Page 16 of The Boss's Revenge

Coney Island was one of my guilty pleasures. When I’d been staying in the Ivanov base of operations, a ramshackle old mall in wreck and ruin, crouching at the farthest end of the boardwalk, I’d come to the amusement park often.

It was childish, garish, and terribly American for a jaded Russian like me, but, the truth was, I liked it. I liked the excitement about silly games and rubbish prizes. I liked the hope on kids' faces when they tried their best to win some plastic keepsake. I liked the couples who strolled hand in hand, laughing at the brightly colored rides, and eating cotton candy. I wished I’d been born a person who could go to Coney Island with my boyfriend or kids, and just have fun, eat too much sugar, and come home with useless plushies, and a fish in a bag I would desperately try and keep alive, even if it had always been fated to die a few days later. I was like that fish, swimming around and around in a shiny bag, seeing the world, but never being part of it, fated to end young and abruptly, uncared about, until the end.

Rocco moved through the crowd and it parted for him. Of course, it did. Not only was he tall and built as hell, handsome as sin to boot, but he had that aura that the men in the Luciano family carried. Don’t fuck with me power. I wished I had evena second of that feeling to enjoy. Every ounce of power I’d ever possessed I’d had to bleed for, manipulate, or steal. He had no idea how lucky he was, and the worst part was that I couldn’t even resent him for that.

I liked him too much.

It was a jarring, and tragic realization that Rocco Luciano had effortlessly slipped between the barbed defenses around my heart and set up camp inside it. Maybe it had started the night he’d offered to help me, or maybe the night I’d cut his handsome face and he’d let me slip through his fingers without retribution. All I knew, was that my heart was now his, not that I could let him know that. I had pride, after all. It was really all I had, in the end.

“We’re early. Why don’t I beat you at knife toss, and see if you can handle it?” Rocco said, grinning at me, and stopping beside a stall.

“Seriously? Weren’t you the one who just told me that not everything is a competition?”

“And you’re the one who insisted it was. Scared to lose?”

“Oh, baby Luciano, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” I muttered to him, my raring sense of challenge well and truly alive.

“You talk a good game, but can you throw, is the question.”

“Let’s see, shall we?”

Twenty minutes later, and with a stuffed plushie under my arm, that I’d won myself, I grinned at Rocco. He was holding his own prize, a goldfish in a bag.

“Technically, since the challenge was for knife toss, I won.”

“I got double your score at the shooting range,” he reminded me.

“Yes, but that wasn’t the game we were competing in.” It wasn’t fair. I hated guns.

“That’s true, it truly wasn’t a competition in any real sense of the word,” Rocco said, and dodged my arm when I went to whack him. Instead of stepping away, he stepped closer and tugged me into him. “Anyway, you should know how much you’ve fucked with my head, that the sight of you sinking ten knives into a three-inch target made me want to take you on the haunted house, sit you on my lap, and fuck you all the way around the ride,” he said, leaning in to kiss me, and biting my lower lip, sucking it between his.

“If that’s so, then why the hell aren’t we in the line for the haunted house?” I teased. His nostrils flared, want painting across his features.

“Kira! The penguin suits you,” A deep voice called. I turned to see Konstantin ambling toward me. He was followed by a big, burly-looking blond man.

“I won it,” I said defensively.

“Of course, you did. Rocco, nice fish. The penguin will last longer,” Kon mused, eying up both.

“Ivanov,” Rocco said cooly. The two still didn’t get on too well, which wasn’t too surprising. His eyes moved to the newcomer. “Who is this?”

“This is Caelan. He’s going to help Kira disappear and he’s damn good at it.”

Caelan held out a hand to me before Rocco. I put my hand in his hard grip. “Nice to meet you, Kira,” he said, an Irish accent flavoring his words.

He was a big guy, tall and broad and burly. There was something dependable looking about him. I nodded, feeling reassured about Kon’s choice of help. He was also handsome ina blunt featured, gentle giant kind of way, though just the sight of his build and confidence warned that the gentle part was an illusion.

“Caelan who?” Rocco asked in a hard tone. Caelan offered his hand to Rocco, who merely looked at it.

“Caelan O’Rourke. We go way back, specifically, we were cellmates for a glorious summer. Ah, the good old days,” Kon grinned. He fit right in on Coney Island with his uncountable number of tattoos and amused ringmaster of the circus façade. Still, he’d been my only friend for a very long time and I’d always trusted him with my life.

Rocco stiffened. “What were you in for?” His question was rude as hell. There was an unspoken etiquette around other criminals not to ask that exact question, and Rocco was anything but rude, except today, apparently.

“Nothing we haven’t all done a hundred times,” Caelan said, with a deep voice that shook my bones. He looked at me, seeming to dismiss Rocco altogether. “Kira, shall we take a walk?”

I felt Rocco’s eyes boring into the side of my head, as I nodded, and followed him slowly. Kon and Rocco fell into step behind us.

“Do I have any choice where I end up?” My voice was distant, emotions I couldn’t name swirling in my chest.

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