And there are plenty. Keeping her in my peripheral view, I risk glancing down and hiss in irritation. She nicked me good with her knife, causing a splotch of blood that ruins this shirt and ensures Vin will get to collect on his bet. I managed to rip the top buttons on it, leaving it open and gaping, exposing part of my chest.
“Goddamn it,” I snarl, fingering the flopping lapel. “The one damn time I try to keep the son of a bitch intact…” I trail off, fixing my attention on the cause of the destruction.
Before my eyes, the little tigre transforms. Her eyes widen in alarm, fixated on my chest. Out of guilt for nicking me? No. I brush my hand over my left pec, and I know what has her attention.
A topic that not even a sexy little hellcat will ever get the chance to defile. I turn my back to her, forsaking the stupidity out of sheer, pathetic pride. Absently, my fingers trace the contours of a marking I’ve memorized every inch of by heart. My reason for being who I am now. For leaving the old Don behind.
This name is everything I stand for as a new man. A new person. Despite how drunk I get, or how many men like Mischa Stepanov shun me, never will I let myself forget it. I may have failed her when it mattered, but she’ll always haunt me. Always.
I will never escape her.
“You can go,” I snap to the woman on the bed. Suddenly, playing games with a hellcat isn’t so appealing. There’s a part of me that will always crave the thrill of the fight. Then there is the man who just wants to rest. To watch Vin marry some spoiled little mafiya bitch and live his happily ever after. Everything I’ve bled and fought for, the horrible shit I’ve done…
All of it will be worth it for that one moment. It will.
Impatient, I wait for the sound of footsteps. For the door to slam. I give her ample time before I whirl around to find her still crouched on the bed, her eyes like saucers, staring at me as though I’m a ghost. Or a monster. Some horrible mixture in between the two.
And my exhausted fucking brain… It toys with an impossibility too foolish to seriously entertain even for a second. Considering it at all makes me no better than a goddamn masochist. For over seven damn years, I’ve avoided poking this wound.
Until tonight. Vin’s already scraped the surface of the scar by saying her name.
So why not stick a knife in it.
My jaw aches as I pry my lips apart. I know before I say the name that it’s useless to suspect this woman could be her. Still, I torture myself. “Safiya?”
An image of her, blurred and distorted after years of suppressing her memory, appears in my mind. A cherub face. Eyes the color of amber. A sweetness unmatched by even the most cheerful incarnation of Pollyanna. She used to love that stupid book. Relished in finding the good in anything, even in the monsters who surrounded her and the parents who, by their actions, condemned her to death. The little girl I sold. The innocent life I ruined. The flame that ignited the creature I’ve become today.
Safiya Mangenello. Her life is a cross around my neck, my burden to carry until I die. And this woman isn’t her. There’s none of that sweetness, that innocent, pure joy. None of that yearning to please or her gift for sowing peace.
The Safiya I knew would never wield a blade against someone. Not her, the girl who cradled dying birds in her hands and wished only to play in the mud. It was her gentle spirit that made her so easy to mold and manipulate at will.
It made it even easier to kill her.
“Safiya Mangenello,” I repeat hoarsely, watching the woman’s face for any shred of acknowledgment. Her lips are pursed, her expression carefully controlled. But she can’t hide a subtle flinching. While not Safiya herself, she’s heard that name before.
Whoever hired her must have fed it to her. As an example of why I deserve to die? Or maybe as part of some elaborate trick. Pretend to be Safiya. Even imitate her mute nature to get inside my head and make me lower my guard.
There is just one flaw with that plan. Safiya couldn’t scream, even if she wanted to. This woman will.
I adjust my grip on the knife, suppressing the tendril of unease warning me to stop. Let her go. Ignore this slight.
But Vin’s not here. Without his calming influence, it’s easier to entertain the icy thoughts for longer than I normally would. Fuck, I swear I literally see red, flashing across my vision for a split second. From the window? I look over, but apart from the lights in a nearby building, I see no such color.
My fucking head… I didn’t drink enough, it seems. Old Don lurks beneath the confines of my fragile sanity, growling like a goddamn animal.
To be fair, she could have gone after me, and I wouldn’t care. My life. My reputation. My livelihood. Anything or anyone but my family—what little of it remains, alive or otherwise.
Olivia and our child.
Vincenzo.
Safiya.
They are the few aspects of my life I’ve deemed off-limits. No one will ever sully them before me.
“Did he tell you to say it?” I demand, gripping the blade so tightly it shakes. “The bastard who hired you? Huh? Did he tell you to pretend to be a mute little girl in some sick, fucking way to get inside my head? Answer me!”
She doesn’t. Her eyes remain fixed on my chest, but her expression slips. For a heartbeat, she isn’t a tiger anymore. Just a woman, pale, trembling in the shadow of someone
