Carmela Trassato
Two Months Later…
I stared at the man known as Bloody Alix and his son, Konstantin. My hands trembling in my lap, I kept my face a cold mask. These assholes would eat me for dinner if I showed any weakness. I couldn’t believe Evie was related to these two men.
“What can you offer us?” Konstantin said, popping a powdered sugar confection into his mouth like we were discussing the weather.
I straightened my spine, refusing to give in to the urge to cower in front of them even though one well-aimed insult would expose me for what I really was—an uptight ball of anxiety waiting for a reason to tuck my tail between my legs and run out of here.
“Just Evie’s happiness. She’s part of your family. Isn’t that enough? She loves my brother, and he loves her.” I lifted my hands in a plea. “Why are you standing in their way?”
“Love is for fools.” Evie’s dad slid his elbows along the rust-colored fabric covering the round table. “They may think they love each other now, but give it a year. The things they loved about each other will become the very things they can’t stand. It will build and build until the love they shared mutates into hatred. In another year, the hatred will become indifference, and they’ll wish they’d never met. I’m saving them a lifetime of bullshit. They should be thanking me for ending the farce before it’s too late.”
Stunned, I blinked, then a rough chuckle escaped my mouth. “You don’t really believe that.”
He ran his fingers through his reddish-gray hair, his eyes void of emotion.
What a soulless bastard.
“I don’t give a shit about love stories. Maybe you can offer me something more tangible to convince me to reconsider.”
I cleared my dry throat. “Like what?”
He leaned back in his chair, propping his thick meaty fingers behind his head. “Like unfettered access to the Trassato territories to distribute my goods. I think your brother owes me that, considering he pilfered six of my high-roller poker players this week alone. Do you have any idea how much money he’s cost me?”
“I didn’t come here as a representative of the Trassato family.” I crossed and uncrossed my legs, trying to get comfortable. “I can’t make any deals on their behalf.”
Alix pushed his chair away from the table, and the wooden legs scraped across the cream-colored tile floor. “Then you’re wasting my time, missy. You don’t have anything I want. Send someone who has the power to bargain because I’m fucking sick of your brother’s antics. I’ve let him play his little games, but I’m done.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless…”
Alix wrapped one arm around Konstantin’s shoulder and pulled him close. I couldn’t make out his hushed whispers.
Konstantin folded his arms across his chest. “That’s fucked up.”
Alix grinned like a maniac. “Kon, don’t play coy. I didn’t miss the way you looked at her at the Trassatos’ house, and I know how much you want to make this right for your sister. You’ve been in my ear nonstop about making peace with her. This would be the perfect way to give everyone a happy ending.”
“Everyone except me.”
Konstantin speared me with his icy glare as he drummed his tattooed hand on the table. Intricate stars, triangles, and crosses decorated his fingers like rings. Equal measures of interest and disgust curled in my gut. Since he and his dad stormed into my parents’ home a couple of months ago, he’d dominated enough of my thoughts to make me more than a little uneasy.
“Get over yourself. Men like us don’t have a normal life with a wife and white picket fence. We get something better: power and wealth.”
He blew out a breath. “I’ll do it only if it happens on my terms.”
Alix lifted his chin. “Fine, make it work, and I won’t have any complaints.”
I wiped a sweaty palm down the side of my face. “What are you talking about?
Kon stood, and he looked so much bigger than I remembered. The corners of his lips curled up, making his angular face handsome. He wore a black leather jacket with jeans and a silver-studded leather belt. At that moment, he commanded the room, even more so than his father.
He ran a tattooed finger ran down my cheek to the hard line of my jaw, and his leather jacket squeaked. With a flick of his hand, he tipped up my face. His too plump lips hovered within a hairsbreadth of my mouth. I could smell the powdered sugar on his breath. I barely suppressed a shudder while I waited for him to speak.
“I know how to make this work.”
My eyes widened and hope surged through me. “How?”
“We do a trade.”
“A trade?” I parroted, the two words scraping over my vocal cords like sandpaper.
“Yes.” He stroked the length of my hair. “My sister for Gian’s sister. How does that sound?”
My heart rate skyrocketed even as my mind refused to do the math. “What are you suggesting?”
Konstantin leaned forward, and the smell of leather and wood wrapped around me like an embrace. “You know exactly what I’m suggesting.” His lips vibrated against the shell of my ear, and the weird, combustible chemistry always buzzing and crackling between us raised the fine hairs on the back of my neck. “But I’m happy to clarify. Gian gets my sister without any conditions, and we get engaged.”
Shock ricocheted through my chest like a pinball machine, and I jumped out of my chair. “No. Absolutely not. I can’t make that deal. I don’t have that kind of power, and my family would never accept it.”
Konstantin shrugged, unconcerned. “Then it looks like your brother will have to accept that he will never come within a hundred feet of my sister again, or I’ll slice him into a million pieces and feed him to my dog.”
I tipped my head toward the ceiling, staring at the garish red paint and brass chandelier with detached fascination. I wanted Evie and Gian to be happy. God knew I did, and I’d do most anything to make it happen. Be that as it may, I didn’t know if I could spend my life tethered to Konstantin. He may have been Evie’s brother, but where Evie was light, he was dark. And I was pretty sure ice water, not blood, pumped through his veins.
I groaned. “I can’t.”
“Is that your final answer?” Alix hissed.
“How will an engagement between your son and me benefit you?”
“Well, let’s just call it a step in the right direction.”
“Or it will start a war.”
“I’m not worried. Your family won’t go to war with me after what happened with the DiTonnos.”
I closed my eyes, hoping to stave off the landslide memories about my dead fiancé. It didn’t work. Rocco’s open smile and his dark eyes haunted me. My heart still ached with how much I missed him. I’d do anything to have another day with him. I’d never love anyone the way I loved him. Truthfully, I couldn’t remember a day when I hadn’t loved him. He was my childhood friend, my lover, and eventually my fiancé, and he’d been dead for nearly two years. Images of Rocco plaited together, making me hurt deep inside my bones. With a blinding clarity, I knew the feeling would never disappear entirely.
If Evie and Gian loved each other half as much as I loved Rocco, I couldn’t let this opportunity slip through my fingers. While I might never find love again, it didn’t mean I had to my condemn brother and my best friend to loveless life. Besides, it didn’t matter if I committed my foreseeable future to the man next to me. My heart was dead, and it would never beat again. Not for anyone and certainly not for Konstantin Trincher.
“Fine,” I rasped, dread spreading like venom through my vital organs. “I’ll do it.”
A smirk stretched across Alix’s face, crinkling his already weatherworn face, and my stomach lurched. “It looks like we have a deal.”
I fingered the engagement ring that dangled from a long chain around my neck. My mom had been begging me to take it off for over a year. She’d got it in her held that the gesture would help me move on. Well, now she had her wish, only not in the way she would have liked.
I cleared my throat. “Are you going to contact my brother, or should I?”
Alix strummed his fingers on his thigh, his eyes holding me prisoner. “I’ll send you something indicating we’ve removed any objections to Gian’s involvement with Evangeline.”
“Thank you.” I exhaled. “What about me?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Konstantin squeezed my shoulder, and goose bumps broke out over my arms. I hated that my body reacted to him, and I sent out a silent prayer for indifference. “We’ll work out the details later. I’m not in any rush.”
Unable to utter a single word, I nodded. I fled the tiny Russian restaurant in Brighton Beach without looking back, my favorite black heels ticking like a countdown to the end of the world. I’d sold my soul to the devil. Thinking about my future almost made me throw up.