Love of a Queen: Chapter 11

Of course I didn’t answer his call.

It was a restricted line, so technically, it could have been anybody.

But, I knew.

My whole body tightened as I stared at my phone ringing in my hand. I considered how it would be if I did answer. Would we talk about the weather? What the forecast looked like for the next week?

We couldn’t make small talk or chit chat. We had nothing to discuss. We never had. Our lives were heavy and dark, filled with things you didn’t talk about over a phone call.

What would I say to a man I wanted but couldn’t have? I didn’t idly talk with anyone on the phone. For me to answer, for me to even consider answering, was ludicrous.

I threw the phone on the bed and went to go shower. As I let the steam engulf me, I stared at the tiling on the walls. The mosaic designs in cream colors fogged up with the heat over time. I stood in there so long thinking of the call I couldn’t take that the fog turned to droplets. I slid to the ground and considered how long Rome would try, if he’d ever give up on me.

Or maybe another would grab his attention. He had a sex club after all.

The thought had me off the floor with jealousy, with frustration, but also resignation. I turned the handle and the water stopped falling. I dried off and went back to my phone.

My fingers hovered over the keys. One phone call and I could have Rome’s number.

Instead, I texted Maksim, giving him our signal that I was safe and sound for the night.

I put my phone on the opposite side of where I slept, trying to forget the call that had ruined my night.

And that was singular because he only dialed my number once. He definitely hadn’t left a message and I wasn’t even sure he’d waited to hear the voicemail click on.

Rome was always impatient when he wanted something. He’d lived a life where efficiency was necessary and it bled over into everything he did. I didn’t know if it was a product of his lifestyle or if he’d been born with it.

Still, I was more than a little surprised when the next day, as I got ready for another meeting with Ivan, Rome texted me.

Lately, the meetings with Ivan had been more heated as we brought in lawyers and allies to sign documents. We were getting close, so close I should have been focusing on that, not a text from Rome.

Still, I sat on the bed in my lingerie, about to change, and I pulled open the text. The number wasn’t blocked this time, giving me a way to respond.

I shook away my excitement, reminding myself that I’d been the one to push him away. It was necessary for us both to have clear heads for our families, our line of work. We didn’t need relationships. Some mob family codes actually forbade them for the very reason that they put your mob family at risk.

Emotions and ties just ended up broken apart on the floor in front of you.

And yet we were both bound to bleed out in front of one another anyway.

Rome: You didn’t answer.

Me: You didn’t leave a message. Or a number to call back.

Rome: I have it on good authority you stared at me ringing your phone. You ignored the call and I know for a fact you could have got my number if you wanted it.

Me: Maybe I don’t want it. Ever cross your mind?

Rome: Never. I’ll see you soon.

Me: What?

Rome: I’ll be at the meeting.

Me: Why? You’re not invited.

Rome: We will be. That meeting’s bound to go to shit.

Me: I don’t want to see you. Don’t come.

Rome: Now, we both know I don’t listen to commands well.

Me: Rome, this is business.

Rome: I’m well aware. What are you wearing to your business meeting, Katalina?

Me: Oh, get fucked.

Rome: Wear something for me, huh? If I can’t have your pussy, I’d at least like to admire the view.

This was a conversation that was bound to lead to sexting if I didn’t stop. This little taste of my addiction was already becoming a bigger problem. My thighs were clenching as I sat on the side of the bed, my heart racing for just a fix, my soul yearning for the place it felt most comfortable. Next to the man who put me on top of the world instead of those who constantly tried to drag me down into the depths of it.

Me: Don’t you have anything better to do right now?

Rome: Yeah. I could be fucking you in your bed if you’d give me your address. I know just where to touch you to make you scream. Want me to come show you?

Jesus Christ, he could raise the heat level in seconds. We needed a cold bucket of water for the two of us.

Me: Admire someone else.

Rome: That an invitation to substitute cubic zirconium for a diamond? I’ll pass.

