4. Sal

The ice coldof the water around us closes over our heads, but it's so much better than the scorching heat of the blast from the restaurant.

Holding Gia, I kick off from the canal floor. When we break the surface, I immediately turn Gia's face to mine.

"Gia. Are you hurt? Are you okay? What's broken?"

She sucks in a breath.

Then, another one.

The canal is pretty slow-moving. I can hear the sound of police screaming up to the site of the explosion.

We can't be there when they pull up.

I grab Gia and kick off to the bridge that's arching over us. I pull us against the side of the cement wall, holding on while people rush overhead.

"We need to get out of here."

Gia blinks. "Where?"

My mind races.

If the bomb was meant for us, then we need to lay low. I can't tell if it was supposed to be us or the Russians, or both.

I can't discount either option, and both of them mean that we need to hide.

I shut my eyes.

"I have a place."

Gia turns to look at me. "What?"

"I have a place."

"Like, the De Lucas? There's no way that whoever it is hasn't found all of our properties, Sal…"

I shake my head. "No. I have a place. Me. Personally. That no one knows about."

I have a lot of places, actually.

The De Luca family is my family. I love every single one of my siblings and my extended family.

But watching your grandfather get slammed behind bars for RICO charges at the tender age of five does something to you.

When you know that your brother is going to inherit the family's money, the power, everything, and you're a third son who is out in the world on your own…

Well.

There are only a few options for guys like us.

One is to go all in.

Devote everything to the family. Be there when they need you, be the guy who does everything so that you make yourself invaluable.

From irrelevant to indispensable.

That pretty much went out the window for me when I saw my Uncle Andrei get put behind bars. Taking the fall, as he was supposed to.

He was a third son too.

So, when I started making real estate investments, I didn't do it for my family.

I did it for me.

And now…

Well.

It's a good thing Marco doesn't know about the properties I own. No one does.

Not even Gia.

Keeping her from finding out has been a nightmare. She's really good at what she does.

Annoyingly so, sometimes.

Now, I'm going to have to let her in on this little secret. And once I let her in, I have to tell her about all of it.

I look at her. "Gia. I have a place. It is not a family place. But we can hide. Do you trust me?"

She takes one minute to study me. Her brown eyes study mine.

And she nods. "Yes."

* * *

The whole wayto the little row house that I bought about two years ago, Gia is dead silent.

If the man driving us has any questions, he doesn't ask them, which I'm grateful for.

My Dutch is barely conversational, but Gia's relatively fluent. She gives him the directions that I relay, and we manage to hunker down as he starts to drive.

The taxi brings us about a half mile away from my house.

I carry Gia the rest of the way. Curled in my arms, I can feel her shaking with the cold.

She's shivering.

Gia looks so miserable; it brings me back to the time in Belarus. I take a deep breath. I need to keep the memory where it is, at least for right now.

It belongs in the past.

Everything about that belongs in the past.

When we walk up to the row house, I set her down and I press the code that opens the garage. I have no idea if it's going to be occupied by a renter right now; there are private chambers that I keep open just in case, but most of my properties are either vacation rentals or occupied by people who just rent them from me.

It looks like there's no one here.

We walk across the cement floor of the garage, shoes squelching. When we get to the door that leads up to the living room, Gia pauses.

"Gia?"

"This… is yours?" Her brown eyes are wide, and I think she might be going into shock.

"Yes."

"How?"

I smile. "There are some secrets even you don't know, Gia Rossi."

She shakes her head.

I shut the door behind us and carry Gia upstairs to the primary suite. There are towels hanging on the rack, soap in the shower, and a bathtub built to hold an entire soccer team.

I gently set her down. "I can leave if you want."

She shakes her head. "No. I… I think I need help getting out of this."

I look down at her expensive leather Chanel suit.

"I'll bet you do."

Slowly, I help Gia undress. The cold at this point is getting to me too. Every motion that I take feels like it's taking too much time, and my limbs feel heavy.

