I see right through her little ploy. She took me out here to exercise some control over me again. She knows her body is her best tool against me, and she is using it to her fullest advantage. I have to give her credit for the initiative and not being terrified after the Gennady scene, but she’s not quite as powerful as she thinks. I have never been a slave to my libido.
I grab onto her hips, pulling her tight against me. Her body stills, our eyes still locked.
“Don’t stop now,” I taunt. I pull her leg up, the hem of her dress creeping up. “You were having so much fun.”
Cassandra places her hand over mine, gripping it tightly. “I’m not stopping.”
She pulls my hand away. Her leg drops down, but I keep our bodies tightly pressed against each other. We sway against each other, so hot, so close. She slips her other leg in between my legs. Right as her leg reaches my groin, I grab her arm, spin her, and pull her back to me. With her back pressed against my chest, my arm pulling her arm tight across her chest, I grind up against her. Her ass slides up against my cock in perfect rhythm with the music.
“I didn’t know you could dance,” she says, slightly breathless.
“There are many things you don’t know about me, princess.”
She twists her arm around, grabbing onto my hand and sliding it down to her breast. I squeeze, and for a moment, I lose myself in the sensation of her flesh beneath my grasp. Her ass continues to sway against me. It’s a lightning round of pleasure.
I pull away from her. When she turns to check where I am, I grab onto her. I spin her around, my arm around her waist. I hold her close to me while my other hand rests on her hip. We move to the music, a single unit. A man behind her bumps against her, forcing her closer to me. She clings to me to keep her balance. As she looks at me, there’s that haziness in her expression that I saw in her bedroom the night before. Lust.
If I don’t fuck her now, I’ll lose my goddamn mind. It will be far worse than what happened to Gennady.
The VIP lounge has a private room behind it. I grab Cassandra, nearly ready to carry her away as I pull her back toward the lounge.
As I reach the stairs, Bogdan comes down to meet me. He stops me, his hand on my shoulder, and leans forward to whisper in my ear.
I take a slow breath and then untangle my arm from Cassandra. She stands there, the hazy look soon overtaken by confusion.
She’ll understand soon enough.
I turn toward the entrance doors to see what is coming for us.
The group of six men walks into the nightclub. They are wary—as they should be. The people around them diverge, moving in small groups away from the men. They’re heading toward the open booths on the right side of the balcony like Esme, the nightlife columnist I called for intel, said they are known to do. Tension reverberates with the music.
My full focus should be on these men, but I can’t help turning to look at Cassandra. Her reaction is the one I want to see most of all.
Her forehead is furrowed with confusion. She can sense the unease from the rest of the patrons, but she can’t see the men to understand why.
She will see very shortly.
As the men stalk closer to us, the crowd parting, I keep watching her until they’re a couple of feet away from us.
Her face changes. Her eyebrows shoot up, the confusion sharpening like a knife, focused on the faces in front of her. When it all clicks into place, her jaw tightens and her lips press together into a thin line. Then the corners of her lips turn downward, and her eyes narrow.
It’s a shedding of emotions, each one revealing a rawer face.
Confusion.
Understanding.
Then rage.
The group moves past us, up the stairs, heading toward another set of booths on the balcony. Cassandra’s eyes follow the man in the middle. Never yielding, never blinking. Rooted. Fixed.
For good reason.
Gianluigi Balducci moves to the front of the group as they get closer to the booth. He doesn’t notice us. If their tunnel vision didn’t betray their inability to handle their liquor, their blotchy faces would.
I turn back to Cassandra. All the energy that had been charging through her is gone. She looks like a kid locked out of the house on a cold night. I know how that feels.
Something uneasy stirs in my gut.
I have never once questioned my decisions. Others have—my lieutenants, Ravil—but they have always been proven wrong in the end. The things I choose have taken the Bratva to a place of indomitable strength.
It is not arrogance or luck that I rely on. I merely see all the pieces on the chessboard. I know how to move them to get what I want.
But as I take in Cassandra’s expressions, there’s a festering apprehension that my objective wasn’t as well-defined as it should have been. My plan was to dangle Cassandra in front of her father and take her away in the same way that Gianluigi keeps taking so much from me.
But standing here now, the plan feels flawed. Even as the tension drains from the room, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been too focused on the trees to notice the burning forest.
11
Cassandra
I once saw an embroidered pillow in one of my professor’s offices at J-school that his wife had stitched for him. It said, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” It seemed so cute with its little red threads.
But in my own life, it seemed like a bold-faced lie.
I ran out of New York like a bat out of hell as soon as I had the chance. New
