Page 81 of Born in Depravity

My eyes roamed over the delicate lines of her face.

Like a scientist watching over his latest obsession—over the experiment he had poured hours of hard work into.

She ate the French toast first, before her eyes moved to the maple syrup on the table. I handed it over to her without a word and watched as she poured a generous amount onto her plate, the syrup spilling over and touching the other food.

It didn’t look like she minded.

Catalina had a sweet tooth.

Her hunger took away her feelings of inhibition. I had one arm wrapped tightly around her, my fingers moving restlessly against her side, as I used my other hand to pour myself a cup of coffee and took a sip. Then I pulled out my phone to check on the legitimate side of my business.

Between the three of us, Nikolay, Mikhail, and I ran various tax-paying businesses that kept the IRS and government off our asses—or at the very least, kept them from pinning anything on us.

This included casinos, strip clubs, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and a shipping company along the East Coast.

The West Coast was run by the elusive head of the Bianchi Famiglia that spanned out to the Las Vegas Strip and the Northwest.

The South was controlled by Catalina’s father, and that was what we were after, not only because of how profitable it was, considering he sat on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, but because we all wanted to see the fucking bastard dead.

And we wouldn’t stop until that was done.

The bastard had evaded us for close to two decades now.

Vengeance was so fucking close, I could almost taste the sweetness of it on my tongue.

My gaze lost its focus on the phone when I felt her heavy stare on me.

She flinched when I turned my attention to her, but bravely, she didn’t look away. Not many people could have held my stare.

I took another sip of my coffee without saying anything, and her eyes tracked my movement. Her plate was nearly wiped clean.

She was obviously done.

I handed her the coffee mug.

She looked inside the cup and sniffed, before carefully bringing it up to her mouth, taking a sip.

Her eyes widened and scrunched up in disgust after the first sip. I lost the battle and smiled then.

“Bitter?” I asked.

She nodded and handed the mug back to me. I looked down at it, not knowing why I was feeling the way I was.

I didn’t care about anyone except for my brothers. I shouldn’t care about her.

In the grand scheme of things, she didn’t matter. A pawn. Nothing more and nothing less.

I removed the tray and plate from her lap and moved her back down on the bed. Without saying another word, I walked out the door, closing it, though I didn’t lock it.

I didn’t plan on being away from her for long. And I wasn’t really thinking when I walked downstairs and to the kitchen of the huge house.

The kitchen staff went quiet as soon as I entered. I looked around. “I need coffee creamers.”

One of them—a young girl with lifeless brown eyes—was the one who got it for me. She didn’t meet my eyes when she approached and I ignored the tremors I could see in her hands when I grabbed it from her and walked out the kitchen.

Would Catalina look like that years down the line?

Catalina didn’t talk, and there was something mousey about her, but fuck, I could still see the life in her eyes. The fire burned brightly despite her obvious fear. Would we be the one to break the little bird’s wings?

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