Page 5 of Ambition

Maybe I’m simply not as progressive as I thought.

But I still assumed all these years were enough to get used to the idea that one day the girl who smashed my face in my fifth birthday cake so viciously I got icing in my eye and subsequently, a minor infection, would be tasked with fucking a stranger. A crime lord. A man who could kill her and never lose a moment of sleep over her body decomposing in Raven River. She’s sleeping with him for secrets—intel on his supplier—and I’d much rather slit his throat to bleed them out. But even criminals have codes.

“Anyway, I only came here because I knew you’d want to see me in one piece, somewhere…neutral.” Her voice is precise, sharp.Ambitious,Dad once said. I had no idea ambition would one day break my fucking heart. “I’m tired and I’m going home.” She announces this all without ceremony. There is nothing like regret in her words. I should accept that as a good thing. She did the job; she came back to me in one piece.

She can break men into pieces, for that matter. She is not helpless.

But it feels as if her wicked words are carvingmeup right now.

I hear my pulse thump wildly in my ears as I imagine it. What the two of them did together. Theo Sancte is thirty-five to mine and Isa’s twenty-four. Tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, a former MMA fighter thrown into leading Vipera by his cocaine king of a father. He has a penchant for submissive girls and displays of sadism. All facts gleaned from my dad, Mads, who was tasked with feeding information to Isadora. Her own parents couldn’t be expected to throw their daughter to the vampire, could they? But if you ask me, it’s pretty fucked up that our families are down with this kind of thing anyway. That’s another story for another day though, the way our parents treat our work.

And last night, Isadora had to do nothing but be herself to complete her job. Vipera has no idea of Writhe’s connection to the 6. It isn’t publicized for a reason.This one.Writhe and a handful of other underground criminal organizations hide their true loyalty in order to steal secrets, exchange information, lie down in a bed and get fucked by Theo Sancte, his hand around Isadora’s pretty little fucking throat.

Yeah, maybe I’m going off topic here, but I can’t help it.

That’s the same throat I’ve kissed. Bitten, even, once when we were very drunk, and I was feeling very brave, and she asked me for it. I bruised her that same night, for the first time, my thumb pressed to her waist.

It was new for me. I’ve always been cold and collected and calm even if it doesn’t seem like it right now. Even when I fuck. It’s a way to get off, but I don’t need any additional theatrics like Isadora loves. And I’ve tried to stay relatively detached from the sheer fuckinglongingof having Isa for my own, because it was never anything more than a pipe dream. We have different ambitions and we’re better as friends, plus less attractive as ransom or threats against the other when we’re not a couple. We know that.

But sometimes over the years, there were moments of weakness between us. Sometimes Isadora’s analytical mind would turn off and instead of finding a stranger at a bar to sate her ridiculous fucking sexual appetite, she would let me try.

Especially after the warehouse.

It’s like she wanted me to fuck her memories away.

And God, did I try. Usually when I was wasted, when I could convince myself I would be able to handle the sting the next morning when she walked out of my bedroom covered in my marks, but not any closer to belonging to me than she had been when we were thirteen. When we shared our first kiss and she wanted more from me, but I was too uncomfortable to give it.

So she found it elsewhere.

Just like last night. She didn’t technically have to do what she did. It could’ve gone to someone else. My dad would never force her to take a job like that. But being a foot soldier for Writhe isn’t enough for her.

Ambitious.

As she walks by me, no doubt to do just what she said and go home to our shared condo, I decide I want to be a little fucking ambitious myself.

I reach out and grab her arm, closing my fingers tight around her wrist, remembering the way it felt to have her cling to me after the warehouse. Her one single moment of professional weakness, her face pressed to my chest, and I knew then I’d give anything to be who and what she needed for the rest of our lives.

She doesn’t immediately jerk away from me now. She’s facing the matte black door in the back corner of the room so I can’t see her face, but I imagine it, vivid inside my head. Dark brows pulled together, lips pursed, her nostrils flaring as anger floods her veins at my fuckingaudacity.She doesn’t like to be grabbed—until she gives her permission, of course—but I assume last night she was hurt in ways she absolutely loved, so why not with me?Why not now?She likes everything dark and demented;I can be that.

“Von.” She says my name quietly, but she still doesn’t look at me.

I feel her pulse race beneath my grip on her arm. My gaze trails over her hair, the curls down her back ending at her waistline. Deep brown-black with threads of a lighter brunette shade. I clench my teeth as my eyes find her wide hips, round ass, the way her burgundy, slim-fitted sweats cling to her curves. My bare chest heaves in and out, my mind conjuring the worst of what could’ve happened to her last night.

Surrounded by men with bad habits and worse addictions. Guns, knives, coke, pills, Fentanyl. It would take nothing to end her; slowly, or quick. Whatever Theo wanted, her demise is only limited by his imagination. Of course I’d avenge her, but what would that matter with her gone?

The warehouse only gave me a taste. No one touched her there. Not really. The big man she disemboweled was only to look after her until his boss received the ransom for us.

It’s you he wants.I hear those words in my head every time I lay down to sleep.

Even last night, but it wasn’t Isa whispering them to me in the dark. It was me, thinking of her, worried Theo would slit her throat just because he could.

It feels like getting shot, imagining it, and I know that feeling. Nineteen, second year into work for Writhe, I was disrespectful to the wrong one.

I’d take that bullet again and again never to think of someone else’s fingers around Isa’s beautiful throat.

I force myself to lift my gaze up to the small of her back, brown skin visible from the white T-shirt she tied just above her waistline. I trace the dimples bracketing her spine, then rake my gaze higher to the curve of her back, the firm muscles of her shoulder blades, just noticeable outside the thick strands of her hair.

“You’re not going home,” I say, voice low as I stare at the slope of her neck.

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