Heavier than usual.

I turn when she's in her bra and underwear, trying to keep my eyes off of the tanned expanse of her skin. I turn and start to turn the bathtub on, testing the taps until they're warm.

"Get in," I whisper against her neck.

She shivers.

That one, tiny reaction sets off a chain reaction in my chest that's like a nuclear bomb. My skin explodes with heat, my eyes focus on Gia, and my cock starts to swell against my too-wet pants.

She liked that.

Gia Rossi. The bossiest woman that I've ever met. The woman who has haunted my dreams for nearly a year now.

She liked that I gave her an order.

And she's following it.

Still in her underwear, Gia gets into the tub. She sits there, shaking, then turns her beautiful face up to me.

"What about you?"

Fuck. Fuck.

I can't look at her.

Gia's nearly naked. I can see the smooth swell of her breasts under her expensive lingerie. I can see the bones in her ribs, the curve of her hip.

I want to go sit in that bathtub with her more than I've wanted to do anything in my life.

I want to tell her to sit on my cock. I want to tell her when she can come.

And when she can't.

We've been here before. Right at the edge of something between us.

The problem is that with Gia, I don't just want one night of sex. I don't want something that feels… mundane.

I'm not easy in bed. I'm very particular.

Very particular.

I don't know why, but in order for me to feel sexually satisfied, I can't just do regular, vanilla things. I know that about myself, and I generally don't look for partners who can't do that. I'm happy to get a woman off, but for me to feel any measure of satisfaction?

I have to be in control. I have to be the one in charge.

And I have no idea what Gia would do if that were the case.

I'm attracted to Gia.

I've always liked her. Always wanted to do something more with her, even when she fully rejected me the day before Luna's birthday party.

I'd be perfectly happy to live my life being the one who meets Gia's needs and forgoing my own if she decided she ever wanted to take the step that would make something sexual between us.

Well.

I had been.

Until, of course, she rejected me.

But I haven't ever known that she wants to go that far with me. And I never counted or even considered the fact that she would be interested in doing what I need to do in order to feel satisfied.

However….

Get in.

She did like that.

I'm not wrong.

Being that I am who I am, I'm not wrong about this stuff. Gia, though she might not know it, wants a little more control in her life. Or rather, she wants someone else to take control. Yes. That's it. Somewhere inside her, Gia wants someone else to take control. Just for a little while.

Which means that while I've always known we're compatible… if she's able to give me what I need?

The temptation of it is too much. I want to do all of that.

With Gia.

I can't just bring her into it either. If we do that, if we go that route, she's going to need to know exactly what she's getting into.

And right now? She can't consent to anything.

I give her a smile. "Let me make some calls to get some new clothes, and so that we can get the hell out of here."

The shutter of her hopeful gaze kills me. Somewhere inside, part of me crumples.

I'll never even be able to explore that with her because we can't even fucking get to that place.

"I'll be right back, Gia," I whisper.

"Okay."

I know that I'm ruining the potential for this… whatever is between us.

It's better this way, though. Gia can't be what I need her to be.

And I can't be what she needs me to be.

So, it's better just to fucking end it before it gets to be something we can never have.

I head downstairs.

The liquor cabinet, as with all of my properties, is fully stocked. I grab one of my more expensive bottles of gin, taking it out so that I can pour a ridiculous amount of it into a glass.

Gin is not fun to drink straight.

But it reminds you that you're alive.

I'm one glass in when the memories of Belarus overwhelm me.

Slowly, painfully, I remember the last time she looked this way. Since the memory is so persistent, I entertain it. You can't heal what you didn't feel, right?

So, I let myself feel it.

* * *

The building is on fire.

As I come over the hill, that's the first thing that I think. The building is on fire.

And Gia Rossi is dead.

The thought compels me to gun the stupid Soviet-era motorcycle that I stole in Minsk, racing at a breakneck pace over the broken dirt road that leads to the warehouse.

