Before I reached the door to go to the Geminis’ event, the sound of heels approaching me warned me that I wasn’t off the hook yet.
I held in a sigh, knowing only one person in this house could be wearing high heels to make a sound like that on the marble floor. Only one woman was here, and if she wanted to chase after me, it had to be so she could nag me again.
“Maxim. I’d like a word with you.”
I exhaled, closing my eyes with my back to my grandmother as I stopped.
She didn’t want a word. She wanted the last word.
Quickly walking past the guards until she could circle and face me, she didn’t offer any further explanation for why she had to hold me back from leaving. I didn’t need any further explanation anyway. Her slight frown suggested she was annoyed and disappointed with me.
But nothing was new there.
“Yes?” I replied, minding my manners. As the only woman in the family, she was due respect. And as my grandmother, she was owed as much politeness as I could manage.
“I happened to overhear your conversation with your brothers just now.” Calmly clasping her hands together, she let them hang over her stomach. Dressed in a simple dress since she’d never cared for pants, calling herself an old-fashioned soul to appreciate the finery of women from long ago, she looked ready to lecture me.
Too bad for her, I wasn’t in the mood for it.
“And?” I replied.
“And I am growing frustrated with your lack of concern to settle down. You and your brothers.”
I shrugged. “I’m not ready to.”
“With your attitude, you will never be ready.” She raised her brows, judging me.
“I won’t,” I agreed. “And you won’t be able to change my mind about it.”
“I’m not trying to change your mind about anything,” she replied coolly. “Heaven forbid I try to influence my son or grandsons.” Her quip was full of the icy snark she was known for. Usually, I loved her spirit like this, but not on this matter.
“I am merely reminding you that it is your duty. It will be a matter of security for you to obtain an heir. Within wedlock.” She added that last bit with a point of her fingers without unlocking her clasped hands.
I nodded, wondering how long it would take for her to tire of hearing herself say this. “I’m aware. But you won’t be arranging me to marry someone I can’t stand.”
“Oh.” She smirked, losing her cool slightly as she looked off to the side of the room. “No bride and groom can stand each other for long. That’s just human nature. It’s expected.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, waiting her out. That was the best way to handle her when she was pushy like this. She’d lose steam eventually, but the longer she kept me here, the more I wanted to take off for this party and do the opposite of what she wanted. I was this much more eager to get out of this place and fuck the first nameless nobody I could find just to vent.
“It’s expected for your marriage to be a business matter instead of an emotional one. And I know you too well to even try to hope that you could find something like what I shared with your grandfather.”
I had to cave and smile a little then. She’d truly loved him, and her heart still belonged to him after his death. That secret twinkle of joy lit up her eyes any time she mentioned him, and I couldn’t argue that she had something special with my grandfather.
“I was arranged to marry him,” she said, like I hadn’t already known this for a long time. “But there was just something about him that captured my eye in the end. There was something between us, and we truly were a love match, Maxim.” Reaching out to lay her hand on my elbow, she softened up more and smiled freely. “We loved each other.”
“I know you did. But that’s rare.”
She sighed. “Perhaps it can be rare, but it’s not impossible.”
I laughed once. “I’m not gambling on the odds. And I’m not going to set out looking for love or anything close to it.”
She furrowed her brow, digging her heels in this argument again.
“I’m not going to look for a woman, either. Not yet. Until there is a rush for me to have an heir, it’s not even on my mind.”
“Why can’t it be? You saw how much your grandfather and I loved each other. Why don’t you want that for yourself?”
“Because I don’t want to be in the position of my wife and the mother of my child turning traitor and having an affair. I don’t desire being stuck between saving my family or letting someone in it.”
“Maxim.” She sighed heavily. “Beatrice was different. She had been too spoiled all her life as a Mafia princess and thought she could play games.”
“No,” I cut in coldly. “She fucked around and found out what happened when the Ivanov Syndicate was nearly ruined because of her lies and duplicity. That is a mistake I will not allow.”
