Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 48709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 244(@200wpm)___ 195(@250wpm)___ 162(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 244(@200wpm)___ 195(@250wpm)___ 162(@300wpm)
She was made for me, carved out of destiny if such a thing exists.
Ducking my head, I walk past her, fighting every urge in my body.
I can’t claim her here. I can’t let myself go there. I wouldn’t be able to stop if I did. I’d push her savagely up against the wall and kiss her, but kissing her would never be enough.
She’d whimper as I pushed against her firmly, making her feel my swollen lust, my bone-deep need.
Enough.
I push out the door into the party.
Max strolls over, his eyebrow raised. “Do I need to be worried?”
“Why do you ask that?” I say, voice low.
“Gabriel walked out of there looking pretty pissed, Damien.”
I sigh. “It’s nothing.”
Max moves closer. “Nothing as in…really nothing, or I should stay alert sort of nothing?”
“The latter.”
“All right, thanks. I’ll be ready if something goes down.”
“It won’t,” I fiercely say, my gaze drawn to her as Liliana emerges from the door behind me, striding past me with her chin held aloft.
She looks so confident, so different from the prey-like thing she was for me just a few minutes ago. It’s a mask.
I want to make it slip, see the real her, and let her know she never has to hide from me. I want her to know I’m always going to be here.
I turn back to Max with an effort.
He’s seen. I know it. He’s a perceptive person, one of the reasons I value him so much.
“I’ll be ready,” he says again.
I nod my head. “Yeah, do that. But I hope it doesn’t go there. Gabriel needs to swallow his goddamn pride for once.”
CHAPTER
SIX
Liliana
Uncle Nick walks over to me in the corner of the room.
As the party continues around me, I’m hidden away here, sunken into an armchair. Usually, I’d sit with my hand facing down, hiding my wrist.
But something about the exchange in the hallway has me wanting to display the crosshair.
Fine, target me. I can’t do any worse than what I did to myself.
For a crazy second, the impossible was possible. I was going to be Damien’s fiancée. But then I snapped without thinking, ruining the moment.
What the heck was I thinking?
It doesn’t matter, not that part. What matters is how close I came to getting killed by Gabriel. What matters is the safe house. What matters is we’re marked now, not just me. Nick too.
“What’s wrong?” Uncle Nick leans down, touching my arm. “Liliana?”
“It’s…,” Nothing, I almost say, but I can’t lie. “It’s our whole lives. They’re going to change now. Something terrible happened.”
“What?”
Swallowing a ball of tension, I tell him. I start with my sneaking off to get a closer look at the kitchen and then the meeting with Damien. I leave out the part where my thoughts started doing crazy things, telling me Damien is the man for me.
Fate brought us together. Or something did.
I was marked, fine….
But for him, my man, the future father of my children.
“Gabriel overheard me defending Dad. Then Damien defended me. Gabriel was pissed, as in he-wanted-to-kill-me pissed. We have to go after this. To a safe house.”
“Damien Dovlatov’s safe house?” Nick asks, sucking in a breath.
I lean back as though I’m offended, as if I don’t know Nick partially blames Damien for what happened. Of course, he knows it was Gabriel who forced a war, Gabriel who tattooed me, but if Damien had led the Bratva better, Nick sometimes says, he could’ve avoided it all.
He seems to forget the part where he was on the opposing side, on the West Coast earning money for the Cartel. He was helping to fund the war.
I’ve always kept quiet when he goes off like that.
Despite everything, I know Damien did the best he could. I know it would’ve been worse if they’d never made the alliance.
Or is that just my want, my need clouding my mind?
“Liliana?”
We pause as a few people pass us by. Nobody looks at us. Or, if they do, it’s only so they can confirm we’re not worth their attention. Maybe that’s a benefit of showing the crosshair.
“Yes,” I whisper.
Uncle Nick shakes his head, adjusting his leather jacket. “I can’t do that.”
“What, why? Gabriel will go after you too.”
“I know he will.” He sets his jaw. “But I’ve never placed my safety in another person’s hands. My brother did that, placed it in a cop’s hands, and look at what happened. They told the fucking Cartel. And the Bratva…”
“You said they were better than the Cartel.”
“They are. I’ll hold my hands up to that. And that’s me saying this. But it doesn’t mean I can swallow this.”
Darting my hand out, I lay it on Nick’s shoulder, trying my best to calm him down. We’re relatively secluded here, the music drowning out other conversations, but talking about these topics is always a risk.
Yeah, look at me, trying to stop other people from taking risks.