Alessandro
Life was full of lessons. I think a teacher might have said that to me once. You always learned, even up to the time you died.
“Of course, Yuri,” I smiled, chatting over the phone with the head of the Petrenko family.
Clearly, I had underestimated Katya. She was a deceptively wrapped present. Every layer I discovered only made me want her more.
Her breath had been hot on my lips, and the last of my imperfect patience had nearly frayed from the effort it had taken to not flip us around and have her back against the table.
Especially when she had said that she knew precisely what she was doing.
She knew.
And had made it clear she could have it if she wished. I chuckled to myself.
Because she could, I was already at the end of how much temptation I could resist. If she walked into my office right now and demanded I fucked her, goodness knew I’d have her against the wall before the end of the fucking sentence.
“You’re laughing, unexpectedly happy for somebody surrounded by mountains of problems.”
It was almost wrong the thoughts I was having about his daughter when we were just forming a kind of friendship.
Almost.
“Exactly why. The small victories should be enjoyed, no?
You’ve just solved one out of my mountains of problems.” Yuri laughed as well. “I agree perfectly. You are a very persuasive man.”
“I have been accused of that on enough occasions.”
Katya had been clear that I wouldn’t be able to pull the shit I’d pulled before, so there was only one solution.
Yuri Petrenko.
That determined look had been compelling, but there would be little she would do against her father.
I buzzed my secretary on the phone. “Get a bouquet of white roses to Katya Petrenko at Blue Range in….” I glanced down at my watch, “an hour. I am inviting her to lunch at Nova, an attempt to appease her. Make sure to mention it in the card.”
“Yes, sir.”
There were many things I liked about being a part of one of the crime families in New York, many things. Now, meeting Katya Petrenko was one of them.
I’m thirty-three, far from a kid, but I’m almost giddy with the anticipation. What she would wear, her scent, all the expressions she would make.
Her steely eyes.
I didn’t even think that she might not come. Not her. Challenges didn’t faze her, plus I was sure she’d be pissed out of her mind after meeting with Yuri.
She’d probably be coming to start a fight more than to be appeased.
Still, I couldn’t get to the restaurant fast enough.
The table I reserved for two was very private. Nova was the best place for a potential confrontation.
Katya came only minutes after I’d sat down, wearing a classic pink dress that accented her frame. There was no teasing smile, no sly glitter in her eyes. Just that fiercely sensual aura.
Yes, she was pissed off.
As a gentleman, I made to get up and pull out her chair.
“If you get up, I will strike you across your face.”
I paused, fought a smile, then settled back and gestured to her seat. “Then, help yourself. I’m happy that you decided to come.”
She settled quietly and ordered when the waiter came to us. Not a word was uttered, and I decided not to try to start a conversation, at least not until we’d eaten.
“I see you met with my father,” she said, knifing violently into her chicken.
I reached for my champagne flute. “I did. Your father’s a very pleasant man, you know. I think he is starting to grow on me.”
Her eyes flickered to mine predatorily. “You went behind my back.”
“Wrong. I saw a loophole and used it to my advantage. The site is mine again, I didn’t go through any unsavory means, and I know you got every dime back this time.”
Gently, she put down her cutlery. “Your attempt to appease me is downright bullshit.”
“Only because you insist on making it that way. I had a series of events perfectly planned out for you.”
“Oh really? A pathetic lunch in this private dining room, and then what? Hot, back-breaking sex on this worthless oakwood table?”
“I was thinking against the wall,” I said, leaning back into my seat, “but if you’d prefer on the table, adjustments can readily be made.”
Something that could involve me licking a bottle of wine off her body. I wondered how those eyes would be when she was whimpering for more.
Katya glared at me for a moment, as if she would read my thoughts, and the room heated up despite the AC. I could see the heat in her eyes swell. “I hate how you’ve bested me continuously,” she admitted, and I swore there might have been angels blowing trumpets.
Her admission made me adjust in my chair, for comfort.
I cleared my throat because, fuck, now I wanted her on the table, against the wall, under the sun.