“It would serve you well, though, to remember how your grandfather and I ruled as partners.” Lifting her chin, she looked both regal and scolding. “I understand you have lived your life hating your mother for how she harmed the family, but I do wish you would see my role in your life as an example of how else a married life can be.”
“I do see…” I growled, raking my hand over my hair. “And I also see how it’s pointless to worry about marriage or an heir now.”
“I beg to differ.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, as if I were the one giving her a headache about this. “And that is why I’ll still go through the preliminary steps of researching eligible women you can consider. I am doing the background checks and compiling their files so that when you do get your head out of your ass and feel ready to just pick someone, I’ll have it all prepared for you to browse through.”
I shrugged. “Fine.” But don’t hold your breath waiting for me to jump to action.
With that terse ending, I left the house. I walked away from the topic of marrying a woman and knocking her up. Of course, she was right. I would have to do my duty someday. But she had to give it a rest and stop nagging me.
I had other things to worry about first.
On the drive to the club where the Geminis’ party was, I didn’t bother dwelling on the trouble our family was facing. Instead, as I neared the strip club with the private rooms in the back for elites like myself, I looked forward to finding a woman to fuck.
It’d been too long since I’d let go and enjoyed a tight pussy. I’d been too busy lately to let a stranger pleasure me. But that dry spell would end now.
“Wait in the car,” I told the driver and the other Ivanov man in the front seat. “I won’t be long.”
One walk through the VIP rooms would tell me if I would find what I was looking for here. It would only take a single trip through the crowd to overhear anything worth listening in to. And it would give me enough time to scan the dancers and strippers on offer.
After all that talk with my grandmother about Mafia princesses, I entered the party with a defiant mindset to sample something opposite of what she wanted me to see and live with for the rest of my life.
No more sleek brunettes. I was sick of seeing the same old from the Russian families we were allies with, all of them overly dressed up, too prim and proper and posh, like porcelain dolls. They dressed the same. They talked the same. And they felt the same.
I was in the mood for something different. Someone new.
The first few minutes of making my way through the crowd told me that I wouldn’t be overhearing any decent gossip that might equate to intel. Just from saying hello to the members of the Gemini family who called for a celebration I didn’t care about, I heard and saw how drunk and wasted the guests were. Perhaps I’d come later than I thought I might, but it seemed everyone else had arrived with an intention to get as messed up as they could, as quickly as they could.
Half of them were falling over and others were drinking harder and harder between hitting lines of coke.
Goddamn…
It seemed like all the dancers and strippers were just as far down the path of making this night one they wouldn’t remember in the morning. If they weren’t doing lap dances and drinking shot after shot, they were sucking dick or fooling around with each other.
What the hell did I walk into here?
Is there a fucking full moon or something?
There was a difference between finding a woman to fuck versus walking into an out-of-control orgy. That was what this seemed like—until I spotted her.
Doing a double-take at the slender woman in the corner, I was snagged again after my cursory glance of that area by how bright gold her hair was. Even in the lower lights of the party rooms, her blonde waves enticed me to want to look again.
And again. I raked my gaze over her, unable to look away from her curvy yet slender figure. Still in a skimpy costume and not yet bare, she instantly lured me to want to peel away those flimsy layers and see what she was hiding. As the only dancer here who hadn’t stripped all the way yet, she was offering an automatic game of playing hard to get.
Before I could think it through, before I could rationalize why I was so immediately drawn to her, I was walking across the room. Without taking my gaze off her once, I headed directly to where she was in the corner, her back plastered against the wall as she furrowed her brow at the three men crowding around her.
Maybe that was it.
She wasn’t smiling sultrily and suggesting for men to come hither. This blonde was almost scowling, not acting like a siren. And as she tried to rear back out of the way of one of the men making a grab for her waist, she looked pissed.
