Kiss Of Death: A Dark Mafia Romance

Nero

Ten days. It’s been ten days since Una left and seven days of mercilessly killing Russians. I’d say that the blood weighs heavy on me, but it doesn’t. Cesare has begged me to stop. He doesn’t have the stomach to make the hard decisions. He believes that this can be solved with words and tact. The simple fact is, battle lines must be drawn in blood.

With Rafael’s help, I’ve managed to fuck up the bratva’s drug and gun supplies. This will be a war of attrition and I will starve them out if I must. Without their drugs and guns, the bratva will soon be scrambling around, desperate for money. It stands to reason that the life of one woman and one child is not worth complete anarchy. What’s left of the bratva here in New York are reaping my wrath and they’re running, retreating to Russia because the Italian underboss has declared war.

Nicholai has no weaknesses, and Una is his obsession, so he’d never give her up. The only ones who can force Nicholai’s hand are the rest of the bratva, so it’s them that I now press.

I lift the glass of whiskey to my lips, downing the burning liquid before I refill the glass. It’s two in the morning and I can’t sleep. Instead, I sit at my desk staring at my laptop screen. At the tiny red dot on a blueprint. Una’s tracker. It hasn’t moved from the same room in Nicholai’s base for the last nine days. Is he holding her prisoner? Or did they find it? What if she’s dead? I clench my fist on the desk in front of me. No, she can’t be.

I lift the glass to my lips again when my phone beeps. Frowning, I glance at the screen and see it flashing with a security warning. The fire exit door has been breached. A slow smile pulls at my lips because I know exactly what that means. Nicholai finally got my message. There’s no one in the apartment other than me. Gio was staying here, but I sent him back to the Hamptons because I couldn’t take his bitching anymore. I have two guys on the lobby and two on the parking garage, but that’s it. Una isn’t here to protect anymore, and I want them to come.

Opening my desk, I take out the .45 Cal that I keep there, checking the clip before I slide it back with a resounding click. My .40 Cal is strapped to my chest. If that isn’t enough, then I’m fucked anyway.

I switch off the desk lamp and plunge the office into darkness. The glow from the city below allows me enough light to make my way to the door. My shoulder blades press flush against the wall beside the door, and I wait. I hear nothing, but of course, if they’re Elite, I wouldn’t. Eventually the door handle to the office slowly lowers. My pulse drums rapidly as adrenaline floods my system. The second someone opens the door I aim through the gap and pull the trigger. A body hits the floor, and if there are more, I’ve lost the element of surprise.

Moving through the doorway, my eyes dart everywhere, searching for a trace of movement. Something brushes my leg and I swing my gun downward, only to find Zeus, his sleek black coat camouflaging him with the shadows. I spot a shadow at the top of the stairs and I shoot, barely able to see if the shot hit home before I hear footsteps in the lobby. Without hesitating, I tell Zeus to stay, and then I’m striding towards the lobby, allowing the anger bubbling beneath the surface to manifest and boil over. They take Una and now these fuckers are in my house. A bullet cracks past me, grazing my ear with a sting. I stand in the entrance to the kitchen with a clear line of sight right through to the lobby. My reflexes act without my consent, and I fire off two shots, downing two bodies. My muscles ache from the strain of being so tightly bunched, panting breaths coming in sharp pants.

I round the corner and a silhouetted figure steps in my path. We both raise our guns at the same time, freezing in place.

“Nero,” the familiar voice greets me.

“Sasha. I should have known. I told her you couldn’t be trusted.”

“Do not talk to me of Una,” he says, his voice void of emotion. “You bring about her ruin.”

“Why is that?” I ask. “Because she no longer wants to be a member of the boy’s club?”

His jaw tenses for a second, and then he’s dropping to a crouch and sliding his gun across the floor. I frown in confusion and mimic his action. I barely have time to blink before he punches me, hard. I stagger back a step, but he’s right there again, swinging at the other side of my face. A smile pulls at my lips, as I duck and nail him in the gut. He doesn’t even flinch before he kicks my legs out from underneath me. We fall to the floor trading punches and blows until every part of my body is screaming in agony. The taste of blood on my tongue is its own high, and it makes me mad with a kind of violence I haven’t felt in years. I straddle his body and punch him in the throat. He chokes before he jabbing me in the kidney, then in the temple. Dazed, I tilt sideways, and then he’s on top of me, hands wrapped around my throat. I hit him in his ribs, stomach, back. Everywhere, but he’s locked on like a python and my oxygen is now dwindling. Jesus, he’s like the damn terminator. In one last ditch effort, I grip his elbow tight and shove against his shoulder. I hear the satisfying pop of his shoulder dislocating and his small grunt of pain. His fingers go lax and I take the opportunity to shove him to the side, crawling away from him. My vision blurs as I slump against the wall, watching as he climbs to his knees and smashes his arm into the side of the breakfast bar to relocate his shoulder. Eventually he collapses against the bar. And here we sit, the pair of us breathing heavily, bruised and bleeding.

“You fight well,” he says.

“Thanks.” There’s a beat of silence. “Is she still alive?”

He turns his head towards me, and I can just make out his blank expression. “Of course.”

I know he’s not going to say anymore and aggravation creeps in. “So you were sent to kill me.”

“I volunteered.”

I smirk. “Well, perhaps they should have sent more men.” I gesture towards the two dead bodies sprawled in my lobby.

He tilts his head back against the wall. “She begged me to intervene, to stop Nicholai from sending a team after you.”

“This is you intervening?” I snort.

He says nothing for long seconds. “Do you think she loves you?”

“I…yes.”

“She used to be different, you know? Before Alex. They were best friends. She loved him. I saw the way she looked at him, like he was the only thing that made her happy. She was sixteen when Nicholai made her shoot him.” Jesus, that’s fucked up, even by my standards. “She was not the same after that. I never saw her happy again.”

“Is that what it is to be Elite? Would you kill her if he asked you to?”

He hesitates. “No.”

He’d defy an order for her. And that’s when I realize… “You love her.”

“She makes me happy.” It’s such a simple statement, almost innocent, which is not a word I would ever associate with Sasha.

“She loves you as well, Sasha. She refused to believe that you were the enemy.”

“And you make her happy.” He sighs heavily. “I don’t…I don’t want to take that away from her, but I have a duty. I have orders.”

“What if you didn’t?” He tilts his head to the side. “What if Nicholai didn’t exist? What if you didn’t have orders? What then?” His brows pull together as though the question perplexes him. “If you love her, Sasha, help her. Help her baby. My baby.” Desperation leaks into my voice, and I’m sitting forward because I realize that this might be my only shot, my only chance to help Una.

Pushing to my feet, I limp over to him. He gets up, clutching his arm to his side as we stare at each other. “She once told me that together, you and her were the best.” He nods once. “Then be the best, but fight for a cause. Pick a side Sasha.” I bend down and pick up my gun, handing it to him. I’m trusting him because Una trusts him. That damn woman has me doing stupid shit for her.

He takes the gun and stares at it for a second. “You would die for her?” he asks.

“Of course.”

A deep frown etches into his features and then, with a sigh, he turns the gun around and shoots himself.