Page 72 of City Of Thieves
“Sadism,” she mutters, clutching at her locket again.
“Revenge,” I counter, gritting my teeth. “Whatever went down in the past between your family and his, it meant more to him than it did to his brothers. He never said anything to you about it?”
She shakes her head. “He threatened and I obeyed. There weren’t many words left after that.”
I force myself to focus on the road to keep the black walls from rising.
“If what Oleg said is true, then Konstantin doesn’t know the ‘Atonement’ is a fake yet.” I glance at her again, watching her mind work to piece together my scattered logic. “That’sour leverage.”
She catches on quickly, hope sparking in her face. “Enough to lure him to New York to get his hands on the original?”
“There’s only one way to find out, but we need to speak to our families first. We need to find out if your brother still has the original, or if not, where it is.”
It’s also time to trap a Marchesi traitor in his own fucking web.
I’m finally ready to fight for what’s mine.
What’s always been mine.
Chapter Nineteen
Tatiana
I reada line on a locker room wall once, scrawled in black Sharpie:
“What’s more hazardous for your health? Sex in love, or sex and danger?
Underneath it, around twenty people had offered their opinions, the general consensus being that ‘sex in love’ was the equivalent of jacking up heroin at the back of the bleachers and getting caught in the act by the principal.
Love wasn’t an option in high school. It hasn’t been an option for me in the years since I left, either. But maybe, in time, that door will swing open again, starting with my family. As soon as the jet touches down at Newark, I’m heading straight to my father’s apartment in Manhattan.
But first…
Sex in love, or sex and danger?
What about sexafterdanger?
As the jet taxis away from London, I think about a time when sex was a weapon Konstantin used against me. With Renzo, it’s a weapon he’s handed back to me. Our kind of sex isn’t pretty, and it isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a deconstructed religion between two people who don’t know how to fuck like everyone else. He gives me choice and power and pushes me beyond my limits to a place where my past can’t hurt me. I give him something he craves: an outlet that banishes all his demons.
Just then, we hit a small air pocket, and the jet lurches, jolting me from my reverie. Taking a sip of water, I force my mind to focus on other things. This is a crazy time to think about sex anyway. I’ve just been kidnapped. Renzo’s just been beaten to a pulp and shot. My black silk jumpsuit is covered in blood that isn’t mine...
Then again, nothing about the voodoo that happens when we’re around each other is normal.
I’m fearful for Anastasia, fearful of Konstantin’s retribution, fearful of what I need to say to my family to fix everything.
Things are spinning, and I need for him to center me again.
Oblivious of my dilemma, he’s slouched in the cream leather chair opposite me, his huge frame taking up most of the space and more. There was a medic waiting for us when we arrived, and his bullet wound was stitched and dressed before take-off. His face is still a gruesome patchwork of cuts and bruises, but they’re mostly superficial—or so he tells me.
The fact that he’s been in those kinds of cages before makes me feel sick to my stomach. While I was filling my emptiness with abstract art, he was filling his with senseless violence.Is there a way to make sense of our desolation together?
I never expected him to open up about his brother, and it’s forged something between us that neither of us could have foreseen. Hate swung to lust and trust so fast, both of us were caught in the crossfire.
When the cabin levels out, I unclip my seatbelt and kick my shoes off. As gingerly as I can, I climb astride him, taking care not to knock his wounds. His eyelids flicker open, fixing me with that dark, unrelenting gaze.
“Is this the inflight entertainment?”
“Sex and danger, or sexafterdanger?” I ask him, adapting the locker room scrawl for my own situation as I plant soft kisses to the corners of his mouth. “Congratulations, you won me, Mr. Marchesi. How would you like to claim your prize?”
