Page 32 of Brutal Vows

The door clicks closed, and I sink down on my bed, my heart hammering in my chest, my skin echoing with every soft line he drew on my body. Luca didn’t do what he could so easily have done, and I have no clue why. He says he isn’t the type of man who waits, but he’s waiting.

He told me not to flinch, then touched me so gently I could weep.

In my mind, there’s a ticking time bomb, my need to get out, away and back to Russia in a race against this man and him unravelling me. As it is, I’m holding on by a thread. Ever since Luca Scalera said I do, it’s as if he got into a bulldozer and is plowing his way toward my inner world where he’s going to ram through my barriers and dig until he’s unearthed all my secrets.

I need to get away from him before he comes any closer and does more damage than I can cope with.

16

LUCA

When Milana joins me in the main cabin half an hour later, I’ve had time to digest our tug-of-war exchange. She’s dried her hair, and it hangs in silky waves down her back. The light blue cashmere sweater she’s wearing accentuates the stark blue of her eyes, rimmed by thick lashes.

My wife. Delicate. Beautiful. On guard. Anxious, frightened—desperate—but she’s trying not to give it away. But I can read her easily. I’ve honed my sixth sense to people’s emotional state for years.

It’s weird how an obscure sex diet—anything goes, as long as nobody knows who the fuck you are, therefore you’ll be confined to this dark room—can fine-tune you to sensing human emotions. Our fucked-up Don and father made sure to introduce me to this concept early and ensured I never ventured out into the light.

Maybe I do have a special skill—I’ve just never needed to use it outside of the black-out room where I’d wait for a woman to walk in, feeling her way to me, following my quiet instructions, reaching out, touching in the dark, exploring, daring to do things with me in complete anonymity. Me cracking jokes to put her at ease. After all, I also wanted to have fun. Just a man, a walking erection with tension that found one true escape. In the dark, I could be someone else too.

We all have secrets, desires, insecurities. I’ve learned to navigate around all of them, right to a woman’s core, to the heart of her sensuality and her forbidden fantasies that trigger the deepest release.

And I’m fucking good at it. This is how I’m going to lure my wife to me, allow her to find her own way to me in the dark, give up her secrets one by one, hand them over, treasures to guard.

Only this time, I get to look my wife in the eye, see her reaction instead of just sensing it, watch her arousal compound as I spur it on, gaze at her as she comes for me. I can’t fucking wait, but my princess needs patience, and that’s another thing my dark-room adventures have taught me in spades. Plus foreplay. Restraint. And stamina. All in endless amounts.

She sits down next to me on the sofa, and as her face comes into profile, it hits me: this is why I’m obsessed with that video of hers. Not only because it isn’t porn, scripted and staged. Our camgirls do the same. It’s all just an act. But with Milana, I saw sex translated into love for the first time, from her side at least. As for the death-row fucker who filmed her, he’ll still pay…with his life.

“Is there more news?” she asks as she curls her feet under her.

“No, but we’re working on it.” I put my laptop aside, wave for the steward to bring breakfast over to the coffee table, and then tell him to leave.

Her eyes track the steward as he walks out to the deck and closes the sliding door behind him.

“How are you working on it?” she asks, reaching for the fruit platter.

“There’s a connection between the Italian Mafia and some Bratva member our sister got promised to. We are—sadly—related to the fucker who is the Italian piece of the puzzle. We need to figure out who the Bratva pieces are and how the whole lot fits together.”

“We?” she asks, then bites into a slice of pineapple.

“My brothers. You. Your brother. All of us. We’re a team now, princess, and this is my sister we’re talking about.” I catch the flash of dismay in her eyes. “I know this isn’t what you’ve been plotting, but you’re in it now.”

“I haven’t been plotting.”

“Oh, you’ve been plotting so hard, fumes from that factory in your head are escaping your ears.”

She gives me the stink eye, but it has a sparkle in it as she takes another bite. She chews, pensively, then nods.

“Okay. This is what I know for sure.” She reaches for a napkin. “Even before the fall of the Berlin wall, various Bratva factions had established trade routes outside the old Communist bloc. When the wall fell, things became easier. This is one of the reasons my dad came to America. But you know how it goes. Sanctions are the one thing Russians have always had to deal with, but the Bratva has ways and means of circumventing all of them, most of them illegal.”

“Sounds like your standard villain origin story.”

“Oh, we’re all the same.” She shrugs as if this is just fact, which it is. “A lot of people became very rich, the oligarchs of our time, but you know the saying: it’s never enough because the world is constantly shifting, changing. In Russia, things changed, but they’re still the same. You still buy your way in and out of power. My dad saw this coming and made the decision to leave when the wall fell to take his chances here for a better life. For freedom for his children.”

“I see. I won’t say my dad’s motives for leaving Sicily were that noble. In any case, how would the Bratva connect with the Italian Mafia?”

“The usual,” she says with a shrug. “Your Mafia connection and whichever Bratva group was involved would have been in a merger of sorts, giving each other a helping hand, protection on home turf, but most importantly, access to networks hard to obtain as an outsider. Gabriella served as security on the deal. As usual. A woman is just a powerless little pawn.”

“Sweet,” I say, but her words are bitter. “Which Bratva are we talking about?”