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She led me through to the ensuite attached to my room with a confidence that surprised me and gestured for me to take a seat on the edge of the bath as she ran the water in the sink until it started to get warm. Kneeling in front of me, she pulled my hand into her lap and dampened a towel with the water so she could start cleaning me up.
Her touch was soft and slow and careful, and I watched as she worked, a small furrow appearing between her brows as she tended to my cut. I would have just thrown a bandage on it and knocked back a couple of shots of vodka, not gone to all this effort, but maybe there was something to be said for letting her actually deal with it. I needed to be more careful with myself, I knew that, and letting Tony get in my face with a broken bottle wasn’t exactly living by those standards.
"What happened?" she asked again, looking up at me with those clear, crystalline blue eyes.
"There was a fight at the club," I replied before I could stop myself. It caught me off guard, the way she looked at me, so open and innocent, like all she wanted in the world was to know the truth.
"You don’t have security guards to deal with that?" she asked, sounding confused, as she switched over to a dry towel to wrap around my arm.
"We do," I replied. "But sometimes … they need someone with a little more clout to handle what’s going on in there. That’s where I come in."
Her eyes widened.
"Like what?" she asked curiously. I knew I shouldn’t have been telling her this; she didn’t need to know the details of what went on in there, but I found it spilling from my mouth before I could stop it.
"Some asshole Mafia boss who thinks he’s hot shit," I explained. She raised her eyebrows at me.
"That’s … That’s what you guys are, right?" she asked me.
"What, people who think we’re hot shit?" I asked. She giggled slightly, the first laugh I had heard from her in all the time she’d been here. She shook her head.
"No, not that," she assured me. "I mean … you’re … you’re Mafia, right? Bratva?"
"Yeah, we are," I replied. No point in bullshitting here. She was already this far into our lives as it was, better to just cut to the chase and be honest with her about what was going on here.
"So, what’s another boss doing in your club?" she wondered aloud. "You let other people get into your place like that?"
"Long story," I sighed. It hadn’t been my idea to start building those connections with the other criminals in this city. No, that had all been on Maxim. I would have been happy keeping our sharp-edged rivalry, but he insisted that it would be better for us in the long term if we at least tried to get along with them. He was likely right, but that didn’t mean I wanted to admit it. I never liked giving him the win. Just a side effect of being his brother, I figured.
"That doesn’t bother you?" I asked her. She lifted her gaze up to meet mine as she tied the towel off around my wrist.
"What doesn’t?"
"The fact that we’re Bratva."
She shook her head.
"I … I know what’s out there, in this city," she told me quietly. "I know it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. And sometimes … Sometimes, you need the bad guys on your side just to survive, right?"
Bad guys? Was that how she saw us? I watched her as she finished cleaning me up, pulling her hands away from my wound.
"There," she told me, looking up at me. "All done."
Her hand was still resting close to mine. Before I could think twice about it, I hooked my fingers across hers.
"We’re not the bad guys, Mina," I told her softly. She inhaled sharply but didn’t pull her hand away.
"I … I wasn’t trying to say that," she blurted out. "I just …"
I lifted my hand to her face. I expected her to draw back from me, but instead, her cheeks flushed that delicious pink that I had started to expect from her.
"We’re trying to help you," I murmured. "You believe that, don’t you?"
"I do," she breathed back, her voice dropping slightly. She was still kneeling on the ground before me, our fingers still interlinked. She tightened her grip on me slightly, as though making sure I wasn’t going anywhere.
As though there was anywhere I would have rather been in that moment.
I could hear a voice at the back of my mind, screaming at me not to go through with this—telling me, in no uncertain terms, that this was a bad idea and I needed to remember that we were here to help her, not here to make a move on her. But all I could think about were her soft fingers brushing up against my skin, how good they felt, and how much I wanted more.