That fire. That fight.
Those were what I could get on board with. Too many of the Mafia princesses I had to meet were so vacant, so conditioned to be docile that they had no backbone at all.
Whoever this woman was… She had some sass and attitude.
Just what I could use tonight.
“No,” she said before I could reach her cornered near the hallway that would open to the selection of private rooms.
Another of her admirers rushed at her, bringing his arm back and up to strike at her. “You can’t tell me no,” he growled, high and furious.
Just in time, before he could backhand her, I stepped forward and intervened. These idiots were low-level Gemini soldiers. Nobodies. But in this moment, they were the dumb fucks who’d learn to back off before I killed them for trying to touch this stranger I had to have.
“Then how about I tell you no?” I offered roughly, gripping the man’s hand before he could hit her. Keeping her at my back, I physically blocked these three men from being close enough to get to her. Aware of the warmth radiating off her body, I knew she had to be pressing herself behind me, using me as a shield.
“We saw her first,” one man argued, trying to punch me. I held the first man’s arm in the air as I deflected the other’s punch and kicked him so hard that he flung back. With the music so loud, no one could’ve heard the thud of him smacking into a table or the crash of it falling with him.
“Hey, fuck off,” the third guy said. He tried to charge at me, to tackle me, and I punched him twice so he’d drop to the ground.
Down to the last one, the one I’d stopped in the beginning and whose arm I still held out of the way, I dared him to try anything else. His two friends were moaning on the floor. If he had any sense, he’d retreat. But he seemed too high and out of it to think straight at all. “Who do you think—”
I never cared to humor someone who asked me who I thought I was. I knew who I was and would always be. A boss of the Ivanov Syndicate. The eldest son of Grigory Ivanov, leader of the criminal world in New York. I didn’t need to guess or be put in my place—ever. But I did that now. Twisting this guy’s arm, I made him screech out in pain as I dislocated his shoulder. Then before he could fully embrace the total pain of that maneuver, I raised my knee up into his face twice, feeling the bones crack before letting him drop to the floor.
No one noticed the violence in this corner, tucked further from the main space of the party rooms.
All the groans and grunts of pain went unheard with the music and conversations carrying over the celebration.
One man made no noise at all. As I caught my breath from the brief rush of adrenaline from fighting, I glanced at them and wondered fleetingly if I’d killed that tall one with my knee bashing in his nose like that.
That was his mistake. Not mine.
Turning slowly, I took in the beauty cowering behind me.
She still looked edgy, too guarded to swoon with relief that these punks had been handled. As she lifted her cautious green gaze up to meet mine, I wanted to growl at the instant punch she gave me.
One full look into her eyes and I was sucked in.
That wild intensity challenged me. That cautious defensiveness intrigued me. She was gorgeous, so unafraid to stare me down, as if she couldn’t decide whether I was worthy of being in her presence either.
And as I watched her lose a fraction of that nervous tension to almost smile at me, I knew I was too intrigued to give up on exploring who she was now.
“Um.” She swallowed hard, lowering her gaze quickly to check me out belatedly. Mesmerized by the vulnerability and barely veiled interest in her reaction, I stepped forward to move her with me away from these men on the floor.
She didn’t protest, walking aside with me as I put my hand on her curvy waist.
“Thank—”
“Third door on your left.”
I tore my gaze off the blonde to realize a club employee was speaking to me. “What?”
“Third on your left,” he repeated, indicating for us to go ahead. He stalked forward, nearly corralling me and this woman toward a private room. We’d been close enough to the entrance to the private room area that he misinterpreted us as the next couple waiting for a small room.
“I— He—” Stammering over her words, the blonde was directed to enter the dark, small space with me.
She seemed as surprised and confused as I had been, but I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to protest his mistake or trying to explain that we hadn’t been in line to get a room.
Once we were inside together with the door securely closed behind us, I stood there and wondered if she’d want to bolt or stay.