Me: You’re ridiculous, you know that?

I sent the text with a small smile on my face. Maybe he was just throwing out a compliment to keep the conversation going, or maybe he knew it was what I needed. He was the one man who never made me doubt myself in any regard. He held me to a sky-high standard.

Would my confidence ever get to where he thought I was? I didn’t know, but I dressed in a black crop top that showed my tattoo. His words on my skin. His confidence in me.

It was a tribute to the monster that loved the woman he thought I was.

I hoped I could prove him right.

I headed out after pulling some ripped jeans on and smoothing my dark hair with a straightener.

“Maksim!” I said. “You brought a friend.”

Maksim stood at the hood of the SUV outside my building with a tall, broody looking man that was about our age. The two of them side by side in front of a dark SUV were what nightmares turned to fantasies were made of. Maksim had the dark, Italian look with a couple small scars on his face that I knew were from his time being a bodyguard. His friend stood just as tall beside him. He had a strong jaw, an athlete’s body, a good hairline. When I took him in, though, I didn’t see any of it, because his eyes were almost translucent because they were so blue.

He held my gaze and smiled, putting out a hand for me to shake. “Luka, heir to the bratva out west.”

I ran through my mental rolodex of people I’d seen at Mario’s funeral. “You didn’t come to town when Mario passed.”

“No need,” said Maksim. “Egor was here.” He nudged his friend in the shoulder like it was an inside joke. “Can you imagine you two sitting through a plane ride together?”

Luka didn’t squeeze my hand too tightly or drop his gaze at all while he measured me up. Instantly, I liked him.

“I’m just here to keep Maksim company,” he said.

“Or spy for Egor?” I suggested.

“My grandfather could ask me to carry him across the street to a hospital after being shot and I wouldn’t do it. You can believe me when I say I’m not here to spy. Maybe to meet you. But only because Maksim says nice things.”

“Maksim does, does he?” I smirked at him and then waved off our meeting of the minds in the middle of a busy Chicago sidewalk. “Shall we all ride to this meeting and get it the fuck out of the way?”

“You think I need to be prepared?” Maksim asked as he opened the door for me. I didn’t share much with Maksim, or anyone in the bratva for that matter. I couldn’t trust them not to trickle down information to others.

Still, he was the only one who could help me if a situation went down. “It’ll be heated.”

“I swear to God…” he grumbled before he slammed the door. When he got into the front seat and Luka was situated in the passenger beside him, he glanced back at me and said, “You got to start giving me more, Katalina. I’m your guy.”

“I don’t have a guy.” I broke eye contact and stared at the city that rolled by. Men in suits, women in heels with briefcases buzzed past. They didn’t even see the men lurking behind them in the shadows, how the gangs wove in and out of society. They’d all become experts at being invisible. I caught one in a hoodie hunched over on a bench. When I met his gaze, he glanced away quickly. He was spying for another gang, surely.

Being aware was my life now, the way I lived another day. If I didn’t stay alert, I’d be grabbed and end up dead and dumped down the river somewhere.

“You’ve got to have someone, huh? You can’t take all this on alone, and the Armanellis—”

“They’re not a part of this.”

Maksim chuckled and nodded. “They’ll always be a part of you, Katalina. Family isn’t just blood, right? You’re not so stupid to think that. I know you know that better than anyone.”

“Maksim, aren’t you only supposed to be my security?” I teased, lifting an eyebrow.

Luka spoke from his side of the car. “He can’t be just that to anyone he cares for. You know we’re supposed to be enemies. My dad wanted me to kill him when we were ten.”

My gaze ping-ponged between the two. “Did anybody have a good parent other than me?”

Luka sighed and tapped the back of his hand against the window. “Not preparing us for much in the mob if you aren’t constantly training for the worst.”

“If we didn’t only have the worst, maybe we’d have better.” The statement was more to myself than both of them.

