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I need to put a stop to that hated nickname, but this time, I let it slide. “I’ll burn the world for you, Rose.”
She turns in the water and kisses me, her mouth soft and warm, tongue wet as she slides it along mine in a slow, languorous kiss. “I’m going to smell like you, Nikolai.”
“Yummy?”
She splashes me, and I laugh. “Ass.”
We take our time in the bath, and I can’t shake the feeling that it’s the calm before the storm, the quiet moments before a bloody battle. When we’re done, I take my time drying her, the heat of the bath and her flesh low-key erotic. Unfortunately, we don’t have time for sex, and I like this moment, this sweetness that Rose should always have and I lack.
With her, it’s easy.
She’s easy to love and cherish.
Easier to lose.
I shut that down.
Later, as she dresses and pins up her thick, soft hair, she looks at me in the mirror.
“New suit?”
I smooth a hand over the soft black of the jacket. “Yes.”
My Rose smiles, but it quickly fades. “Why did Adelaide come to you, apart from wanting you?”
“She doesn’t.” I shrug. “I know her well enough to know that. But I’m interested in knowing that, too, other than we fucked once fifteen years ago. She’s never officially known what I do, not on record. She doesn’t have a thing on me, or she’d have used it.”
Rose nods. “What do we do?”
“She’s using me, or trying to, so we take me out of her equation. Go to Italy. I can control that, keep you all safe.”
While there’s something here I don’t quite get, something I don’t like, I’m sure I’m right on one thing: I don’t think it’s an old enemy after old revenge. I think I’m looking at a common desire to move in and put someone else in charge, and there’s only one person I can think of who’d orchestrate that kind of unrest.
If I’m right, I’m taking them down, and every last cunt who dared thinking of crossing me and Rose.
Every last fucking one.
Chapter12
Rose
“Omg, Roz, this is so extra!”
Genius is a sight in combat boots, ripped black tights, and the frothiest white dress. She looks like the demon child of an eighties bride, minus the giant hair.
We’re in an expensive bridal shop, some name in Italian above the door, trying on wedding gowns.
Outside on the Venetian street sit old stone-face Rafe and two other men in black. There’s a woman in black standing in the corner, watching. I don’t know her, but she’s pretty, tall, and probably lethal.
I’ve picked out a dress. Genius has said it’s perfect, but I’m not too sure. At least it’s as far from the monstrosity she’s wearing as I can get.
I’m utterly in love with Venice, the romantic, old city with its canals and bridges and narrow streets. We’ve been here for three days, Genius for one. For a lot of that time, Nikolai’s been holed up in his study in a house overlooking one of the canals. This is, I’m almost positive, his way of finding some peace from the screeches of laughter and ear-bleeding chatter—his words—that have filled the place for one solid day.
Genius is, in her words, chomping at the bit to get out and about, to get her flirt on with a hot gondola driver.
“Go try the bridesmaid’s dress on.”
She scowls. “It’s pink.”
