“You slaughtered my family,” he whispered, so low he probably thought only Anteros could hear. I quickly looked forward. “You kept me slave and now I’m going to do what you couldn’t do with Lucio. I’m going to take your fucking crown.”
See, now that’s what I was talking about—finally someone said stupid shit about their master plan.
Nikolai stood up and adjusted his suit, walking to join Lucia. I tried to discreetly lock eyes with Anteros. I wanted him to know that Lucia trusted me. We were actually fucking doing this! Our insane plan was going to work and we were going to get out of this alive. I strained against my periphery, trying to make eye contact, when a voice drenched my veins in ice water.
“Oh, isn’t this a fucking party.”
Slowly Anteros and I both looked up to see the person in the room with us.
It couldn’t be—he was dead—but somehow, insanely, he was. Standing at the top of the stairs, elbows on the railing, watching us with a grin.
Crazy A, alive.
Twenty-One
Anteros barely had a second to contemplate the consequences of Crazy A being alive before he’d descended the stairs. Suddenly it made sense why Nikolai wasn’t surprised to see him at the docks. Frankie’s warning about Lucia already knowing he was alive took on new meaning.
They were working together.
“Well, this is a surprise,” Anteros said, attempting to keep his cool. “I thought you were at the bottom of a river.”
Anteros had planned—okay, hoped—for Lucia and Nikolai. If they got Lucia out of the way, he’d only have to deal with Nikolai. That would have been easy. Crazy A was more than a massive wildcard—he was the entire fucking deck.
“You’re alive?” Frankie gasped at his side. “And working with them?” Anteros looked at Frankie. He’d just gotten her back, he couldn’t fucking lose her, but if he knew Crazy A, that was exactly what he’d planned: revenge for demanding of him what he couldn’t do himself.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that,” Nikolai said, sounding bored.
Frankie swiveled her head, looking at all of them. “But—”
“I just want you to have your happily ever after,” Crazy A said, interrupting her. “Like I never got.” Getting low enough to cup Frankie’s chin, he twisted her face so Anteros had to look into her watery blue eyes. Crazy A pinched the skin until it broke, then released Frankie with a harsh jerk. Her head fell forward and Anteros’s eyes burned when he met Crazy A’s twisted grin.
A small droplet of blood fell from Frankie’s chin, landing on the hardwood. From the very beginning, Anteros had been telling Frankie their life was not a fairytale. It wasn’t until then he realized the reason was to protect himself.
“Now that that’s over with.” Lucia exhaled and moved toward Frankie. Tearing his attention from Crazy A, Anteros watched as Lucia lifted Frankie and dragged her down the hallway she’d only just come back from. She threw her head over her shoulder, eyes wide and on his all the way until she disappeared into her bedroom.
A violent kick to the side made Anteros grunt and curl forward in surprise. He clutched his ribs and looked up to find Nikolai smirking. He threw Anteros an unctuous grin before skipping down the hallway and disappearing into Frankie’s bedroom.
“Get up.” Crazy A gripped Anteros by the elbow and pulled him off the floor, shoving him in the same direction, gun at his back. Anteros craned his neck, looking back to where Frankie’s fresh blood marred the once clean floor.
The plan was ruined.
Where before Anteros had been willing to die for Frankie, now he was beginning to think it was an inevitability.
Crazy A shoved Anteros into his bedroom, gun at his back. He barely had a moment to take in the memories and smells he’d suppressed before Crazy A was shoving him into the shower. He barked orders to turn it on and then the room filled with steam.
It was insane to remember Frankie at that moment, but Anteros was never rational when it came to her. The shower was where Anteros had first begun to acknowledge the severity of his feelings for Frankie. Foot on slick tile, he breathed in the steam and memory of her wet and naked and vulnerable. Then Crazy A hit him with the handle of the Glock and he stumbled inside.
“Scrub,” Crazy A demanded. Anteros reached for his body wash and scrubbed off the blood and grime. It was weird and stiff with Crazy A there, so he could only imagine what it was like for Frankie. He threw his head forward and grabbed shampoo, little droplets of water falling from his hair. The reason for getting clean was foreboding, like washing a turkey before dinner.
“I can assure you this does nothing for me,” Crazy A said, keeping the gun pointed. “If that was on your mind.”
“I never thought it did,” Anteros gritted, straightening to wash the shampoo out.
“You probably think I’m good at picking out dresses, too.”
“It was never like that and you fucking know it,” Anteros said, voice rising.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Crazy A replied, unimpressed, then adde