Phantom's Baby: A Mafia Secret Baby Romance (Mob City Book 3) (6 page)

Val tore his lips from mine, and I moaned with displeasure. He stared at me with a hungry, inky blackness spreading in his ice-grey eyes, like an oil spill in the deep ocean. "You're sure you want this?"

His breath caught in his throat as he spoke. The slight hesitation somehow heightened the tension, forced me to hang on his every word.

His voice was made of diamond now. It grated with an edge that I'd never heard in it before. It scared me, chilled me – thrilled me.

"You'd best be certain," he said, throat raw. "Because once I start, I can't promise I'll stop. This won't be like it was last time. I have –" he paused; his eyes filled with a haunted need that threatened to overwhelm him. He blinked, and it disappeared from sight; but I knew it wasn't gone. Something like that could never be
gone
, not really. " –
Urges
now."

I shivered. This was a giant waving a red flag. The kind of moment blossomed before me that any girl – any
normal
girl – would beg for at the start of a relationship; the kind that tells you to run as fast as you can, as far as you can.

But there was something in the way he paused – the way he asked permission instead of just taking – that held me back. He was damaged – maybe beyond all repair – but who was I to judge? There was an aching pit of loneliness and need inside me that threatened to swallow me whole, and Val was the only life raft in sight.

"Will it hurt?"

"Not forever."

"Then I'm certain."

C
ara's
fiery red hair lay scattered across the thick white duck-feather pillow like sparks in a windstorm. Her body was naked under the bed sheets, and as I lay next to her, hand propping up my head, all I wanted was to rip them off, wake her up, and have her again. I closed my eyes, grimacing.

What the hell came over you?

I wasn't in control last night, and it scared me. I hated my body for betraying me, and my mind for allowing it to happen. One half of me, the weak half, whispered that there was nothing wrong with it. After all, I was a red-blooded twenty-one-year-old man, so why the hell shouldn't I give in to the desires of my flesh from time to time?

But Cara wasn't just any fuck, not that I spent my life frequenting bars, looking for women to screw. She was the one I'd dreamt of all those long nights, the one who'd kept me going.

She was my beacon in the darkness.

Shit, it wasn't even that I ended up in bed with her that worried me – though that was bad enough. I'd resolved to not let my guard down – not for me, but for her. After everything she'd been through, could she even really honestly
choose
to be with me?

Or was she running from her demons and, instead of healing, latching onto another wild ride. My eyes settled on Cara's bare shoulders, and on the dark shadows of bruised skin where I'd grabbed hold, and not let go.

Call it a wild ride
…
Or call it what it was
–
depraved
.

What scared me was that I never intended to reveal the darker side of myself to Cara. I thought I could hold it together, resist her, but she drew me in like a moth to a flame. She had a hold on me that broke through my mental walls – those I'd built up for strength – with the same ease as a bulldozer matched up against a dollhouse.

I rose, naked, moving with a killer's lean silence. I travelled with an economy of movement, barely rustling the sheets as I pulled back the covers. Cara sighed heavily as I plucked myself off the mattress, as though her subconscious recognized my departure, but she didn't wake.

I glided to the center of the hotel suite and sat, cross-legged on the thick cream carpet. My mind was ablaze with thought and worry, a cacophony of sound, fear, and emotion. It wasn't
me
. It was weak, and I hated weakness. I needed it gone.

I closed my eyes, arching my back so my chest thrust out. I knew without looking that if someone was sketching me, they would have been able to draw a straight line down through the crown of my head, down through my spine, through my hips, and down into the floor. The posture was natural, now; my flesh molded to fit it through the practice of long hours, which often turned into whole days without food, or drink; my only sustenance a meditative trance.

I never had a teacher. I didn't join a group of suburban Urbana mommas in their weekly yoga session. I didn't lie down on my mat at the end of class, close my eyes with the rest and relax for five minutes. I never told anyone what I was doing; never called myself enlightened to anyone who asked, let alone to those who didn't.

No, my practice was forged in a far harder school. It kept me sane, when the slow, steady hacksaw of solitary confinement threatened to pry open my head and flay the brain inside.