In my bed.
I had to down my flute and breathe.
Maybe a private room with this woman wasn’t the best place for a meeting, not when I had intended to have my senses with me throughout. “I’m not turning down the invitation,”
“What invitation?”
“But we have more pressing matters to discuss.”
I adjusted again, and she noticed the movement. The tension in her shoulders eased up, and her full lips stretched into a teasing smirk. “Sure.” She picked up her cutlery and continued eating her lunch. “Your father told you about Triev?”
“The human trafficking crime family trying to pull something? He might have mentioned it in passing. It’s a problem I have every intention of handling.”
“Handling how?” I could stop my eyes from narrowing. Impulsivity flowed through Katya’s veins, not blood, and I didn’t want her messing with the Trievs. Especially when I had a hunch, she would try to do it on her own.
“Handling in a manner that doesn’t concern you at all, Sorvino. I am not in the business of spilling my plans to competitors.”
“Katya, we aren’t enemies.”
“We’re also definitely not allies.” She put her cutlery down and dabbed the corners of her mouth with a napkin.
I drew a deep breath. “Whatever you’re thinking, I discourage it.”
She regarded me quietly and leaned forward on the table. “Then I suppose it’s a lucky coincidence that I don’t need your opinion, isn’t it?”
Her voice dropped low and sultry, pushing the blood in my veins.
Her predatory eyes were trained on me, so I didn’t adjust for comfort even though my pants were drawn tight.
“What? She asked with a teasing smile. “Won’t you adjust yourself? I’m sure your pants must be uncomfortably tight by now.”
The corner of my lips twitched, and I leaned forward on the table. “What would make you assume that?”
She chuckled. “Look at me, Alessandro,” she said, standing up slowly, allowing me to take in the way her dress hugged her curves. This bloody woman, I swallowed. “I’m surprised you still had enough blood in your brain to try and influence my decision.”
I breathed out, laughed, and leaned back into my seat, just reveling in the hard on she was giving me. “You don’t know what you’re testing.”
“Oh please. Since I’ve had my lunch, I’ll take my leave, if there’s nothing else we’re doing here.” She said the latter part giving me a look that made me want to get up and… I chuckled. “Believe me, Katya, there are many…many things I would like to do here.” I could already taste the wine I could be licking off her skin. “If I get up, I would have you against that wall behind you faster than you can imagine.”
One of her perfectly curved brows rose in question. “Then why are you still sitting there?”
That broke my last thread of decency. True to my word, I had her pressed against the wall in a heartbeat, our mouths crashed together, tongues lashing each other, and our hot breath mixing.
My hands held her waist as I pressed her harder against the wall, and her arms wrapped around my neck. Fingers digging into my hair.
Fuck. I groaned when she raised one leg to my hip and reached down to grip it and hold it up.
Then I started to rock against her as I trailed kisses down her throat.
Katya let out a strangled laugh. “You don’t go slow, do you?” she accused, but she moaned when my other hand lowered to grab her ass.
Shit. I was so aroused, rocking hard into her, her hot gasps tickling against my ear.
We were going fast, and hard, and… Katya’s phone started to ring.
I growled against her neck, and she groaned too. Slowly, as the phone rang, we disentangled. She had to place a hand on my chest for a second to stand properly, and I could help the smirk that tugged at my lip.
“Yes?” she answered while I ran my hands through my hair. At least I wasn’t the only one frustrated.
Then her eyes widened, and I paused.
“What?! I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She grabbed her purse and was about to rush out, but I reached for her hand, confusion evident on my face.
“What happened?”
Katya dragged her arm back and rushed out. “Ask the motherfucking Trievs.”
Katya
Nebesa was a strip club my family owned.
It had a very unusual theme; I’d made sure of that when I’d restructured it two years ago to increase sales. Classiness was its ongoing theme, and between the Greek-style short columns decorating outside, the high pastel walls, and the prime flowered garden wrapping around the place, elegance was what it represented.
It pulled the clients with the highest profiles year-round. Even though it wasn’t a prostitution ring, I knew very well that the girls working there made serious cash every night doing…extracurricular activities.
