Series: Penny Dee
Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97669 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97669 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
I say it simply because that’s how it happened. I took the gun and pulled the trigger, and he stopped breathing. That was the end of the monster I called my husband.
I drain the rest of my whiskey. The glass trembles in my hand as I set it on the coffee table.
“His brother, Konstantin, became Pakhan after Viktor’s death. But he’s not like Viktor. He’s worse. Viktor was reckless. Konstantin is cold and calculated and focused. He’s twice as dangerous because he’s fueled by the notion of revenge. Konstantin has been looking for me since that night, and he won’t stop until I’m dead.”
I finally look at Silas. His face is stone. His jaw is set hard. His eyes black in the firelight.
“There was a woman at the restaurant tonight, and she recognized me. Her husband knows Konstantin well. It’s only a matter of time before she tells Konstantin she saw me, if she hasn’t already. And he’ll come for me.”
I sit back and exhale roughly. It is terrifying letting go of the story I’ve locked inside me for six years. But there is also a sweet relief in freeing it.
“I’ve never told anyone any of this,” I say softly.
Not even Nessa.
Not even when I heard my father had died, or when my sister got married to one of my husband’s cousins two years ago, though I knew she’d always had a crush on him, even back then. I didn’t get to be there, so I rented a room across the street from the venue in hopes of catching a glimpse of her.
I didn’t.
I had to read about it online like everyone else; we have been emotionally lost to each other for a long time.
“What is your real name? The name Konstantin will call you?” Silas asks.
“Antonia DiLantis.”
Silas seems to recognize my surname, which doesn’t surprise me. My father was known from east to west, and in every underbelly in between. He wasn’t a big player. But he was known.
“What did your father think happened to you?” he asks.
“I’m a missing person. But I think my father believed Viktor killed me. I think it’s what everyone believed. Or what Konstantin made them believe.”
“So after you killed your husband, you walked into the night and disappeared?”
“By way of the morgue where I worked. It’s not hard to fake your death when you work with the dead.”
Silas thinks. “Will Konstantin believe this woman?”
“Even if he doesn’t fully believe her, it’s a lead he will follow.”
For six years I thought I was safe. Laid low and kept my head down.
And it only took one chance encounter in a fancy restaurant to unravel six years of hiding my identity.
“Fuck…” I whisper as fear surges through me and brings tears to my eyes.
Silas sets his glass down and reaches for me, and his touch is so gentle it makes my chest ache. Silently, he pulls me into his arms, and in the safety of them, I break apart.
I press my face into his chest, and for the first time in a long time, I let my emotions pour out of me.
He doesn’t tell me it’s going to be okay. He just holds me and lets me fall apart in his arms, exposing a part of me that even I wasn’t aware was still there. Vulnerability.
38
LEONORE
His heart beats steady against my cheek, his arms strong and safe around me. I don’t know how long we stay there for. Long enough for the trembling in my limbs to ease and my racing pulse to even out.
When I finally pull back to look up at him, his eyes burn with something dark.
Fury.
I know Silas is a capable man, but I don’t understand why he would go out on a limb for someone like me. Although the past few months we’ve slowly drawn together, as much as I’ve fought it—why would he go so far for me? I’m not his family. Or his crew. Why stick his neck out this far for me?
“You should run from this,” I whisper.
“I don’t run from anything.” His voice is deep and hard. I know this. I just watched as he took on the Nero crew without a second thought. But that was personal to him.
“You don’t know what Konstantin is capable of.”
“I don’t need to know what he is capable of to know I am going to protect you from it.”
My lower stomach floods with warmth, my heart skipping a beat. I want to cling on to those words. To believe in them, but it’s terrifying to hand my heart and safety to a man of power when I’ve been burned for the same thing in the past. Not that my ex-husband ever had my heart.
“He’s a monster,” I whisper. “He won’t stop until he finds me.”
“His window of opportunity just closed,” he says in more of a growl, and a cold chill runs down my spine at the obvious threat.