The Score (5 page)

“Your friend who got shot, is he okay?” Anton asked.

Joshua shook his head.

“Sorry to hear that, but that’s dealing on the streets when you’ve got enemies, kid. Do you use?”

“Not meth.”

“Chemical at all?” Anton pressed.

The kid nodded. “Not serious use, it’s mostly recreational. You can’t expect to turn a profit if you’re only selling to feed an addiction.”

Joshua was a smart kid, but he could get a hell of a lot smarter.

Anton flicked his knife closed and tossed it back into the drawer. “Well, I suggest if you want to stand in my office for a different reason someday, you don’t ever touch a chemical again. Got it?”

“Got it … Boss, is it?”

Most street thugs never got the chance to stand in the same room with the head of the family. They heard them talked about enough, sure, but meeting them was a whole other ballgame.

Anton smirked at the kid. “It is to you.”

“Boss, then,” Joshua said quickly.

“All right.” Anton leaned over his desk and pressed the conference button to call own to the bar. “Now, let’s get some drinks. On the house.”

***

Anton rested back in the booth. The calmness sweeping his senses barely registered as unusual, but somehow, he knew it was. He was never this relaxed inside a venue with well over two-hundred drunken bodies moving around him.

“Boss?”

Drumming his fingers to the tabletop, Anton was vaguely aware of the heat that bloomed under his fingertips at every tap and moved up his digits. Fuck, that sensation was great. He rapped his fingers again just to feel it spread.

“Boss?” someone asked again.

Anton wasn’t in the mood to talk. The spotlights rounding the moving wave of people were far too interesting and had caught his eye well over a half an hour ago. Melting into his seat and watching the rhythmic movement of the rays, he almost felt dreamlike. As if he had no weight. Like there was no substance to his self, or the things around him.

Maybe his thoughts, though.

Those had to be real.

“Jesus, Boss, look at me,” Rory snapped.

Anton glared in his bull's direction, aggravated that his mood was being interrupted. “What?”

“How much of that shit did you swallow?”

“What?”

“The meth, how much of it did—”

“Shut up,” Anton ordered, turning back to look at the lights again.

Rory didn’t make sense, Anton decided. He’d merely tasted less than a pinch of the meth and washed it back with a drink. It certainly wasn’t enough to make him fly, or get his mind jumbled up. Anton might not have used anything strong in a long while, but a blow of powder wasn’t going to get his mouth sticky like wet cotton, or make him crave a joint something fierce.

No, he was just drunk.

“I need to go lay down,” Anton muttered under his breath, the decision coming as quick as the last thoughts had gone. No worries. No cares. He was tired, unbothered, and his nerves felt really, really good. “Yeah, in my office.”

Rory’s brow furrowed across the booth. “Want me to take you home?”

“I want to lay the fuck down.”

“Boss, look at me,” Rory repeated.

Anton waved him off, already leaving the table.

It seemed like a blink and Anton was in his office.

A blink.

Staring at the large decorative clock on the wall, he tried to figure out what time it was. That was a massive failure. Between the time it said it was, the time Anton was sure he’d arrived, and the time in-between, he couldn’t possibly put it all together. How had he been here three and a half hours already?

That was his first inclination something wasn’t right.

Where was that time?

Blankness, that’s where it was. Nowhere.

Ten more minutes passed while he stared at the clock.

Wasn’t he supposed to be home with …?

Anton’s thought process cut off at the quiet click of the office door shutting closed.

“Boss?”

That feminine voice was nothing like Rory’s. Anton turned on his heel to face Natalie. Leaning back on his desk, he pressed his palms into the edge to steady the sudden swaying, feeling that glorious heat travel through his skin and nerves again.

Anton pressed harder to make it repeat. It did.

“Anton,” he said gruffly. “That’s my name.”

“I can call you that,” Natalie replied sweetly.

Something was wrong here. Anton knew it. Like the color of her eyes and hair. Or the way her jasmine perfume soaked the room when it should have been the scent of roses instead. There was something else unexpected crawling through Anton’s awakening nervous system, too. Arousal. He was turned on, and he didn’t have a fucking clue why.

