Page 84 of The Arrangement

Viviana looked up through wet lashes, finally starting to look more like his girl. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Why now?”

Anton crossed the space, kneeling down and placing his hands on both of her jean covered thighs. Straightaway, she sunk into his touch. Tears slipped down to her wet trembling lips, but for a moment she seemed calmed.

That was why, he thought sadly.

Viviana might have not been speaking, and when he talked, Anton thought she wasn’t understanding. But he had been the one who wasn’t listening. All week she’d been stuck in silent screams that all but begged for him to just listen to her, and he hadn’t.

“Because I wasn’t hearing you. I am now.”

Her voice was just an echo when she hushed out a quiet, “Thank you.”

• • •

“Did you like your childhood?”

Viviana didn’t miss the surprise that flitted through his eyes at her random question. They’d been quiet for awhile, given he let her talk so damned much without barely saying a thing back. And when he did talk, he managed to keep those opinions of his out of it. She was grateful; she didn’t know she needed it until he gave it.

“What do you mean?”

Crawling up to his spot against the headboard, she was quick to find herself in his opened arms and leaned back into his muscular chest. Anton used her propped up thighs to set his weapons magazine on. Flipping to a new page, he hummed an appreciative sound in her ear over a vintage revolver that had one entire spread in the centerfold.

“I only have one of these,” he said offhandedly. “I need another few and I’d be happy. They’re mighty hard to get a hold of, though.”

“You like guns far too much for it to be healthy.”

“I beg to differ. It’s very healthy given my lifestyle. I know guns better than most. After all, I am a weapons tra—” Anton stopped short suddenly. His next statement could be something Viviana would be forced to use against him in court if they weren’t married. “Yeah, I have a thing for guns, baby. Don’t judge me.”

“So, my question …”

“Again, explain.”

“Just your upbringing in general. How do you think it was, good or bad?”

“How do you think yours was, Viviana?”

He’d stumped her there. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond for a second. It was a loaded question in more ways than one. Did she see or hear things she shouldn’t have or didn’t want to along the way? Sure. Had she been given some of the best moments of her life with a man who, when alive, had been known as one of America’s most notorious crime bosses? Yes.

“It was … different, at times. Good, but different.”

“Mine, too,” Anton admitted. “I wasn’t just raised by my parents. I was raised by many men. Bratva men. Gangsters. But they were gentlemen, too, as hard as that is to believe. I heard ‘try this, boy’ more times than I can count and probably should have said no more than I did; I learned to disassemble and reassemble an assault weapon by the time I was twelve; school pretty much bored the hell out of me because I was leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else in the maturity department, at least in my own mind. Sure, I had a lot of normalcy in between, but I was a mafia child all the same.”

“Didn’t that bother you?”

“No.”

The answer was so simple. It struck a chord with Viviana.

“I loved having so many different personalities around me to grab onto. I quite liked my life, just the same as I do now,” Anton continued when she stayed quiet. “I respected the values I was taught. And it wasn’t just about this crime world I deal in, either. A lot of those guys were the first men I ever really knew besides Daniil and Nicoli, and I was quick to watch them … to want to be them. I was grateful they’d been put in my path; I wouldn’t be who I am now had they not been.”

“So, who are you exactly, or have you figured it out yet?”

Viviana hadn’t meant for her tone to turn so silky and demure when the words tumbled out without her even thinking about them, but they had anyway. By the way he swallowed a rumbled sound behind her, she knew he didn’t miss the change in her voice, either.

“How am I supposed to even answer when you’re not looking at me? Turn around.”