How Gia ended up here, at a warehouse in the middle of the Belarusian countryside, is a fucking mystery.

Except, I guess it's not.

She came looking for Anastasia. Stassi, as Gia calls her.

She was convinced that this would be the way to get the Russians back on our side.

And that is going to get her killed.

I cut the bike off and run straight into the building.

"Gia!" I scream.

There's nothing.

Panicked, I look around. Everything is burning. Smoke is rolling out of the areas around me like thunderclouds, and the acrid air burns my lungs.

"Gia!"

There's something. Behind me. Somewhere.

I spin.

Flames lick at the ceiling. Any minute, that thing is going to come down. Boxes around me are catching fire.

Something crackles.

"Gia?"

Motion. Motion that doesn't look like the flames, or the ceiling breaking down. I catch a flash of a hand, grasping at the edge of a crate.

Gia.

I sprint over to her. "Gia!"

"Stassi?"

I shake my head. "She's out, Gia. She's safe. She's at the airport, just like you asked."

"‘Kay."

No.

That sounded different than usual. That sounded like defeat.

I've never heard Gia be defeated before.

The boxes around us are burning, but I dive past them. I reach for her, pulling her out of the little case she made for herself.

"I'm fine…" she murmurs.

Like hell.

Roaring with a strength that I don't possess any other time, I grab her and pull her out of the pile of burning boxes. The smoke roils around us as we sprint for the edge of the warehouse.

When we get out, I gently lay Gia on the ground before falling to my knees.

We're both coughing, but the noise is sweet.

She's alive.

When Stassi told me where she was, I thought she was dead.

The motorcycle has saddlebags, and I go through them, looking for bandages or something that I can use to help her.

There's a water bottle. I pray it's water and not vodka and I open it.

Clean.

I immediately turn and kneel next to Gia. "Open your lips," I order.

They part.

Her beautiful, full lips are so cracked that I can hardly recognize them. I gently put the water bottle on them and pour.

She drinks.

When she's done, I sip some of the water before pulling Gia into my arms. My hands roam her body, checking for injuries.

There are burns. There have to be burns.

There could be cuts.

Broken bones.

She fought the fucking Irish mob by herself trying to get that stupid Russian girl out of their clutches.

There has to be…

"Sal?"

I freeze. "Gia?"

"Am I dead?"

She's delirious. I know she's delirious.

There's so much adrenaline flooding her system right now, there's no way she's going to get through this without going into shock.

"No. You're not dead."

"Prove it."

I freeze. "What?"

"Prove it. That I'm not dead."

"How?"

"Kiss me."

"Gia, I…"

I don't finish.

She leans up, pulling my head down to meet hers. Our lips crash together, and my heart squeezes because she's got to be in so much pain.

This is not how I ever envisioned our first kiss.

But holy hell.

Kissing Gia is like a shot of straight adrenaline.

Even with her cracked lips, even with her smoke-scented skin, this is the best kiss of my life.

I'm dying for her.

When the kiss ends, she slumps back. "Guess ‘m not dead," she whispers.

Then, she's out.

I'm happy that she's getting rest. I need to figure out how to get us back into Minsk, then get us the hell out of this godforsaken country.

But that kiss…

I know, in that moment, that I'll never ever forget it. That kiss is everything to me. It's more than just a kiss.

It's every emotion I've felt for Gia.

Bottled. Contained.

And now, in the past.

* * *

"Sal?"

I snap my eyes open.

Gia's at the bottom of my stairs. She's wearing one of the robes that I keep in the bathroom, and the plush fabric seems to swallow her whole.

I offer her the bottle of gin. "Here."

"Do you have any vodka?"

I bring her the bottle.

Gia sits in my kitchen. She pulls up one of the chairs to the counter. She opens the bottle and takes a drink.

Looking out over the canal, she sighs.

"So, whose fucking house is this again?"