Page 3 of With This Kiss
But not in the same way I had grown up knowing that name.
And I knew a lot more about them than most people. And the information I had was given to me unwittingly.
“Etta. How did you even meet him?”
“At Blooms.”
“Blooms?”The nightclub… owned by the Bratva?
She nodded.
I leaned back against the uncomfortable hospital chair. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from saying anything to her that I might regret later on. Of all the men in New York, she pickedthatone.
She shook her head. “I didn’t know. Not at first. We weren’t that serious to begin with, and I… I didn’t know his surname either. And Kingston is a common enough name?—”
“Not in this part of town,” I said, trying to keep the anger from my voice. Some of the emotion must have seeped through anyway because she flinched.
I closed my eyes.
She was seeing KingstonMahankov. Kingston fucking Mahankov.
The fucking heir to the Mahankov Bratva, and also the sworn enemies of the Caparelli Famiglia.
If my brother knew about this…
He would find a way to brand Etta as a traitor to the family, even if she and I weren’t a part of the Caparelli Famiglia.
It wouldn’t matter.
And her dad was captain, serving under my dad… thecapo dei capiof the Caparelli Famiglia. What a fucking mess.
I let out a long exhale.
“Don’t tell my father,” she said.
I shot her a sharp look. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
She moved back a little, and I instantly regretted snapping at her. Most of my anger had evaporated, and I grabbed her hand.
“Thanks for telling me. Get some rest, okay?”
Her bottom lip trembled, tugging at my heartstrings. “I’m really sorry.”
I closed my eyes briefly. I wanted to tell her there was nothing to be sorry about. It wasn’t her fucking fault that the heir to the Mahankov Bratva was a fucking monster, living up to his name.
I nodded. “Just rest. Don’t worry about anything, okay?”
“Okay,” she said softly.
I pressed the button to lean her bed back, pulling the thin hospital blanket over her shoulders.
I stayed where I was seated for a while, thinking.
There was no way to keep Etta’s hospital stay from either of our fathers.
They would want to know the man responsible for doing this to her. The tenuous peace between the two clashing crime organizations would come to a head. And we had just gotten out of the war with the Mahankov Bratva a few years prior, but it wasn’t without loss… from both sides.
Another war…