I made my own rules, built my own structures. I slowed my breathing: one, one thousand; two, two thousand; three, three thousand. I closed my eyes, inhaled long and slow through my nose, and out through my mouth. I clenched my toes, and then relaxed them. I squeezed the soles of my feet tight, and then relaxed.

I compressed my calf muscles, then my thighs, then my buttocks, and relaxed. The tension trickled out of me, slowly at first, like water, seeping down the smooth surface, through the first few fissures of a dam. My awareness of my body’s tension began to stream into the floor; my muscles continued to soften; and all conscious thought to dissolve. The trickle gathered strength and my conscious mind's walls were ruptured by the surge building behind them.

All of my stress, worries, self-recriminations and temptations began to flow down and out –

I was at peace.

My heart beat evermore slowly – regularly, but infrequently; forty beats a minute, then twenty, then ten.

Some say that Tibetan monks can hibernate through the power of the mind, make the body temperature drop by a dozen degrees. In this state, the men dressed all in red can pass for the dead, their chests still, their eyes blank, and their skin cold.

The mind is powerful; mine more than most. Worries floated to the surface, centered in my mind’s eye, and soared as their darkness burned away. My desires built the bones for a bonfire, stacked upon each other – a stolen glance, a hungered stare.

My soul threw the match.

They flared as one, to a blackened, charred nothingness.

I don't know how long I remained in that calm, healing silence before a sound drifted into the restructured chamber of my mind; nor did I know how long I had ignored it; a familiar noise, from a familiar voice. It bounced off my mind's hard marble walls, and it was gone. "Val?"

"Val, are you there?" It came again, and some remnant of the last attempt must have lingered, for the walls began to fall, and the deep, dark blackness fade. The voice became a rope, and I saw my hands on it, pulling me back to the sentient world. I heard a woman's voice. I knew that voice.

"Valentino!"

My eyes opened. They met Cara's green gaze, and I saw a strange cauldron of confusion, worry and unease hanging in them. I looked down. My cock hung loose between naked thighs, and my chest was still, not rising, nor falling. I barely needed air in that state, but I did now. I breathed in so that I could talk.

"What is it?"

"Your," Cara stammered. "your cell phone; it rang. I've been calling your name for, like, two minutes now. What were you doing?"

"Meditating."

"Oh."

Awkwardness hung in the air between us, that strange twilight zone that follows a couple's first fuck: our second first fuck. I felt it, but it didn't register. My mind was clean, clear – a blank slate.

The darkness that had overwhelmed me the night before was gone. My control was back. I got noiselessly to my feet, and Cara's eyes followed the cock dangling between my legs until she felt my gaze dancing across her face. She ducked away, red-handed, red-faced.

I didn't care. In this state I could have walked from the Brooklyn Bridge to Midtown naked as a baby and not noticed so much as a sideways glance. I grabbed my cell phone from the pocket of my suit pants, discarded with such speed the night before, and re-dialed the missed call. Dimitri. It barely rang once before he picked up, in a hurry.

"Boss, I'm outside."

I looked longingly down at Cara's naked skin – at the bruises I'd left there like an elaborate cave drawing – marking her out as mine. She stared back, chin high and proud, not cowed as a lesser woman might have been. I raised an eyebrow as I realized there wasn't a trace of embarrassment left on her face.

I felt my cock stiffen. The way I saw it, my newfound strength didn't mean I couldn't
screw
her, it just meant that the darkness inside me couldn't rear its ugly head.

"Dimitri, this better be goddamn life or death."

The stout man's strangled voice sounded even higher through the cell phone's tinny speaker. "Believe me, boss, you want to see this. And, boss –?"

"What is it, Dimitri?" I growled, though long tendrils of fear started growing in my gut, weaving together, squeezing it tight.

"Close the curtains."

* * *

I
met
my lieutenant in the concierge's office. The man hadn't liked it, but any protest died unborn when he saw the grimace on my lips or the gun at Dimitri's hip. I clapped him firmly on the shoulder and tucked a hundred dollar bill in his top pocket. He left in a hurry, not even bothering with a word of thanks.

I liked him more. I couldn't abide men who wasted my time and theirs with idle talk. Though I'd often found flecks of gold nestled amongst the chaff such men spewed from busy tongues – people often say a lot, when you listen – I remained focused on Dimitri and his news.

