The Life (6 page)

“Let me in.” When his hands pushed at her thighs to widen them again, Viviana felt her knees fall open under his want. Soothing and sweet, Anton’s voice echoed in the darkened bedroom when he said, “There you go, baby.”

When the tip of his thumb slid between the fleshy folds of her swollen, wet sex, Viviana yelped in surprise. She hadn’t been expecting that, and the swell of her midsection made it a bit difficult to see everything he was doing. Chuckling darkly at her response, Anton kissed the inside of her thigh before laying a gentle bite down to the same spot.

“You know what makes me proud?” he asked, that thumb of his pressing with just enough pressure to stretch the entrance of her pussy. The teasing contact had her rocking into his hand, wanting so much more.

“What’s that?”

“I have an amazing wife.
Strong, brave, and smart. You could have just as easily turned around and left, found your bulls and let them get you away, but instead you stood your ground. It doesn’t matter if what she said hurt, you couldn’t let it be said without proper justification. Not for the Bratva, or Cosa Nostra, or even you, just for us. For who we are. That’s honor, baby, in a way a lot of people can’t begin to understand.”

When his thumb slid into her soaked, clenching pussy, Viviana moaned.

“And you’re beautiful,” Anton added, drawing her gaze in to watch him focus his attention between her thighs. “So goddamn beautiful. Lighting up my fucking life every day you breathe, Viviana. Always.”

It wasn’t a moment later before his mouth was covering her sex, too, that skillfully quick tongue of his striking out to spear her aching clit with a force to make her shake. The cry that bubbled its way up from her middle resounded above her shuddering pants and his approving growl. From the tips of her toes to the top of her head, she felt electrified.

With her fingers finding purchase tangled in her husband’s hair, Viviana rested back on her one elbow and simply
felt
him. Felt the way his tongue lavished a slow, tantalizing beat to her sex and how his thumb caressed her tightening passage.

Her blood rushed through expanding veins, pounding in her ear drums as her legs widened further and air sucked through her clenched teeth. The sounds of his tongue lapping at her pussy, sweeping away her arousal with every lick and suck had her peaking quicker than she thought possible. There was something beautifully harsh coiling around her beating heart, burning bright colors behind her closed eyelids.

Viviana didn’t even care what the man touching her had done is his life to get where he was. She just didn’t—he was
hers
. Anton could be as bad as he wanted, washed in his own fucking sin, but he’d always be hers.

When his teeth nipped into the tender flesh of her sex, mouth encasing to suck hard against her clit, Viviana felt every nerve in her body snap awake with life. The pleasure of ecstasy sung through her senses with the sweet bite of the pain chasing behind. She thought he would release his hold and remove his mouth, but Anton didn’t. Instead, his thumb was replaced by two fingers, curling up into the walls of her pussy to seek and find that fleshy spot that would have her shaking as tart smelling fluid soaked his hand further.

With her body burning with the aftershocks of one orgasm, she didn’t think she could work up to another one without taking a pause first. But her fingers tightened their grip on his hair as her heart skipped a beat, feeling him press a little harder on her g-spot as his fingers thrust inside her pussy once more. Trembling and weak, she shook her head frantically, the oddest sensations travelling from her sex to her midsection.

“Anton, I
can’t
—”

It was only then that he spoke, all dark and husky in the quiet room. “Fucking right you can.”

Sure enough, with his mouth back on her sex, his tongue joining the assault on her clit once more, Viviana was lost. Coming hard and fast, her head fell back as she blew through a second orgasm that ached just as much as it relieved.

Painfully slow, Anton was crawling back up the bed again, over her body. Her trembling hands pulled at his shirt to remove the offending fabric. Viviana wanted him closer, his muscled frame covering hers, and their skin pressed together.

She wanted to feel
them
.

“Please …”

“Shh.” He soothed away her trembling, kissing her jaw as his hand cradled the side of her cheek. “Breathe, baby.”

