Page 132 of My Pucking Crush

“Ah,” I mutter past the sting of pain, but shake it off. “Five years, Ivan. I’ve kept your secrets for five years while I’ve been away. I have nothing to gain by handing that over as long as I’m alive. I just want to be free.”

“I have a hacker who—”

“Giancarlo Byrne programmed it,” I deadpan.

Mentioning the son of Irish mob boss Patrick Byrne tightens Belova’s jaw to the point it might crack. Huffing, he tosses the phone back to me, but I can’t catch it because this fucker chained me up like a dog.

I see no way out of this, so I give in. “Let Max go. I’ll leave here with you. Right now.”

“No,” Max says, kneeling under the swinging light.

God, I had him kneeling for me. Submitting to me. Loving me. Wanting me to fuck him. Now he’s beaten and broken. Becauseof me.

“It’s what Ivan wants,” I say coldly. “I was going to leave you anyway. I told you that.”

“You told me you loved me,” Max grinds out.

“I lied so you’d let me fuck you.”

Men snicker all around us.

Max shakes his head, trying to get to his feet again. “You want a win, Belova. I’ll fake being sick.”

“This is no longer about you,” he laughs. “My team will win. Or lose. Doesn’t matter anymore. With how they ended the season, I can charge more for tickets and the networks have already offered me double for coverage rights.”

At the end of the day, it’s about money. Honor onlycasually threads in and out of that equation.

“Why did you grab me if you just wanted him?” Max points to me.

“He’d put up too vicious a fight if taken alone. You were my insurance that he wouldn’t go completely ballistic on me. He didn’t want to risk you getting hurt,” Belova answers. He’s right.

“You have me.” I struggle against the metal holding me down. “Now get these fucking chains off me so I can bring him home and collect my things from—”

“Things? On your houseboat?” Belova laughs and shows me his phone. “This houseboat? The one on fire?”

Aw, hell.

“Did you think I’d allow you to go back to a place where you’ve stored weapons and poison darts to take my men out?” Belova grips my face. “We found your stash.”

I shrug away from his hands. “Nothing in there was important,” I say, even though I’m dying inside at the loss of little Eli’s hair.

Everything else I care about is in Max’s penthouse. Including him.

SEVENTY

Max

The guy wearing the Viking pin removes the chains from my Luca. My love. I’m... I’m losing him.

The rest of Belova’s murderers sit perched on the roof of this dirty warehouse watching us as Nero escorts us to the car Luca’s been driving me around in. I guess they didn’t want to leave it in East Hampton if someone went to the house looking for me.

Damn, these guys think of everything.

The image of Luca on his knees sucking that man’s his dick twists my stomach. No, not Luca. Daniil. That’s how everyone knows him.

I like Luca better.

My God. My light. My hero.

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