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While I hadn’t spent time fucking daydreaming about the woman, I still knew everything about her, as I did the entire Petrov family. Just like I was aware those psychotic brothers of hers knew everything about me and my family.
Tatiana was twenty-three years old, not much younger than my twenty-six.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, unsure where the fuck that thought had come from.
“You stupid motherfucker,” I said under my breath.
The pretty, little Russian took online classes for business management, but she made it known she didn’t give two fucks about it. It was more to keep her busy.
She spent a lot of time with Dmitry’s dog, Sasha, while he was in jail. I knew her brothers were protective as hell over her, but I didn’t fault them. I was the same way with my sisters. In our line of work, our enemies would use the ones we loved the most. They’d take our loved ones and dismember thembefore scattering the limbs across different state lines just to send a message.
That was the world I lived in. So I had to know every single dark secret about anyone who was close to me, especially those who were “family.”
I’d let her crash here tonight, then send her on her way. I’d explain that I’d have nothing to do with whatever shit went down with her and her brothers. The threat was taken care of and currently rotting six feet in the ground in the middle of the woods right outside Desolation.
“You stupid fucker,” I said to myself once again and turned, looking around at the master bedroom. Desolation wasn’t my home. It was a pit stop for when I needed to get in the ring and do damage—not just to my opponent but to myself as well.
This penthouse would never be home, but neither was my house back on the West Coast. I felt like I didn’t have a solid, stable place to let my roots grow. But then again, maybe I wasn’t the type of man who would ever settle down. I sure as fuck wouldn’t find happiness.
I stared down at my busted-as-fuck knuckles, the old wounds nothing but opened-up scabs from my fight tonight. I’d killed countless times—too manytimes to keep track of. These hands—my hands—were stained with blood to the bone.
To my fucking soul.
I took one more look at Tatiana and cursed under my breath as I left, shut my bedroom door, and headed to the spare room down the hall. After the door was closed behind me, I leaned against it and closed my eyes. The darkness taking me back to the empty storage room and where I put a bullet in that fucker’s skull.
And the longer I closed my eyes, the darker the world became, until I was back—way back—standing in the middle of the woods and staring down at the corpse of the first person I ever killed.
5
GIO
THE PAST
Ithought I’d feel something after making my first kill.
But as I stared at my blood-soaked hands and forearms, the scratches littering my skin—because the bastard tried in vain to fight me off—and then glanced down at his mutilated corpse a foot from whereI stood… I felt absolutely nothing.
It was concerning, after leaving the woods, being so numb, so I decided I needed to get straight into a fight. I needed to feel something.Anything.
I’d started shit with a stranger in a back alley, getting into a brutal fight and going hardcore with the raw, unfiltered savagery I felt growing within me.
I thought of nothing but all the men my fatherkilled in front of me. I focused on the repeated beatings he had given me since I was a child.
I’d seen plenty of people killed. I’d smelled the coppery scent of blood fill the air, felt the warm stickiness of it cover my skin countless times. But this… this was different.
After I was beaten—allowing the guy to get in some nicely placed punches—and out of breath, I wanted nothing more than to crash and sleep for the next twelve hours. But family dinner was something that had to be done.
It wasn’t because my father wanted to spend time with his children and wife. No, he wanted the control. He wanted the routine, so he could exert his power and vileness onto the ones he should have cared for the most.
And the motherfucker wanted to look me in the eye and know I’d taken care of the situation the only way our kind did.
I headed to my parents’ house and was with it enough that I changed clothes and washed my hands. But other than that, I stayed in a haze. I could only envision all that blood I had on my hands and felt like it still covered me.
I was about to push through the dining room door, when I heard my mother speak.
“Where is Gio?” she softly asked.
“Work.”