“I agree.” Maksim looked both ways and behind us before he turned down an alley and wove through a few streets. He then veered onto the highway and we started our real drive to Ivan’s. He thought mixing up his routes would help deter followers but I was sure it didn’t. “It’s why I believe in you. I need you to believe in me too.”

“I’m doing the best I can.” I dragged a hand over my face. “Let’s talk about something else. Something light.”

I closed my eyes as we rode and Maksim listed off things we needed to make decisions on. “Nico and his wife are most likely going into witness protection. I said we could give them a cut of my earnings for the next few years to help ease the transition. Oh, also, give Akim money for his son.”

“You’ll run out of money at this rate,” advised Luka.

“I never had money before. What do I need it for now?”

Maksim laughed. “Got a point there.”

“You weren’t leading the bratva before,” said Luka. “They expect a certain level of financial security.”

“And they’ll get it. Some will get even more because of the decisions I make. So everyone can thank me. If they don’t want to, they can keep their mouth shut.”

“Ah, that’s the type of leadership I’m used to.” He combed a hand through his thick brown hair.

“It seems to be the only leadership anyone listens to around here.” The statement was petty but I was tired. This meeting was about to exhaust me more.

We pulled up to the beautiful white home and were greeted with an open door. Ivan waited for us at his dining room table, Konstantin, the head of the Miami bratva sitting there with him. Neither stood for me the last to be seated.

He didn’t greet us or even mention Luka being there, he simply motioned toward me. “Begin with the logistics, Katalina.”

I didn’t hesitate. I dove right in like we had at the other meetings. The lawyers fanned out to hand out the contracts and then exited the room while I continued talking.

The contracts for partnerships between businesses, for security, and for making most of our income and businesses legal, which most importantly took trafficking off the table, needed to be solidified and signed off today by the one man at the table. He was a leader of the bratva in Miami, an extremely wealthy one who didn’t ever want to change his way, I was told.

Maksim and Luka stared at me in shock as I finished. Maksim got up and came to stand behind me, like he knew I might need the damn security.

“I know this is the first time you’re hearing this, but it has to be done,” I stated while the older man across the table stared at the document in silence.

Ivan motioned toward a man standing in the corner. “I’ll need a beverage. Get us some tea.”

My stomach rolled at the thought. “Water for me only.”

I’d been disgusted at even the thought of water or food or drink lately. I wanted to focus on this family, on moving forward. The only thing that could occupy my thoughts was Rome or talk of these contracts. Nothing else was important. My dream, our organization, our plans consumed everything in my mind.

The closer you got to a goal, to the finish line, the more you wanted it. I was so close, it felt like the sun was right up against my skin. It burned in me, shined all around me, and was ready to kill me if I didn’t do something about it.

“Katalina, things like this take time.” Ivan shook his head and tsked like my negotiation was too fast, frivolous, not smart.

“And every child sold takes a life.”

“They aren’t our children,” the man from Miami, Konstantin, stated. He smiled and the hairs on his face folded into his wrinkles. I wanted to burn each one off slowly, hold a lighter to them and watch them flare. That man had stared at me from the second I’d arrived at the funeral and watched me like I was a piece of meat. He didn’t want to end sex trafficking, because he was a part of it, because he didn’t see where he could earn just as much money, and he probably enjoyed it.

“Do you have children?”

His beady eyes narrowed, the blue in them as cold as ice. “Do you?”

“Yes.” My heart swelled, thinking of the girl that I had met so long ago at Marvin’s, how her eyes looked dead inside and mirrored my own. “They are my children. They are my sisters and my brothers. They’re mothers and daughters. This isn’t a plantation from years ago. We aren’t selling slaves or humans or sex trafficking them. We find another way.”

His hand slammed down on the table. “You don’t get to come in here and change everything.” Spit flew from his mouth while he talked. “Ivan! This is ridiculous.”

