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With an outraged huff, Kat lightly slaps my shoulder. “Can you imagine?” she asks, horrified, nibbling her bottom lip. “Me, gainfully employed, doing some good, old-fashioned honest work?” She shudders. “I don’t think so. No, sir!”
“Call me sir one more time, and I won’t bring it up again,” I say in a whisper, and Kat rolls her eyes before laughing. She leans forward to kiss me, unwittingly awakening my insatiable hunger for her. It’s been too long since I made love to her. At least eight hours by now…
She pulls away too soon, and I groan in protest. Mercilessly ignoring my starving pleas, she asks, “So, how did your meeting go?”
Patrick McGuire and I have been meeting periodically for months now. In the aftermath of the Salvatore ordeal, McGuire finally accepted that the bratva and I had nothing to do with his daughter’s disappearance. In an attempt to mend fences, we’ve been working together to find her. It was, if nothing else, a gesture of good faith.
Besides, Maxim would have wanted me to ensure Erin was safe and well. I owe him that—and so much more. Especially considering the mess involving the location of his remains, a mystery I still haven’t been able to solve.
Kat insisted we should have a memorial service for him. At first, I resisted her idea, thinking the whole thing would leave a bad taste in my mouth since we would be burying nothing but an empty casket. But in the end, as usual, she was right. It was time. Even though it was nothing but a symbolic gesture, it gave me the closure I needed to move on and start a new life with her.
“It went as well as it could be expected,” I say with a sigh. “And by that, I mean it was a complete waste of time, but at least McGuire and I didn’t come to blows. This time.”
“Baby steps,” she jokes. Then, gently, she says, “You’ll find Erin. And Maxim. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re doing the best you can, and that’s not nothing.”
I sigh. “It sure feels like it sometimes.”
“I know, miliy,” she says, wrapping her arms around my neck before pressing a soft kiss against my forehead. “But I know you’ll succeed at this as you have with everything else you’ve ever set out to accomplish.”
“My greatest accomplishment,” I say, squeezing the plump flesh of her ass, “is to be loved by you.”
She winks me. “And I’ll never let you forget it.”
I laugh. “Don’t I know it.”
Kat smiles at me for a moment before a sober expression settles over her finely wrought features. Before she even opens her lips to form the words, I already know what she’s going to ask me.
“Did you see him?”
I nod in response, still beyond words, even after all these months. “Lorenzo was there, too.”
After the reigning Italian boss, Giuseppe Salvatore—or the stronzo, as Kat tends to refer to him—died at my hands, his nephew, Lorenzo, took his place. The young man was a breath of fresh air compared to his disgrace of an uncle. In all fairness, as Lorenzo likes to remind me, Giuseppe was only his uncle by marriage.
Lorenzo has been trying to step up to the plate and establish order within the Italian family’s ranks. He has his work cut out for him, and I don’t envy his position. But for whatever it’s worth, he seems to be made of stronger—and better—stuff than his predecessor.
“How is he doing?”
I know she’s not referring to the new young Italian boss.
“Dmitri’s…condition hasn’t improved much since I last saw him. He barely seemed to recognize me this time. Or at least I felt that way because all he does is ask about her.”
His girlfriend. Shortly after Salvatore died, we found Dmitri’s girlfriend in a deplorable state. We freed her, and we’ve been trying our best to help her recover since then, but understandably, the young woman is still profoundly damaged and traumatized.
Somehow, Dmitri is in an even worse state.
His betrayal cut me deeply, more than anything or anyone else before him. Still, I just couldn’t bring myself to kill him. The best alternative had been to have him incarcerated. Not in an actual, government-provided prison, of course. We always handle these things internally. Instead, I had him confined in our private lockup. Indefinitely.
Dmitri hasn’t been faring well ever since. At times, I fear that keeping him away from the girl might be a fate worse than death for him. Every time I visit him, he seems to be further down the path towards insanity. I worry I will gaze into my friend’s eyes one day, and nothing but madness will stare back at me.
Kat sighs. “Poor Dmitri. I wish there were another way.”
I rub my hand over her back. “I know, milaya. I do, too.”
She stares blankly ahead, frowning slightly. But to my surprise, after a moment, she seems content to drop the subject, shrugging before turning to face me.
“After you left this morning, I thought about the night we first met. As monumental of a night as it was for you and me, we had no idea everything would change. Forever.” With a teasing glint in her eyes, she brushes her lips against mine. “I bet you didn’t even know what hit you when you first saw me across the room.”
“It was the stuff of legends, Kat. The earth moved. Even if I live to be a hundred years old, I’ll still perfectly remember the way you looked that night and the devastation you caused in my life. You stole my diamond and my heart—and I was better for it.”
