Page 1 of Savage Bratva King

1

GIANNA

I watchmy suitcase trundle off down the ramp towards the waiting aircraft, the flight sticker flapping from the handle like a miniature flag and turn around to face my friends.

“Aw, come here.” Mika pulls me into a hug, the fake fur of her leopard-print jacket tickling my nose and making it even harder to hold back the tears. “I wish we were coming with you, Gi.”

I wish they were coming with me too, but that would mean introducing them to my family and telling them the truth about my fiancé, neither of which is going to happen. Not while there’s breath in my body, anyways.

Cartier goes next. She already has tears in her beautiful big eyes, and I deliberately turn away, stare at the luggage still waiting in line, owners already carrying the stress of the coming flight on their shoulders. “Gi…” Cartier holds my arms and forces me to look at her. “You know you can tell us anything, right?”

I force a smile. “Sure.”

“Only…” She sucks on her top lip and eyes me up like I just told her I’d arranged for a shipment of horror novels to land in her apartment after I’ve gone. “I don’t know. Call me cynical, but you don’t look like a woman who’s flying back to Chicago to get married.”

I tip my head back and laugh.

Mika stands next to her, shoulder to shoulder, ganging up on me.

I haven’t told them much about Seamus. My fiancé.

I’ve shown them photographs. If they realized that none of these images were of me and Seamus together, they didn’t say it out loud, and neither of them is known for their discretion and diplomacy.

Mika once told the guy in the grocery store near where we worked that I was the only twenty-three-year-old virgin in the world, and I deserved either a medal or for some adonis to come and sweep me off my feet and show me what I was missing. All with a smile on her face that promised it was in my best interests.

I did almost kiss a dark-haired adonis once. In a nightclub. I was drunk—not so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing but steaming enough to tell the adonis that he was pretty kissable. The girls rescued me with a glass of water and a reminder that my fiancé was waiting for me in Chicago, and I’d be plagued with guilt in the morning.

And, of course, I didn’t stop them.

“Pre-wedding nerves,” I say.

“Wow, that’s what you’re going with.” Mika’s eyebrows do this funny dance that I’ve never been able to master. “Who are you and what have you done with the real Gianna?”

“Stay, Gi.” Cartier’s tone is serious. “Who will get drunk with Mika next weekend if you’re not here?”

“And who will tell Cartier it isn’t real life when she finishes the tear-jerker she’s currently reading?” Mika elbows Cartier in the ribs and earns herself a playful punch on the arm.

We’re the three musketeers. We’ve worked together at the women’s refuge in Montenegro for the past twelve months. We’ve helped people like Rosalie, whose husband beat her so badly when she told him she was pregnant with his child that she miscarried, her injuries leaving her unable to carry another child to full-term. We’ve cried together, made each other laugh, and generally picked each other up off the floor each time we try to stitch a broken woman back together.

They should be there when I walk down the aisle towards my future husband, but it’s because I love them that I’m leaving them behind.

“We have Internet in Chicago, you know.”

“Like you’re going to take time out from humping your new husband to speak to us.”

Mika laughs, the sound throaty and contagious, as someone’s case splits open behind us, and a man mutters, “Shit!” under his breath.

Mika and Cartier watch with bemused smiles as the guy crouches beside his luggage and starts shoving his stuff back inside. “And that right there is the reason why I travel light.” The lie just rolls off Mika’s tongue; her clothes take up more space in the apartment than mine and Cartier’s combined.

Instinct kicks in, and I leave my friends gaping while I help the guy pick up his T-shirts and sweaters and boxers which I try not to think about when I touch them. Just a regular suitcase filled with regular stuff, and not a designer label in sight.

He glances up and smiles briefly. “My girlfriend gave me a strap to wrap around my case, but I couldn’t find it when I was packing.”

“Is this it?” I pull out a heavy-duty, green nylon strap from the bottom of his case that’s either for his luggage or some kind of weird fetish.

His shoulders slump as he takes it. “Where did you…” His gaze drops to the tangle of clothes. “I packed it, huh?”

“I think that’s about it.” I stand and go back to my friends as he calls out, “Thank you!”

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