The wetness of her arousal on his thumb grazed the apple of her cheek and she caught the digit as it came closer to her mouth. The tartly sweet fluid swept along her bottom lip. Viviana calmed as their gazes met.

“I always will, Anton.”

“What’s that?” he asked, leaning down to brush his nose against hers.

“Defend you.”

As his eyes flicked away from hers, Anton murmured, “I know.”

“It’s not honor,” she said quieter. “It’s
love
.”

“Yeah, I know that, too.”

Chapter Four

“Why on earth am I here?” Erik asked, not bothering to hide the disdain in his voice.

Anton didn’t pay any mind. Where Ivan’s job in their business where the boss was concerned was an obvious one, Erik’s was a little more complicated. Known for his ability to talk himself through any situation, the man could get close to anyone, find their weaknesses, and play them like dice. He also had personal access to the
Bratva’s money for even more complicated reasons.

Enticements that were.
Or bribes, as some preferred.

Erik whined his impatience. “Anton.”

Anton shot the older man a look to silence him. “To do your job.”

“In a
gym
?”

“Does it really fucking matter where you have to do it?”

Erik said nothing as Anton hit the speed button on the treadmill he was currently jogging on. Turning it to go faster, he kept up the speed easily. There was nothing like getting out some aggression through a decent run.

Usually he’d work out in his basement, but Anton had a need for being at this particular gym today. He also had a need for Erik being there. That reason just happened to be thirty feet away doing stretches against a wall lined with mirrors.

Tall and curvy, with her red hair pulled back into a high ponytail, the woman was pretty. Vanessa Macey didn’t lack attention in the male department if the way some of the men’s eyes in the room were following her were any indication. It took Anton all of two days to get the information he needed on the girl, and now he was going to use it.

Tugging up the hood on his hoodie, Anton hid his face. “Go find something to do,” he told Erik.

The older gentleman cursed under his breath. “Like what?”

“It’s a gym, Erik, you figure it out.”

“Do I look like I’m dressed for this shit?” Erik asked sarcastically. Anton had to admit his Obshchak appeared completely out of place standing in a suit that likely cost more than the treadmill. “This is ridiculous.”

“Tell that to your pretty wife when you have a heart attack, old friend.”

Sure enough, that did it. Erik turned on his heel and walked away, grumbling. Anton disregarded him as he slid the iPod out of his pocket, and put the ear buds in before turning on the device. The loud, harsh bang of heavy metal thrummed in his eardrums as he continued jogging. Less than five minutes later, a female form joined the pace on the machine next to his. Anton smirked under the cloak of his hood, but said nothing while Vanessa Macey began her workout.

As per his information, the girl lived four blocks away from the gym. Working a part-time job in a bar across the street as a waitress, she showed up to the gym three times a week before her work shifts. She attended Long Island University full time, intent on getting her degree in Education. Born and raised in Long Island, New York, she likely had the usual expectations and naive understanding of the crime world that revolved around her home state.

With a sick father at home and no mother, Vanessa had yet to move out on her own and took on a great deal of her diabetic father’s care by herself. Add that in to everything else she had going on, and she was a busy woman.

For all purposes, she was a good girl. One who seemed nice enough on the outside, and probably was just as sweet on the inside. But, she’d also hurt his wife—the only thing on the
earth Anton would move heaven and hell for. It didn’t make much of a difference that Viviana moved on from the situation, determined to brush the girl’s comments and opinions off. Anton couldn’t let it go.

After all, he hadn’t promised his wife a thing when it came to Vanessa.

That didn’t mean he had to tell Viviana, of course.

Ten minutes into Vanessa’s run, Anton pulled a single ear bud out of his ear. Letting the wire dangle freely, the loud music hummed from the tiny speaker, drawing in the girl’s attention. Watching her from the corners of his eyes, Anton said nothing as she reached out to hit the speed button on her machine. Just as quickly, he stopped his altogether.

