help with our serial killer problem, they’ll end up paying the wrong side… which means that I’ll have to deal with any clean-up that follows a job done wrong—andallamateur hit men leave tracks.

I don’t have time for that, so it’s best we tackle the murderer before he goes public.

Another body drop out in the open, however, means that he isn’t trying to hide his kills. He’s trying to send a message. And for some inexplicable reason, that message brings everything back to Celia fucking Monrovia. The disaster my brothers can’t seem to shake. Over the past week, I’ve poured over all public and private records about her life that I can get my hands on. Marriage and birth certificates, bank notes, doctor’s appointments, medical records—countless documents, spanning nearly three decades with her upcoming thirtieth birthday. Trying to figure out what makes her so fucking special is driving me insane.

I hear her voice in my sleep, from the champagne bubble of her laughter from the wedding video I downloaded to my phone to the sobbing wreck of a woman crying her eyes out in therapy after her ex-husband had an affair. Her therapist prescribed her sleeping pills and anti-depressants, but Celia never refilled either, so I’m not sure if she took them in the first place. Piecing together Celia’s life and motivations should be easy—every piece of information that I’ve found has been straightforward. There are innumerable facts about her upbringing and early adult life that I have committed to memory.

But none of it explains why my brothers choseher.

The bratva bitch with baggage.

Any other woman would be crawling into their laps to bounce on their dicks and call them daddy, but not her, not Celia.Of course, the prettiest one would be the most broken. I’ve stared at her photographs for hours, trying to find the cracks. The pieces I can chip away to reveal the bitch underneath, the part my brothers refuse to see.

Now, I’m not only hearing her voice in my sleep, but she’s right there with me in my dreams, her wide, doe-eyes shining with tears as we lie next to each other in bed—mybed, the one she and Rage fucked in—naked and trembling and so goddamn beautiful that ithurts.

In my dreams, the conversation she had with her therapist is directed at me instead.

I tried my best. I really did.She sniffles as we lie in bed beside each other, bringing the crisp white bedsheet up to her chin. It falls over her waist and hips like satin, showing her delicate curves and transforming into a silken wedding dress. She’s warm to the touch as my palm glides up her waist and across her collarbone. A tear slips past her chin, and it catches on my fingertip. Her voice floats between us despite her lips not moving.I loved him as best I knew how. I did everything to make him love me. How am I still not enough?

The image shifts, and suddenly she’s straddling my lap, the white slip draped across her body bunching up over her hips to reveal gorgeous, tanned thighs, and between them, a tuft of soft curls and glistening lips as she sinks down onto my shaft, making my balls ache and my teeth clench.

More tears fall as she rides me, her voice a scratch inside my skull.If we just had a baby—her breath hitches—everything would be perfect.

I slam my fist on the drywall inside the stairwell, banishing the fucked-up nightmares, daydreams,wet dreams?—

Hissing through my teeth, I tear open the door to the fifth floor and fight the pounding ache in my skull.

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