Kiss Me in the Dark Anthology - Monica James Page 0,81

left no doubt about her death. I bent over her and tugged her pants down, revealing her hipbone. There was a scar where someone had burnt away a tattoo. I knew what kind of sign had been on her skin: the crossed Kalashinkovs of the fucking Bratva that they inked onto the skin of every single one of their whores.

“Fuck,” I snarled. This had been a trap, and I’d walked straight into it, had let my dick rule over my thinking, had lowered my guards. Shouldn’t the incident with my cousin have taught me better?

I jerked upright. Matteo. Fuck. I rushed out of the room and searched the other back rooms. No sign of him or the other no-doubt traitorous whore. I stormed across the dance floor, searching the crowd for a sign of my brother, but I didn’t see him anywhere. Where was he?

I headed outside past the waiting crowd and around the corner until I reached the small back alley behind the Sphere. Matteo was busy getting head. His eyes, too, were closed. We were fucking stupid idiots. No goddamn blowjob was worth forgetting about the first rule in our world: don’t trust anyone.

The whore reached for something in her bag.

“Matteo!” I shouted, pulling my gun. His eyes shot open, his expression a mix of annoyance and confusion before he registered what she was holding in her hand. He reached for his knife and she raised the syringe to strike. I pulled the trigger and the bullet tore straight through her head, throwing it back. She fell to her side, the syringe tumbling out of her palm.

Matteo stared down at the woman, knife in hand and his fucking boner still on display. I moved toward him and revealed the burnt skin over her hipbone.

“I really wish she would have waited for me to come before she tried to kill me,” he muttered.

I straightened, then grimaced. “Why don’t you pull up your pants? There’s no reason to present your junk anymore.”

He dragged his pants up his legs and fastened his belt, then he looked at me. “Thanks for saving my ass.” He gave me a smirk, but it was off. “Did you at least have your happy ending before your conquest tried to end you for good?”

I shook my head. “The Bratva almost got us. We both acted like fucking fools, letting those stupid whores lead us around by our dicks like randy teenagers.”

“We are randy teenagers,” Matteo joked as he sheathed his knife.

I glared down at the dead women.

“The other whore’s dead as well?” Matteo asked.

I nodded. “Broke her neck.”

“Your first two women,” he said with a hint of wariness, his eyes scanning my face, looking for God knew what. “You feel guilty?”

I regarded the blood staining the concrete and the lifeless eyes of the woman. Anger was the prevailing emotion in my body. Anger at myself for being an easy target, for thinking a pretty woman was no threat. And burning fury at the Bratva for trying to kill me—and worse, Matteo.

“No,” I said. “The only thing I regret is that I killed them before they could answer a few questions. Now we’ll have to hunt down a few Bratva assholes and get info out of them.”

Matteo picked up the syringe and I tensed, worried he could get some of the poison on his skin by accident. I had no doubt that whatever was in there would lead to an excruciating death. “We need to find out what’s in there.”

“First, we need to get rid of the two bodies before guests or the police find them.” I raised my phone to my ear, calling Cesare. “I need you at the Sphere. Fast.”

“All right. Give me ten minutes,” Cesare said, sounding as if I’d woken him.

Cesare was more my man than he was Father’s soldier, and I trusted him to keep his mouth shut when required. “Father won’t be happy about this,” I said.

Matteo gave me a curious look. “About us walking into a trap or that the Bratva tried to kill us?”

“The first, and maybe the second.”

“I’m growing tired of people trying to kill us,” Matteo muttered, his tone serious for once.

I took a deep breath. “That’s how it is. How it’ll always be. We can’t trust anyone but each other.”

Matteo shook his head. “Look at Father. He trusts no one. Not even Nina.”

He did well not to trust his wife considering the way he treated her. The marriages in our world rarely led to trust, much