“You need to leave,” Anton heard himself say, but it wasn’t very firm.

Natalie took another step closer and Anton felt his own try to take a step back because of it. Oddly, he knew he wasn’t in control of this situation. Certainly not of the woman five feet away, who usually followed directions well, kept her head out of trouble, and left him alone. Thinking he was in control of his own body was goddamn joke, given the only thing his cock was considering was something warm and wet.

Not hers, though. Not Natalie.

Anton wanted a dark haired beauty with brown eyes, a pretty mouth, and rose scented skin he could get lost in.

Not Natalie.

No
.

Anton blinked out of his haze, glancing from Natalie to the clock. “What time did I get here?”

“Ten-thirty.”

Her voice was soft, he noticed. Not silky like his wife’s. But soft.

Not soft enough
, something whispered.

Natalie took another step forward and Anton noticed the heels she wore. Silver strappy things with spikes that had to be hell for working in the club after hours of walking the floor. Unfortunately, those heels were attached to a pair of legs that traveled all the way up to a tight, short dress showcasing the sexy curves of a young woman. She had a sway when she moved, not a natural one, but a learned one.

Anton nearly choked on the spit gathering in his mouth. What in the fuck was wrong with him?

Natalie’s voice distracted him from taking the thought further. “Are you as bad as they say, Anton?”

“Hmm?”

“You …”

Natalie was right in front of him then. Anton had no idea how she got there that quickly. The sensation of being caged crept in and he sidestepped the female. The brush of her fingertips along his exposed skin where he rolled up his shirt sleeves earlier sent a burst of sparks along every nerve in his limb.

God, it felt fucking amazing. And
wrong
.

“Jesus,” Anton whispered, jerking away.

Natalie’s face tipped sideways. “You okay?”

“Fine. Why are you here?” Anton asked.

“I wanted to talk. The club is starting to clear out, so I had a few minutes.”

The club was clearing out already? Again, time had gone somewhere and Anton didn’t know it passed.

The cotton sensation was back in his mouth. “I need a drink of water.”

No more liquor. He didn’t need that at all.

Natalie handed him a glass of clear liquid that was resting on his desk. Anton downed the room temperature water, barely realizing what he had just done. A couple of hours before, he’d slipped at least a half a teaspoon or more of drugs into that water to watch how quickly it would dissolve.

Too late now.

His mouth was still dry.

Shit.

“Anton …”

Where was Rory? That offer of going home certainly sounded good right now.

“Anton.”

Viviana’s quiet tenor in his mind asking him to be there in the morning to wake up their son reminded him of where he needed to be right now. Where he wanted to be …

“Anton?”

A hand landed to the middle of his chest. The heat from Natalie’s unexpected touch and what was already moving over his skin sent Anton moving backwards instantly. When the back of his legs hit the couch, Anton found himself seated.

Then, she was on him. Straddling his waist, hands moving. It was much too fast, and Anton couldn’t process the feelings with his thoughts, and his thoughts with the feelings.

“Are you?” he heard her ask again. “Did you?”

Buttons on his shirt were snapped open. Fingers trailed up his chest, over his neck. Something hot spilled along his cheek. Anton’s fingers were digging into her sides, but he wasn’t entirely sure if it was to try to move her off him, or keep her there.

He certainly liked the way her hips ground into the length of his erection, but disgust was rolling heavy, too.

Not right, he knew. So wrong.

“What?” Anton rasped.

“Those people they said you killed.”

“Who says that?”

“People. I wondered,” Natalie mused above him. “You hear talk, but you don’t really know. Did you do that?”

“To some,” Anton muttered. “Men who didn’t deserve breath.”

Anton was aware he needed to stop talking, but the filter between his brain and his mouth wasn’t working. Just like the filter between his mind and his cock. They weren’t in agreement, either.

“Sonny?” Natalie asked softly.

“He tried to kill my wife,” Anton answered. “I made sure he didn’t try again.”

Something screamed at him to shut up.

“And what's his name … Sergei?”

Anton chuckled lowly. “Someone else did that. I just helped.”

“His daughter?” Natalie whispered, coming down dangerously close to Anton’s face.

“That was me,” Anton said.