Placing both of his hands to the treadmill’s top, he rolled his shoulders and took a breath. With his face still covered by the hood of his sweater, Anton knew Vanessa didn’t have a fucking clue of just who was beside her or how close to death she had come two nights before when his wife had cried herself to sleep.

There were things Anton knew he and Viviana couldn’t ever get away from—judgment from others for one, but that didn’t mean he had to turn cheek, either.

“I suppose you switched from law to education because it wouldn’t take as long to get your degree, huh?”

The girl missed a step on her run, nearly slipping off the treadmill but managing to catch herself just in time. “Excuse me?”

“University,” Anton clarified, keeping his head down. “You were studying law, but it was going to take you a good seven years at least to get there and a hell of a lot of study time in between. What with your father being sick like he is and his retirement not paying out as good as it should, you were stuck. He needed you, and you wanted to continue school. With the credits you already had, education was the quickest endgame. I bet you would have made one hell of a good D.A. God knows they could use a few more opinionated bitches like you on their docket.”

That seemed to have its desired effect. Vanessa reached up with a shaky hand to hit the off button on her machine before attempting to step off. Anton didn’t let her. In a flash of movement, he was off his treadmill and beside hers. His hand grasped her wrist with a pressure he knew would have been painful to a man of his size, let alone a woman of hers.

Finally, he tilted his head up to regard her blatantly, unbothered by the wide, frightened green eyes that stared back. To anyone else, it might have looked like he was approaching the woman as a friend, but if someone came close enough, Anton knew they would see the fear written all over her features.

“I’d say you know who I am, then,” he said, sneering.

“Let—”

“Scream, I dare you.
I’ll have someone outside of your place of work at the end of your shift. Or maybe I’ll wait to have them catch you tomorrow morning on your trek to the university. Hell, how do you know I don’t already have a man standing outside your father’s apartment waiting for my call? I very well could.”

“You wouldn’t,” Vanessa spat.

Anton cocked a brow, challenging the girl. “You don’t know for sure, though, do you? The only thing you really know about me, or my wife, is what you’ve been told. Don’t let me sully your opinion or anything, because most of what you’ve heard about me is likely true. Viviana is a completely different matter.”

More than once, Anton had been told when he leveled on
someone, he did so with a predator’s graceful composure. Swathed in calm and unbothered by any and all of the activity around him, when the boss moved in, he went straight for the kill and didn’t give a second glance back. Striking with a gaze that could burn in a single look, and terrorizing with a voice that rolled and coated like sweetened molasses, he was frightening.

Anton preferred
dangerous
.

The girl didn’t seem to know what to say, so Anton continued with his same cool, quiet tenor. “If you had considered
to think about the things you said to my wife, you would have known just why it was a stupid choice and you wouldn’t have done it at all. I’m not just affiliated with the Russian Mafia in New York, Vanessa, I fucking
am
it. You’d disappear, sweetheart—just like that.
Poof
, gone. Did you realize that when you told Viviana her hands were just as filthy as mine? Did you consider I could have blown your brains out and still made it home to wake my wife the next morning with a smile on my face when you called my unborn son a
criminal’s
bastard?”

“I—”

“Shut the fuck up.” Anton’s grip on her wrist squeezed tighter again. “You had your chance to speak, and now I’m going to have mine.”

The girl swallowed nervously, her gaze flickering somewhere behind him. With a simple tug on her arm, Anton had her attention back on him. “What, did she run home and cry to the criminal who shares her bed that some nasty girl made her cry?”

Anton scoffed. “Oh, no. My wife has a hell of a lot more intelligence than that. In fact, she told me very little about your encounter. What I learned, I heard from your friend George. Nice guy, but trust he knows which is the safer side for him to be on, Vanessa. That was probably a better outcome for you. If I had heard it from my wife, I would have shoved my gun so far down your throat that when I pulled the trigger, you’d have felt the bullet rip through your esophagus before it killed you.”