The elegantly seductive ambiance enticed millionaires, CEOs, celebrities, and people with the fattest wallets to pay ten times the actual amount for a glass of beer.
I loved all my family’s establishments, but Nebesa had a particular place in my heart. It was the first project I’d overseen for my family completely on my own. Every decision I’d taken, I hadn’t consulted my father about it, and it had turned into one of our biggest successes.
Now, Nebesa was a ruined, burned building sending fat billows of smoke into the sky, surrounded by police officers and firefighters that were starting to clear out. There were also people that couldn’t mind their damned business loitering and talking.
Three ambulances were parked around, and the paramedics were attending to the injured. There wasn’t a lot of them, and I hoped to all the saints and angels that there was a better reason for it than what kept stubbornly popping into my head.
I was staggering towards the building, my mind overflowing with things I needed to do.
I had to find out if anybody had died, how the fire had started, the extent of damage, and what the insurance company would be doing about this.
Hannah made her way towards me, stopping short so she didn’t get too close.
“Miss Petrenko,” she called, and it took me a minute to realize that she was calling me. “Are you alright?”
She was a model slim redhead, a mother to two boys, and one of the top girls at the club. There were a lot of regulars that came just to see her.
“Hannah,” I breathed, “what happened here? Where is everybody?”
“We were preparing to open for the evening, so people were still coming in. Plus, we’d been booked for a private event, so not all the girls needed to come. There weren’t many of us here, thank God, and we all got out in time.” The relief that flooded my lungs was instant.
I looked around at the destruction-my very first project to prove myself to my father…gone.
“How did this happen?”
Hannah gave me a wary look that made me instantly suspicious. “Well, I think Carlos told the police we didn’t know, but it was them.”
“Who?”
“The Trievs. They showed up and started up shit even though Carlos told them we weren’t opening for the public.” As she talked, I looked around. Carlos wasn’t here. “The goons cornered Carlos, and then the rest went backstage. I was at the bar, but I heard the girls scream and run out.
They were screaming about a bomb, so everybody ran out with them. Then, the explosion happened.”
I was picking at the back of my lower lip with my teeth, getting more agitated as I listened.
They were already a problem, thinking they could pull crap on my family, but now they’d just made it personal.
But Hannah didn’t look like she was done.
“Mel didn’t come out.”
“What? You just said nobody got hurt in the fire?!”
Hannah shriveled back at my tone, eyes wide, shaking her head. “No-not the fire. She didn’t run out with everybody else. They took her with them.”
My teeth clamped down on my lip, hard. The metallic taste of blood made me realize and let it go.
I nodded to myself and took a deep breath so I could speak calmly. “Ok, thank you Hannah. Do you know where Carlos is?”
“He left in an ambulance. The Triev guys did a number on him, and a few of the guys had to help him out.”
Mel was another of the top girls in the club. A petite frame and a sweet, angelic face. She had a lovely singing voice.
In my house, I sat at the bar, without the lights on, thinking. About the strip club, about Mel, about the Trievs.
It was as if they were determined to get under everybody’s skin.
My dad called, and in less than an hour, I was walking into his office, stopping in my tracks because of his expression.
“Something about the Triev?” I asked, casting a suspicious eye on the package sitting on top of the coffee table. The news about the club was still cooking inside me. I hadn’t told him yet. I thought I could keep it until tomorrow when the wound wouldn’t be as fresh.
My father nodded, the death stare on his face rigid as he gestured for the package. “There’s a note too,” he pointed at a folded birthday card lying on the edge of his desk. “This is getting out of hand now. They’ve become too aggressive.” I didn’t flinch when I got closer to investigate the package.
Blood, bone, sinews. Beautifully platinum blonde hair matted, ratty, and stained with blood and shards of bones.
It was Mel.
In the card was a warning.
No, it was a threat.
“I’ll have this disposed of,” I said solemnly, kissing my father on the side of his temple and reaching for the office phone.
This was the very last straw.