I know why.
She never should have been in that alley. But she was. And like it or not, she caught the attention of my monster.
His full attention, in a way no woman ever has before.
I don’t know how I feel about our game turning into a marriage, and what that means for us and our dark play.
I don’t even know how I feel about the fact that Bianca is clearly a virgin, given my own fucked-up history involving sex and “first times”.
But I do know that once my beast’s attention has been caught, there’s no evading it. No escaping it, like the jaws of a crocodile.
Come what may, Bianca is mine now.
So where the fuck is she.
She’s not with her family. She’s not in the restrooms, or at the bar. She’s vanished.
Until I step outside onto the deck overlooking the East River, that is, and hear her voice coming from around the corner, in the shadows of the restaurant.
“Stop it, Grisha.”
Scowling, my jaw set, I prowl toward the corner of the deck, pausing behind a wall of climbing ivy to listen.
“Ah, but we have history, beautiful.”
Something venomous and toxic spills like black ink inside my chest.
Rage explodes through my veins.
What fucking historydoes she have with fucking Grisha Lenkov?
“Please, get away from—”
“But the thing is, shlyukha,” Grisha mutters, “you owe me. And you owe me a lot. Now, you can go ask your new fiancé for the money and tell him why his little wifey needs four hundred grand. Or you can be a good little whore and get on your knees, and start paying me back right now—”
I think he actually pisses himself when I storm around the corner at full speed, my face a mask of rage. Grisha sputters, dropping his grip on Bianca’s wrist as she backs away.
“Now listen, Kr—”
“No.”
My fist smashes into his face, hard. He screams as his nose breaks, blood exploding across his face and streaming down his chin as he stumbles backward.
I turn to Bianca. Our eyes lock—mine full of fury and wrath, hers wide with fear.
And something else.
Danger-lust.
Sin and temptation.
Excitement.
“Kratos, I…”
“Wait here.”
I turn just as Grisha starts to reach inside his jacket. I punch him again, relishing the sound of his orbital cracking as he drops to the ground, squealing. The gun tucked into his waistband clatters to the ground, and I immediately kick it off the deck into the river.
“Do you know who my uncle is?!” he screeches from the decking.
I do. But I also don’t give a single fuck that Artem Lenkov is high up in the Chernoff Bratva. Or that Grisha himself has a the title of avtoritet. This little fuckstick just laid his hands on what’s mine.
That will not go unpunished.
My eyes go to his hand—the one that was grabbing Bianca’s wrist.
Grisha screams as I stomp down hard on it, breaking a few of the bones. He’s sucking in ragged breaths when I stoop down to yank him up by his collar into my face.
“I don’t give a fuck if your uncle is Jesus fucking Christ himself,” I snarl. “If you ever come near her again, I’ll cut your balls off and enjoy watching you choke on them when I ram them down your fucking throat.”
I hurl him down to the deck and turn to grab Bianca’s hand, but the little fucker springs up behind me. I whirl as his blade flashes, hissing when it gets me on the arm. Bianca screams as I wrestle the knife out of Grisha’s hand and toss it into the river to join the gun before I start to beat the ever-living fuck out of him, roaring.
Footsteps and shouting thunder behind me. Arms grab me, yanking me away.
“ENOUGH!” Ares hisses in my ear. Hades is suddenly standing in front of me, too, shaking his head as he plants a hand on my chest.
“We’ll get rid of him, brother,” he growls. “But no matter what he did, I can’t let you kill him.”
