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“Unfortunately, I’m the spare brother.” He wagged his eyebrows at me.
Where was my knife when I needed it? A pretty little scar to match that loud mouth of his would fit him quite right.
“Enough!” Felipe slammed his palm on the desk. “The deal has been made. I met with Dimitri this morning to finalize it. You are to be married within the month. There will be no further discussions or debates.”
My hands clutched onto the armchair, clinging onto the expensive leather for dear life. A fiery hot blaze of anger and frustration filtered through my veins, heating my skin. It took all the strength I had within me to keep from blowing.
When my father spoke, his words were often final and left no room for negotiation or questioning.
“Yes, father.” I bit the words out like a bitter poison.
I didn’t want marriage. I only saw it as a mandatory thing that I needed to do to continue my bloodline. The bride I would have chosen would have been easily subdued and non-combative. But now, instead of a kitten, my father had gifted me a wild lion that I was left to tame.
Savina Baratelli was a wild one, but she had yet to meet her match.
Chapter Four
Savina’s POV
I was steaming. I had been glaring at Uncle Dimitri for the past twenty minutes as we waited for my supposed groom to be.
They were late. How disappointing.
“You can stop glaring at me, cara. It will not change what’s going to happen.” He sipped on his espresso with his eyes trained on his iPad.
“You’re treating me like a helpless woman.”
His gaze flicked to Martina, his daughter, and then to me. “In this situation, you are a helpless woman. The Russians have become more emboldened. They bombed our firearms warehouse. They broke past our security. Not only are we at risk of a mole, but as it stands, our deal with the Iranians is at a standstill.”
I curled my fingers into a tight fist. There were very few things that could tick me off, and messing with my money was one of them. I didn't have any concrete evidence that all these attacks were Vladimir’s doing, but the shoe certainly fit. We had been keeping a close eye on him for the past nine years since my father’s assassination. He had not taken one misstep or caused any kind of ruckus from what we could see, which was what made me think it was him. No one was that proper, especially if you lived a life of crime and blood. He wanted me to believe he had somehow reformed and become a law-abiding citizen of society?
I twirled my brother’s ring that hung on my neck. When I felt the edge drawing closer, I would take comfort in feeling the cool metal between my fingers. To this day my brother still grounded me, even though it had been nine years since I’d seen his eyes for the last time.
I pushed down the emotions that threatened to peek through. The last thing I needed right now was to get emotional.
Harden your heart.
My father’s words rang loud and true in my head the same way they had the day of his funeral.
“I don’t want a husband, least of all Andres Valdez.” I had only ever met the man once, but I had heard enough to know that I didn’t like him. He was a pretentious prick who couldn’t distinguish between his head and dick. The man disgusted me in the worst way possible.
“You may not want a husband, but we do need the resources and manpower that the Spanish have. If rumors are to be believed the Russians are aligning themselves with the Irish and we all know our history with them.”
My irritation increased. Why could no one learn their place? I had created a very rigid and solid order of things over the years. They had allowed my fellow peers to branch out southward into New Jersey territory. It was far less lucrative than New York, which they thought was unfair of me, but my father had been too kind in letting them have too much territory in New York to begin with.
“I think getting married will soften you, Vina,” Martina spoke up in her gentle and soft voice. “This job has made you… hard.”
“Me being hard has been what has kept us afloat the last nine years. I needed to make it so that we didn’t drown when the sharks started circulating.”
Uncle Dimitri opened his mouth to say something but then he stopped. He pressed against the earpiece in his ear and nodded. He flicked his gaze back to mine.
“They’ve landed.”
“Landed?” What the hell did that mean? “Don’t tell me they flew here?”
He gave me a curt nod. “They loathe the traffic and wanted to cut their ride time short.”
But they were still late. The only place they could land a damned helicopter was on the hills and I had just gotten some new flowers planted down one of the slopes.
