Tempted by the Sinner

Those bastards. Those fucking bastards. Rage ran through me again and I knew that they made a fucking mistake.

“Go ahead,” I said, turning toward the kitchen. I slipped past her, let my hand trail across her hips. “I’ll make some tea first. How’s that sound?”

“Yeah, tea, sure.” She laughed, a little dizzy, a little goofy. “Add some whiskey into it, please.”

I smiled and nodded. “Sure thing.”

She took a few steps to the stairs then stopped. She lingered there for a second and hugged her arms around herself.

“Are we safe here?” she asked.

I nodded. “We’re safe.”

“Are you sure? They found you, Vince, they knew where you were.”

I let out a breath. “Like you said before the shit went down, I’m not exactly hiding,” I said.

“But are you hiding here?”

“Nobody knows where I live,” I said. “That’s one thing I made sure of. Go on, go upstairs, I’ll bring you some tea. I have to make some calls.”

“Yeah.” She sucked in a breath. “Yeah, okay.”

“We’re safe. I promise.”

She nodded then walked up the steps holding onto the railing.

I watched her go then walked into the kitchen.

I stared at the counter then smashed my fists down onto it. Pain lanced up my arms, but damn, it felt good.

I was going to burn them to the ground. Every single Jalisco fuck that was involved in that botched hit, I was going to make them all pay, all their captains, their generals, they were all dead. I’d cut their throats and make them eat their own guts.

Nobody fucked with my Mona. Nobody fucked with me.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and decided to start a goddamn war.15MonaIt was like a waking dream. His tongue between my legs, the orgasm rolling through my body in earth-shattering waves. I’d never come like that before, never in my life. I nearly blacked out, nearly lost myself entirely. My eyes rolled back and his tongue, God, his tongue did that thing, and I just went wild.

After, I hid in my room. He brought me tea at some point, set it down on the nightstand, and left without a word. I sipped it, tasted the whiskey, just a splash. I drank it all down and fell asleep, the world turning into black.

I don’t know how long I slept. It was late when I woke up again. I looked at the bedside clock with bleary eyes and took a few sharp breaths, clearing my head. The clock said it was fifteen after midnight, which meant I’d slept all the rest of the day.

My stomach rumbled, so I got out of bed and headed downstairs.

I figured Vince would be asleep, so I wasn’t thinking as I staggered through the living room. I stopped in my tracks and blinked as I realized there was a light on and Vince was sitting at the kitchen table, his feet up on a chair, a drink in his hand. He stared at me, wearing a tight black V-neck t-shirt, his hair messy, bags under his eyes.

“Hey,” I said, suddenly very self-conscious. I was still in the same clothes from earlier, hadn’t bothered getting changed.

“Hey.” He tilted his head. “You just waking up?”

I nodded. “Hungry. You can’t sleep?”

“Not really.” He looked at his drink, sipped it. “Never can after shit like that.”

I bit my lip, wrapped my arms around myself. Flashes of screams, of gunshots flitted through my mind. I didn’t see most of what happened, I was too busy hiding on the floor of that car with glass shards all around me, trying not to breathe too much, praying a stray bullet didn’t come and end me.

Then he pulled me out, brought me into the daylight, and let me see the corpses on the pavement.

“Yeah.” I pulled out a chair and sat across from him. “That sort of thing happens often?”

He frowned at his drink, sipped it, shrugged. “Not like that,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s usually more warning.”

I nodded a little and stared at the table. “Why would they do that?” I asked. “I mean, why would they do something like that?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure it out all day. Made a lot of calls, talked with my father, with Dante and Steven, but I got nothing. Steven reached out to his guy in the Jalisco, but his guy wouldn’t respond, so something’s going on.”

“You said… it has to do with the Russians, right?”

He nodded. “We’re working on an alliance with them,” he said. “I think the Jalisco want to break that up.”

“That was barely a day ago.”

“I know.” He narrowed his eyes, shook his head. “That’s what I don’t understand. If they wanted to change our minds, it makes no sense to come after us so hard like that.”

I chewed on my lip then reached my hand out. “Drink, please.”