A hand was at his groin, then, pulling at the button, sliding down the zipper. Wetness flicked at his neck, sending something new pulsing and racing through his blood and cock.

“Say yes,” Natalie said gently. “Tell me yes, Anton.”

She didn’t say his name right. It didn’t fall over his senses like liquid gold, or send him spinning. Again he was reminded of how wrong she was with her light colored eyes and jasmine scent.

Fuck, he wished his body would understand that, too.

“Stop touching me,” Anton breathed. “No!”

With a sudden strength that seemed to return with no warning, Anton shoved the female off his lap. Natalie landed to the hardwood floor of his office with a thump, her legs sprawling out underneath her as her face morphed into a mask of surprise.

“Don’t you fucking come anywhere near me.”

Anton wasn’t sure if she’d heard him. Time was jumping again.

Chapter Five

There was a god-awful pulsing in the back of Anton’s skull. Nausea rolled through his middle like a wrecking ball intent on killing him. That feeling was only increased when he turned in the bed and groaned, wanting to bury his face into something sweet-smelling and soft, like his wife.

Anton only met cold sheets instead of Viviana’s warmth.

Instantly, his eyes popped open, unfocused and unsure. The morning light filtering into the master bedroom of their home burned his vision, making his headache that much worse. Struggling to figure out exactly why he felt like shit and where in the hell his wife was, Anton rolled over to his back and pressed his palms to his forehead.

“Oh God, I feel like death. Holy he—”

“Rough night?”

With a dry mouth and bleary eyes, Anton glanced a glance in the direction of where Viviana’s annoyed voice had come from. Standing in the entrance of their bedroom, her hip pressed to the doorjamb and a cup of coffee in hand, his wife looked pissed.

Somehow, Anton knew he needed to apologize. He didn’t know for what, but the stale taste in his mouth mixed with the hangover he seemed to be experiencing was a pretty good indicator he’d done something he shouldn’t have.

“Vine—”

“Oh, it’s not
the wife
today?” Viviana asked, cocking a brow.

Anton flinched. Had he called her that? “Where’s Dem—”

“
Sleeping
,” she interrupted. “It’s still early, Anton.”

“I should … move, or something.”

“Three in the morning, really? I can’t even believe you! If it hadn’t been for that new girl answering the phone at the club, I would have thought you were fucking
dead
.”

Anton blinked at the bright white ceiling, guilt and queasiness filling him up to the brim. The memories he tried to reach from the night before were hazy at best, but he could remember being at his club in Brighton Beach. A few of his guys had showed up and they drank a bit, but that wasn’t anything new.

“I don’t know what happened.”

“Well, your pupils were the size of a dimes, if that helps any. Thank God for Rory driving you home. That was a selfish move, Anton. And coming home stoned, drunk, and stupid? That’s nothing like you.”

“I’m sorry,” Anton said softly. He wasn’t going to make excuses, because clearly he fucked up, but he really wished he could remember why or at least how it had happened. “Vine, really, I don’t know … Did I say anything?”

“Other than telling Rory that the wife would handle it? No.” A heavy sigh fell into the room. The sound felt like a loaded gun pointed directly at his chest. Viviana had never seemed so totally overwhelmed or angry at him before, not like this. “Anton, I just … After last night, I can’t do this.”

The beating heart in his chest might as well have stopped altogether. “What?”

Something was tossed to the bed and Anton didn’t miss the fleeting disgust that flitted over Viviana’s pretty face. Pushing himself up in the bed, he grappled for the dress shirt that now lay forgotten where she threw it. At first he assumed she gave it to him to put on, but a simple glance at the article of clothing told him that wasn’t the case.

Smelling like it’d been washed in a brewery with the faintest smudge of sparkly, red gloss at the collar, the dress shirt might as well have been a bomb ready to blow. Anton choked on the air in his throat. Sure, it was his shirt, no doubt about it. That gloss on the collar, though, meant something else entirely.

“No way,” he said, dropping the shirt like it’d burned him. “No fucking way, Vine. I wouldn’t ever—”

“Pick it up and smell it,” she whispered, anguish filling up the brown eyes that met his unflinchingly. “Smells like a
whore
, Anton. Smells just like she was all over you, and the fact that I had to take it off of you last night to get you into bed … Why would you ever do that to me?”