"Curtains, Dimitri?" I paused to let him squirm, and raised an eyebrow when he didn't. "What the hell."

The short man clutched a brown manila envelope tight to his chest. It was the kind sealed with a short length of green twine. He thrust it out, and I noticed that his hand rested on his hip, fingers drumming against the leather holster. “
Curious,”
I noted.

"You opened it?"

"It was couriered to my house. Hand delivered to me, no name." The Russian gangster delivered the facts in an accurate, staccato tone of voice, but I thought I detected a hint of reproach in his studied calm.

I prided myself on my ability to pick up on my men's deepest desires. When you're a surfer, riding a wave made up of men with guns, necks broader than sewage pipes, and with an accepted history of regular betrayal, it pays to make sure your soldiers are happy.

It was especially important in my case. Not only was I young and, in their eyes, inexperienced, but I'd seized control. I'd earned the leadership by spilling blood, not blood ties; I didn't kid myself that everyone was happy about it. The surprise would be if there
weren't
snakes in the grass, men waiting to pounce on my slightest mistake. I couldn't give them the chance. I couldn't slip.

I considered my next move carefully. Dimitri could either be my most loyal ally, or my greatest threat. He was popular amongst the men. No way could I simply execute him without all my support draining away like water through clasped hands. If I wanted to exact revenge on my father, I needed him onside. My fingers were itching for the touch of the manila folder, but I resisted that siren call.

"Your kids were there?"

Dimitri's eyes widened as he appreciated my restraint. He nodded. "They were. I didn't know you knew."

"Two, right? Elsa, and…?"

"Abel," Dimitri finished with a gratified smile. I'd known his son's name – of course I'd known. I’d learned a long time ago that absolute knowledge is the second most powerful weapon in a leader's arsenal. The first is the ability to let your followers think they have a stake in your future, in your conversations and in your decisions – even better if it's real.

The
bratva
, the Russian mafia, is no different from any other family. If there's trust, then there's love, and you'll die for one another. But if that trust is broken, then it's worse than any knife in the back…

"Abel," I repeated with a smile. "That’s a good strong name." I closed the yard or so of distance between us and stretched out my arm. Dimitri reached out with the manila envelope, his face falling as he realized – or thought, that the moment was over.

I shook my head. "No, give me your hand."

Dimitri stretched it out, a mystified look on his face, brow furrowed. I grasped his wrist, held it tight and pulled the man towards me, into an embrace. "Your family is my family, Dimitri. Understand that."

"Boss, you don't –"

"When it's just us, my friend, use my name. They used your family, threatened them, and they'll pay for that."

"Arkady is old-fashioned, bo–." Dimitri pulled himself up before he said it. "Old-fashioned. He wouldn't move to hurt a family member. He knows too well what that would mean."

"
Otverzhny
," I hissed, the word leaping into my mouth from whatever far-off crevice of the brain my rusty Russian had taken up residence.

Dimitri nodded, a look as black as thunder rolling like storm clouds across his face. "
Outcast
."

I released Dimitri from our embrace. "Be that as it may, my friend, my father will bleed. Arkady Antonov wasn't long for this world before he did this foul thing. For now, I give my apologies."

My lieutenant thrust the manila envelope toward me. "Taken, but not needed. But,
boss
," he said, emphasizing the word for effect. "You
really
need to see this."

The second I pulled the single sheet of paper – glossy, a photograph – from its sheath, I understood Dimitri's warning. "Curtains," I muttered, my stomach clenching again into knots. My blood ran cold as I considered what it meant. It was a warning, plain as day, and had one simple meaning: stay away.

The photograph was black and white, eight inches across, and five down. It was taken with a high definition camera, through a long lens, but from a nearby rooftop. All the implications –

all the possibilities – were
terrifying
.

It showed Cara on her knees, facing away from me. It showed my hands wrapped in her hair, my biceps bulging as I tugged back hard, and an expression somewhere between pain and ecstasy written on her face.

It showed me naked, cock out, ready to mount my lover. But none of that was what worried me. If I went to a PR agency to get a photo like this off the Internet, they'd call it "reputational damage", charge me a fat retainer, and probably fail. A much simpler would be to send a couple of my guys with a message…