Damn it, she’d fucked this up, and badly. What was it about this man that had her missing a step for the first time in her life? She should have shot him in the back, instead she let him get under her skin, and then she missed twice. Oh, not a full miss, but if he could run, she hadn’t done her job properly.
She barely registered her phone buzzing in her hand and answered without looking. “Da?”
“This isn’t over.”
She stopped short. Dante. The gall of him to call her while on the run for his life. She might be impressed if she could breathe through her fury. If the sound of his voice didn’t make her ache with the loss of a relationship that was never real to begin with. “You’re right. It’s not over until you’re dead. Come down to the street, and we’ll talk about it.”
His laugh was raspy and strange. “Rain check. I’ve got a pair of Russians on my tail.”
“I don’t know what you’re running for. They just want to talk, baby. You love to talk.” She should hang up. Nothing good came from this phone call, and Vasily was too good to let Dante get away. This would be over shortly.
I’m just distracting him.
“It’s not over,” he repeated.
Frustration bloomed and she picked up her pace. “Wrong. This was fun while it lasted, but in a few months, you’re going to be rotting in some unmarked grave, and I’ll be walking down the aisle to say ‘I do’ to Romeo Capparelli. It’s over.”
Dante was silent except for his rasping breathing. She’d hurt him, and badly. Nearly as badly as he’d hurt her. “You’ll marry him over my dead fucking body.”
“That’s the plan.”
“We’re not done, Rose Romanov. I’ll be seeing you. Soon.” He hung up before she recovered from her shock.
She still hadn’t recovered after taking the subway and calling for a pickup. The audacity of that motherfucker to say they weren’t done. She shot him. Any normal person would take that as a clear sign that things were over. If he—
She shook her head hard. No. She would not do this to herself. Everything from the last few months between them was a lie, and she would not allow him to worm around inside her head just because her heart was too foolish to know better.
Rose’s phone vibrated in her hand, and she most certainly didn’t feel a beat of disappointment when she saw it was Vasily calling. “Da?”
“We lost him.”
Chapter 3
Three months later
Rose Romanov looked good in white.
Dante studied the pictures in front of him, his hand going to touch the new scar on his shoulder from where she shot him. In the photos, she stood on a short platform in the middle of a shop, dressed in a fancy-ass wedding gown. Her long dark hair fell around her shoulders in waves, and her lips were painted a fuck-me red that made his cock twitch, but the real showstopper was the dress itself. It hugged her body, showing off her perfect tits, wide hips, and bitable ass. She looked like a pinup girl getting ready to walk down the aisle.
She hadn’t been bluffing.
She really did plan to marry that bastard Romeo Capparelli.
Romeo was a savvy fucker, and he’d seen an opportunity to press his agenda. An opportunity Dante provided. He’d been sent to New York for recon and to figure out whether or not there was a Romanov-Capparelli alliance on the horizon…with the secondary aim to disrupt it. He’d spent a month watching the Romanov family before deciding Rose was his in. If he could get close to her, he could potentially influence her against the Capparellis. But he couldn’t do it as himself.
So, Jackson Smith was born.
“Dante.”
He bit back a sigh. His uncle was still furious he’d managed to fuck this up, but the old man would get over it eventually. Dante wasn’t finished in New York. “I’m not coming home yet.”
“It’s over,” he snapped. “You made your play, and you fucked it up to the point where the Romanov bitch is marrying the Capparelli heir. Great fucking job with that. You’ve also managed to stir up Kirill and his people here. It’s your mess, and you need to come back and deal with it.”
Did Lorenzo realize how weak he sounded? What kind of leader couldn’t deal with a little skirmish on his own? Yeah, he was getting up there in age, but with each year that passed, he seemed to become more unstable. More cowardly. He wanted his big, bad attack dog back home to deal with the scary Russians.
Every time the power balance waffled, he sent in Dante to make an example of some poor fuck and scare their enemies back to their own territory. He’d gotten predictable, and it bored Dante.
He wasn’t coming home until he had what he wanted. Or, more accurately, who he wanted. “I’ll be home once I wrap up a few things here,” he finally said. “Have Matteo deal with things until I return. He’s your heir.”