Anton hurt all over. It wasn’t just a physical pain from the hangover, but an emotional one. Simply looking at his wife, her heart so open and broken on her sleeve, he fucking damn well ached. What had he done? Surely there wasn’t any way he would do
that
to Viviana. It just wasn’t possible. He couldn’t even
think
the word, let alone consider it as a real possibility. They’d been married three years and not once had he strayed from his wife.

There were opportunities, sure. Considering his profession as a high ranking boss in the Russian mafia, mixed in with his many businesses that had beautiful women roaming in and out by the dozens, Anton was surrounded by those kinds of opportunities. Drugs, illegalities, and women were a common thing in his day-to-day life, but never … no. Anton could not even consider it.

“Vine, I swear to God,” Anton said, swallowing the lump in his throat. “You know—”

Viviana shook her head, the coffee cup in her hands trembling. “I don’t
know
anything.”

“You know
me
,” he insisted.

“The man I know doesn’t come home stoned out of his mind with a pint of vodka in his hand. He doesn’t worry me half to death, degrade me when he gets home, or forgets that he has a two-and-a-half-year-old son sleeping down the hall. This man …” Viviana said with a flick of her wrist in his direction. “Who in the hell is this man? Not one I need, or want, honestly.”

Before Anton could say another word, the sound of tiny feet pattering down the hallway stopped him. Usually the approach of his son in the morning only served to warm his soul, but today it felt foreboding. Demyan never witnessed his parents' disagreements. Children had a habit of blaming themselves, and Viviana and Anton kept their issues quiet and behind closed doors.

“Papa!”

Anton just managed to hide the dress shirt he didn’t want to look at for a second longer before his son was tumbling into the bedroom. Viviana reached down to tousle the boy’s raven black hair, but Demyan only had eyes for his father. Slipping across the hardwood floor in his socked feet, tiny white teeth shone as he grinned happily at the sight of his father awake and waiting.

“Hey, little man. Get up here.”

Anton reached down to grab Demyan around the waist before pulling him up into the bed. Tickling his son, the high pitch squeals and childish laughter filled the room. Anton took the moment with his son to enjoy the innocent happiness of a child, but a heaviness still hung thick in the air.

“Did you use the bathroom?” Anton asked Demyan.

The huffing, pink cheeked boy shook his head. “Nope.”

In a flash, Anton set his son to the floor. “Go do it and we’ll have some breakfast.” Once Demyan was out of the bedroom, Anton forced himself to move and get up from the bed, ignoring the pounding headache that made him want to puke. Viviana closed the door to shelter their conversation. “Vine—”

“No, I need you to listen to me for a minute, Anton. I am so angry with you. Even if something serious didn’t happen, you still allowed a woman to touch you, to get close enough to you that she left behind her smell and her lipstick. Goddamn it, you promised me you wouldn’t ever stray from our marriage, and I stupidly believed you.

“I can’t do this,” she repeated lowly.

Before Anton could say a word, Viviana kicked at a black duffle bag sitting on the floor that he hadn’t noticed before.

“What is that?”

Viviana wouldn’t meet his gaze. “It’s a bag, for you. You need to go somewhere else for a little while, okay?”

“But, Vine—”

“Be here in the morning for Demyan, and if you want, at night to put him to bed, but in-between, you can’t be here, Anton. I need to think, and I can’t do that with you nearby. All I want to do is scream at you, or hurt you. He can’t see that, so you need to give me some time.”

“This is my house, too,” Anton whispered. “You’re just going to kick me out of our fucking home?”

Viviana nodded jerkily and tears slipped from the corners of her eyes, though she didn’t make a move to wipe away the wetness. “I told you, I need to think about some things.”

“Things,” he said, spitting out the word. “You mean us.”

“That’s one, yeah.”

Fucking hell, why did she sound so indifferent and cold about it all?

“Well what the fuck else is there but us, huh?” Anton’s shout practically reverberated in the room. He didn’t miss the second flood of tears that fell from Viviana or the way her hand, still holding the coffee cup, had wrapped around her midsection as she folded in on herself. “I’m sorry,” he rushed to say. “Baby, I didn’t mean to yell.”