Ivan waited as a man brought out our tea. It steamed from the cup and he let the aroma fill the room before answering. His eyes bounced from me to the window where I knew men stood outside waiting for our visitor. “What’s all this about?”

His eyes appeared empty when he looked at me for a second and he shook his head.

The display was out of character. It wasn’t Ivan at all.

It was his disease.

We’d made deals with pharmaceutical companies and colleges to get him care, to get him medication to control the onset of his Alzheimer’s. Some of the studies and trials were working on him.

Still, there were moments.

He shook his head and shut his eyes. When they opened, the clarity was there again.

“This isn’t for me to decide anymore, Konstantin,” said Ivan. “My memory, my health, it comes first.”

“No. The bratva comes first.” Konstantin stood up, his deep voice guttural and full of fury. He dove into his navy suit jacket, the lapels much bigger than Ivan’s to accommodate his bulk.

Ivan rolled his eyes when Konstantin pointed a gun at him.

I didn’t even flinch when the gun swung my way. I’d done the dance one too many times with men I’d been with, with Ivan over the last few weeks training me. I could see in his eyes that he wouldn’t pull the trigger.

“Don’t point a gun at me if you don’t intend to shoot it,” I said and leaned back in my chair. “Ivan needs rest. I need a drink. You need to agree to all of this or your bratva can go to hell.”

“You go to hell,” he said, jerking the gun that pointed at my head.

“Send me, then.” I shrugged. “See how it works out for you.”

He glanced around and the man in the corner had a gun on him. The two men outside most likely did too. Maksim’s gun had most surely been pulled and aimed above my head also. Snipers were set up all over this house. They always would be and they knew to protect the family that owned it, that paid their bills.

My bratva knew. I held the key.

“The Stonewoods and the Armanellis are my family too,” I said. “They’ve already agreed. You don’t want to, we deal you out. Sign where the lawyers have said to and do as you’re told.”

“My earnings will be cut in half,” he ground out.

“You’ll only lose an eighth of your earnings. And that will grow back with the other contracts.” I combed a finger through my straightened dark hair. I pulled on the collar of my crop top. “You don’t have to trust me. Trust the process.”

“Where’s the process, huh? You come in and take all our money. Some woman we don’t even know.” He swung his gun toward Ivan. “You did this.”

“I should have you killed.” Ivan was growing tired. I could see by the way his shoulders slumped, by the way he’d forgotten where he was before.

“You should kill yourself,” said Konstantin. “After all this, you pretty much have. Giving the bratva over to her, leaving us to rot under the influence of Italians and CEOs.”

“Maybe we need to call them here then.” Ivan rubbed his temple.

Like dominos being perfectly aligned, I saw now that Rome would come. He’d arrive with them all and they’d make a statement with one of the last contracts we needed signed. The man had known even before I had how this world turned. It was a solid reminder of what I needed to learn.

“Call who?” asked Konstantin. Then he sneered at me. “Bastian? The man who fucks this girl when we aren’t looking, or is that Rome? They just agreed to this because they’re pussy whipped and I’m not about to be.”

I almost stood up and reacted. He did deserve to die. I needed to be bigger than my pride though. I needed to prove I was better than all of them by not killing the man immediately even though they thought a woman would be the first to indulge her emotions.

“Yes, I think we will call Bastian.” I took a deep, calming breath. I kept the show moving. This was one in a long line of many to come. We’d set an example with him, though.

“Bastian,” I purred into the phone while glaring at Konstantin. He could believe what he wanted about me at this point; he could roll in his hatred for me for all I cared. I wanted to make him squirm with discomfort and have the hate ooze from him. He’d still sign on the dotted line. “Ivan would like to have you over for tea.”

“Yeah, we figured that was going down. I’m bringing the crew. He’s trouble and I won’t be there without them.” Bastian said calmly to me.

I wouldn’t argue that. I responded, “If they are with you and would like to attend, that’s fine too.”