Water formed behind Vanessa’s eyes as she breathed shakily. “Please …”

“Yeah, now is the time you’d want to beg, girl. Unfortunately, my patience for you is already worn terribly thin. I think it’d make my wife awfully upset to wake up tomorrow morning to a broadcast about a Long Island University student who went missing the night before.”

“You’re not going to—”

“No,” Anton said, his gaze narrowing. “And you’re fucking lucky. It wouldn’t have bothered me a bit to end someone’s life who made my wife unhappy. But, I will tell you what
you’re
going to do, Vanessa.”

Swallowing audibly once more, she asked quietly, “What’s that?”

Anton nodded his head to Erik who was watching their encounter ten feet away with a bored fascination. Now, with Erik being so close to the quiet conversation, Anton knew he understood exactly why he had been asked to meet his boss at the gym.

“See him?” Anton asked.

“Yes.”

“His name is Erik, and he’s a very good friend of mine. When I leave, you’re going to have a nice conversation with him. I’m sure the little chat you two will have will clear up any confusion regarding what I’m about to say.”

Taking a deep breath, Anton sighed. “Tonight, you will go to work. It’ll be your last shift. Then, you’ll go home to your father and tell him you both are moving out of state. I don’t care what excuse you use, or how much he argues, you’re to make him understand without bringing up my name. There isn’t a soul who would believe you if you did, anyway. Tomorrow afternoon, you’ll go to the university and unregister from your classes. I want you gone. I don’t give a fuck if it’s the next state over so long as it isn’t New York. That man over there will write you a check. Name your price. Everyone has one.”

“I can’t leave,” Vanessa said feebly. The slight sniff at the end of her words mixed with the tremble in her hands told Anton she was terrified. That was good. It was exactly how he wanted her. “You can’t just make me—”

“What’s the price of your life worth? One million? Two? Believe me, there isn’t a number big enough that I won’t pay so I can feel assured you will never look in the direction of Viviana Avdonin again. Say it, and I will have it paid by tomorrow night.”

Vanessa’s mouth popped open. “You’re serious.”

“You’re goddamn right. Name your price.”

*

“Boss, we’ve got a major problem right now.”

Anton cursed as he zipped up his leather jacket. He hadn’t even made it out of the gym and already there was something else going wrong. Why did his life have to be so stressful?

“What is it?” he asked Joe as he walked out of the locker room. “Surely it can’t be that bad. Isn’t Viviana with Sasha visiting Daniil?”

At least, that’s where his wife should have been. There wasn’t much trouble to be had in a hospital.

“Yeah. But, uh … well, maybe you should get over here to the hospital, Boss. And hurry up about it.”

Anton’s heart leaped into his throat. “Is Dad …?”

“Not that I know of. He seemed okay when I was up there a few minutes ago. Tired and groggy because of all that Demerol they’ve got him high with.”

“Well, what the fuck is it, then?”

“Boss, really—”

“Let me talk to Rory,” he interrupted angrily.

Joe swore severely. “Can’t, Boss. He’s in the hospital with Vine.”

Anton’s mind stuttered over what his wife’s bull was telling him. “Do you mean to say neither one of you were outside watching her car?”

After the bomb incident that nearly killed his wife, unsupervised vehicles only served to make Anton nervous. It wasn’t hard to check if they’d been tampered with, but it was dangerous. He made sure his guys knew to never leave Viviana’s car unattended when it wasn’t parked in their secured garage.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Boss. Rory’s phone must have died. I couldn’t get a hold of him so I went upstairs. You need to get here and fix this before Vine comes down here and sees it first.”

“What happened?” Anton asked. It’d be the last time he did or Joe wouldn’t like the consequences.

“Somebody slashed her tires,” the bull replied quietly.
“Every damned one of them.”

It took Anton half of the time it normally would for him it make it to the hospital. In the underground garage, he found Joe standing next to Viviana’s new black Bentley. Sure enough, every white-letter tire had a large gash and the car was resting on nothing but useless rubber and five-thousand dollar rims.