“Don’t … God, just don’t, Anton. I won’t keep you from this house, or your son. On the other hand, you need to leave me alone when you are here. That’s all I’m asking.”

Viviana still hadn’t removed her arm from her stomach. Anton’s gaze was drawn in on the protective nature of the hold and the way she just wouldn’t look at him. That wasn’t his wife standing there, frightened and weakened. Viviana was the strongest damned woman he knew, and somehow—by him—she’d been broken.

“I didn’t do anything, Vine. I wouldn’t—
couldn’t
.”

But he couldn’t remember for sure.

However, in the back of his hazy memory, Anton could feel the weight of someone on his lap, and the breath spilling on his neck. Blonde and blue-eyed with a sweetened voice, the female wasn’t his wife. She didn’t feel right. Nothing about her was.

No way
, Anton thought brokenly.

He just
couldn’t
.

“Please,” Anton begged when Viviana refused to speak. “What aren’t you saying?”

Viviana finally regarded him with shining wetness in an anguished stare. “I’m pregnant.”

Oh God, his heart stopped. Anton wanted to be happy at her confession, but the absolute pain marring her features kept him from feeling anything but a deep, settling ache. “What?”

“I was a couple of days late, so the day before yesterday I stopped at the store and got a test just out of curiosity. I wasn’t sure if it would happen so quickly like it did for Demyan when I came off the shot. I should have known better, of course it would. The home test came back positive, but I wanted to be sure so yesterday I went into the clinic. They confirmed it.”

Anton’s mouth was so dry he could barely speak. “Pregnant.”

“Yeah. And I still need you to leave, Anton. Especially now.”

***

Anton stared at the blank screen of his phone, lost and confused. The three texts he sent to his wife had all gone unanswered, although they’d all been about them, and not their son as Viviana requested. The heart inside his chest was aching and breaking in ways he couldn’t even begin to describe. It was as if someone had taken his entire soul and ripped it apart before burying it deeper than he could try to dig.

At least Viviana had allowed him to take Demyan with him for the day. His little boy was keeping him sane with mindless chatter and constant business at the club. Anton, however, was still feeling like hell, but he was doing all he could to hide it from his son.

“Did you talk to Rory about last night?”

Anton glanced up at his lawyer’s voice.

“Yeah,” he croaked out.

“And?”

Demyan, playing in the corner with Rocco and his matchbox cars, didn’t seem to be paying attention to the conversation, or his father’s broken tone. The boy had done remarkably well all morning, despite the obvious frustration and hurt between his parents.

“And nothing,” Anton answered faintly. “Said Natalie seemed like she was pulling down her dress and I was fixing up the buttons on my shirt. She made a big deal about getting out of there, and Rory said I was completely blitzed right out of it, but—”

“That sounds bad, man.”

Yeah, Anton was aware. “Shit, Ivan, I can’t even remember. I don’t think I can count the amount of times I’ve drank enough to black out on one hand, and the hangover I’ve got is fucking ridiculous.”

“I don’t think you drank a heck of a lot, but you were slamming back on the bourbon pretty fast,” Ivan noted. “Maybe more than we thought. It happens.”

“Not to me,” Anton insisted. “My drinks have always been watered down, especially when I have Bratva in this club.”

“It’s not like you, I agree.” The lawyer nodded, shooting a look at the little boy in the corner. “Where are you going to stay?”

“Here for a while. I can go home for whatever I need, so I might as well.”

“And what about you-know-who?” Ivan asked with a cant of his head towards Demyan.

“Keep him with me when I can. Make sure he sees me around enough to know I didn’t leave. There’s not much else I can do.”

“Kids blame themselves for shit like this, Anton.”

But not his boy. Anton wouldn’t allow that.

“We’ll figure it out,” Anton muttered. “Somehow. Right now he doesn’t know the difference. Surely we can keep him from noticing for a little while.”

“That Papa, the one person besides his mother who is his absolute everything in this world, isn’t waiting for him every morning like he had every other day of his life?” Ivan asked sarcastically.