I hung up and stared at the old man. Konstantin holstered his weapon and sat down while he grumbled, “I guess we wait and drink tea.”

The clock ticked. The birds chirped outside. Time passed with only tension making noise in the room. It didn’t take long, an indication that Cade was tracking me and that they were in the area, prepared for all of this. I didn’t care.

This was the first step of legalizing the bratva. We did this my way if I ruled and we did it by making allies, by weeding out illegal trafficking, by saving lives instead of ruining them. The men would have to fall in line. We did what I said, what I believed in, what I knew would ultimately benefit us.

Bastian, Rome, and Dante walked in after half an hour of the two men sipping tea and me water. They all stood tall in their black Armani suits. I knew the brand because I’d been with them and Mario at the boutiques in the past. Rome, though, even in the relaxed way he walked, overpowered their presence in the room.

Or maybe I just felt it. This was the first time he’d attended a meeting since the funeral with Bastian. I should have been focused on the contract, on getting that signature, and making all this work. Instead, that man’s presence suffocated my thoughts of anything else. It was like his grip on my neck. The shivers down my back weren’t from the cold. The darkness in his eyes penetrated even the deepest parts of my soul.

His jawline was flexed and when he made eye contact with me, it popped.

“Glad you could all make it,” I murmured.

Bastian and Dante smiled and took a seat at the table as Ivan waved them in. Dante unbuttoned his suit jacket and Bastian nodded when the corner man offered tea.

Rome stood behind them both, arms crossed.

“Would you like to sit?” Ivan motioned toward the empty chair near me.

“I’ll stand,” he said and didn’t glance my way again.

My mind should have been focused on the contract, focused on making each partner accountable. Instead, I willed him to look my way again. I wanted to peel back his hard exterior, figure out why he wouldn’t turn his face toward me.

“Suit yourself,” Ivan replied and stood. “This isn’t my choice. I’m tired. You all figure it out. I’ll be retiring now.”

The room stilled. No one said a word as Ivan’s chair scraped loudly on the wooden floor. We all stared at him in disbelief.

Ivan had sat with me for every meeting from the beginning. Now, he appeared worn out, sunken in and deflated.

He didn’t say another word, just turned on his leather loafers and disappeared down the hall.

“Well, I guess you’ll lead the bratva to hell without him then,” Konstantin mumbled.

“If you’ll sign on the dotted line, we won’t go anywhere near hell,” I said. “If you won’t, I’ll drag you there and watch you burn.”

“You warn me like you can do a thing.” He smiled at the men who sat there. “I’m not scared of any of you.”

“We don’t want you scared, Konstantin. We want you willing. This partnership will work better with everyone fully involved.”

“I don’t work well with pussies.” He motioned toward me.

The low hum that rolled through the room made me clench my thighs. Rome’s anger affected me in a way that it shouldn’t have. I stared at him, hoping to see some emotion other than fury cross his face.

“Are you calling me a pussy or these men?” I was taunting him, knowing he would never refer to the Armanellis like that.

“I swear to God, I am going to kill you,” Konstantin whispered, but it was loud enough for us all to hear.

Maybe we should’ve known that Rome wasn’t in the right mindset. His monster was clamoring to get out. The rage had consumed him, rage over something I wasn’t exactly sure of.

He pulled his gun and shoved it into Konstantin’s head. The man’s eyes bulged and his hand flew to his own gun. He never got to it though because Rome was too fast. He took the man’s hand and twisted it until we saw his wrist break. The pop of the bone was loud but even Ivan must have heard Konstantin’s blood curdling scream from the other side of the house.

“I’m not here to play games or to waste my time,” Rome said, his face devoid of emotion. “Sign the papers.”

“They won’t be legally binding,” whimpered Konstantin, “considering that I am being forced into putting my signature on paper. “

“Would you like me to give you a choice?”

“I deserve a choice, don’t I?”

“You deserve a choice. Of course. Choose death or signing the paper,” Rome said pointedly.

“You’ve got some evil in you, huh? I like to see that. Maybe it is you that’s fucking—”

Rome lost it. He didn’t wait. He didn’t look at me for a signal, or Bastian for that matter. The gun flew from the man’s head to his leg where Rome pulled the trigger.

I jumped at the sound, before Konstantin wailed.

Blood had splattered across the contracts and onto our shirts and faces.

“I hit your artery. If you don’t get to a hospital in the next five minutes, you will bleed out and die.” Rome had his hands on the man’s shoulders holding him to his chair.

The man screamed and screamed, but he dropped his own gun from his hands like he knew he couldn’t shoot anyone in the room, like he didn’t really hold any of the power.

What a sad feeling to know your place and realize you can’t save your own life because of the hierarchy you agreed to. What an even sadder thought to realize many didn’t agree to it at all.

“This is your world,” I whispered to him. “Not mine.”

He didn’t respond to my comment, he just begged for his life, for us to let his men in. He screamed their names, but our men were certainly holding his men back outside.

I stared at the man who had wanted to send me to hell. I remembered how he downplayed my power, how he called me a pussy, how he insinuated that I was a whore who worked my way to the top.

I contemplated his words and wondered if he was right. And laughed to myself because, it would be ironic, right? The men that had sex trafficked women would be picked off one by one by a woman who had been sex trafficked herself. Did these men not realize that they’d created this beast, that I fed off the power they’d once stolen from me? That after they’d put her pussy up on a pedestal for so long, she’d learn she deserved to use her body in any way she so chose to get what she wanted?

All he had to do was sign on a line; all he had to do was look up at me and beg for his life. He did none of those things. His cold blue eyes never looked my way. He could not bring himself to see me as an equal. A woman in power was beyond what he could accept.

Bastian watched and Rome held him down as he struggled.

They were waiting for him to do the same thing as I was because, at the end of the day, these men were my family. They knew what I needed from him. And they were still mafia men. They would let him die.

I had to be stronger. I had to be the woman of the mafia.

The queen that reigned with love for life instead of with wrath.

I turned to the corner man. “Get someone to take him to the hospital. Drop him there. Make sure he survives.”

Konstantin heard my words. His screaming and begging stopped. The room held silence as blood from his wound poured out onto the wood floors. We watched the red seep into the cracks and I knew the cleaning up afterward would be difficult.

“I’ll sign.” He stared at me; his blue eyes genuinely full of a remorse I couldn’t have fathomed just seconds before.

“If you sign, you sign it of your own will when you finish your hospital stay.” I wouldn’t put our partnership in jeopardy. I wanted clean signatures.

His men rushed in and dragged him out and we were left with red smears across the floor.

Bastian stood and came over to give me a hug. “I guess you did the right thing. I would have let him go.”

“You’d let all bratva go if you could.”

“That’s very true.” He patted my back and kissed my cheek. As he walked out, he said to Rome and Dante, “I’m not in the mood for clean-up. You need to rein it in, Rome.”

Dante followed him, leaving Rome staring at the floor. I lifted my chin for Maksim to leave the room. He hesitated until I wide-eyed him to leave. Luka smiled on his way out and said, “Nice to meet you.”

Nothing about this meeting had been nice, but I didn’t respond as they left.

Instead, I waited. I wouldn’t break the silence between Rome and me at this point. He could do the honors. He could defend his actions this time. If it was because of how we’d left things, he could admit that. I didn’t owe him anything now, not when he’d acted out without consent from any of us.

“His gun was lying on the table pointed at you when I walked in,” said Rome, his voice quiet. “Did he hold you at gunpoint?”

“A lot of men have held me at gunpoint, Rome.”

“You’re baiting with your life now?” He almost whispered the words. The question was ominous and I knew he wouldn’t like my answer.

“Haven’t I always baited with my life? And anyway, it’s my life to bait with, right?” He had to learn, we both had to. Our lives couldn’t be intertwined the way we wanted.

He growled and ran his fingers through his hair before he pulled on the back of his neck and looked toward the ceiling. “No!” he screamed and slammed his hand down on the table. He reared back and then crashed his knuckles into the table.

Over and over again.

I had to walk up and grip his arm. “Stop.”

The wild in his eyes as he glared at me was a reminder at how close this man was to complete oblivion and chaos. The blood dripped from his knuckles into the table where he ground his fist in hard, trying to shake whatever he was feeling.

“Please stop, Rome.” I said again because his knuckles were raw against the wood and the pain he was causing himself was too much.

“It’s my soul, my monster, my life that is fed by yours, Katalina. You’re mine and you keep me living. So I keep you living. You’re fucking mine. This life, this heart”—he shoved his bloodstained finger into my chest—“that’s mine. No one fucks with what’s mine. I should have shot him in the motherfucking head. Next time, I will.”

He was shaking with rage, and most days, I would have let him have at it. He needed to learn that this would be us forever and ever now. But like I was his, his monster was mine. It wasn’t used to not being able to protect. I saw the anguish rolling around deep down inside him and making him crazy.

Was I crazy to sit through what I just had with Konstantin, to be held at gunpoint without batting an eyelash? To not feel anything truly until now?

A heart crumbling and screaming for it’s soulmate was the worst pain and the scariest.

All I wanted was to soothe him, to make our relationship okay.

He wasn’t made to be helpless, Rome was made to fight, to protect, to worry about his family so much that he didn’t stop to think that the bratva could have shot him through the window. He didn’t think twice.

I saw all the steps now; I knew they had guns trained on him. His life had been on the line. My heart beat for that life as much as his heart beat for mine.

I stepped into that expansive chest and hugged him. I didn’t kiss him or rub my hands over him like I usually did. I enveloped the body that was twice my size in my arms and sighed into him. “We’re okay, huh?”

“What?” He whispered into my hair and then he breathed me in.

“We’re okay. It’s all okay.”

“You’re going to kill me, Kate-Bait.”

“Remember, you said once, you’ll survive…”

His arm wrapped around me and his hand rubbed over my tattoo. “Because if you don’t, you die. You trying to say that the same goes for me?”

I shrugged. “I was a little nervous you were going to get yourself killed today by shooting Konstantin. None of them trust you, or me for that matter. They could have shot you today.”

“I’d have lived,” he said into my hair.

“You could have died just as easily as I could have.”

His hand rubbed my back as he said, “I need you to have better security. I’ll split time between you and Bastian.”

“No.” I shook my head on his chest. “We’re not even supposed to be here together now. Maksim does well and I need them to trust—”

“Don’t say it. I could care less about their trust.”

“I earned Konstantin’s today.” I smiled into his shirt and took my own whiff of him.

“That you did, Cleo. That you did.”

“We only have a few more signatures to go. If we implement without hitches, the trafficking will dramatically decrease in the next year.”

“There’ll be hitches, babe.” He pulled back to look down at my eyes. The chocolate brown there oozed a love for me that was so tempting I wanted to melt into it. “There’s going to be a lot more.”

I took a step back, but he just stepped with me and kept his arm locked on my waist. I smirked. “Let go, monster. You can’t have me here or anywhere. We have to be done.”

“We’re never done. I want your address.”

“You can’t have it. We can’t . . .” I sighed because my body and heart were running toward him and leaving my mind behind. I had to reign them all in and stay the course. “We can’t be anything, Rome. Not for a long time.”

“We are something. I’ll take your address when you’re ready to give it.”

“I won’t be.”

He stepped back and I chilled immediately. “I guess you’re leaving me to my own devices.”

The warning in his voice didn’t scare me. The animal in him wasn’t going to leave me alone. And the fiend in me was about to give in. It wouldn’t be smart. Some would even say we were heading toward our own demise. The fact that I was looking forward to it was what truly scared me most.