Kissing The Enemy (19 page)

I stared down at the shirt as the idea broke over me like cool, fresh water.
What if I didn’t?

What if getting out was the right thing to do?

It would solve all my problems. Irina and I could be together, in some country where Vasiliy couldn’t touch us. Irina would be safe from Mikhail. And I’d take Vasiliy’s anger with me. Sure, he’d still be mad as hell with me, but that rage wouldn’t be directed towards
Cosa Nostra
and the people we protected anymore. Whoever took over from me could negotiate peace—Vasiliy had already shown he was willing to deal, just not with me, anymore. It could all work out.

All I had to do was give up everything I’d ever worked for.

I fingered the shirt, then stared at the neat rows of identical shirts and suits hanging in my closet. It was unthinkable. Completely fucking unthinkable. My dad’s legacy: gone. All my men.
Rico.
I’d never see them again. I’d never be able to come back to Little Italy—hell, I’d never be able to come back to
America.

But I’d get to be with her.

I slowly replaced the shirt in the closet. Then I dug around and found the clothes I wore on the rare days I wasn’t working: t-shirt and jeans, a sweater and a leather jacket. Then I took the framed Yankees jersey down off the wall to reveal the wall safe, opened it up and swept all the cash into a sports bag. I grabbed my passport and tucked my gun into the back of my jeans, looked around the place for maybe the last time….

And then I called Irina.

F
our minutes to noon
.

When Angelo had called on the burner phone, I’d had to sit down fast on my bed to avoid collapsing in relief. I’d barely slept the night before, staying up all night watching rolling news coverage of the fires in Little Italy and the fighting in the streets. I was so relieved to hear his voice, I wanted to weep. And when he told me his plan: to flee the country and start fresh somewhere else, I actually did start to cry. He was giving up his whole life for me.

The plan was simple: I’d go to my house on the pretense of collecting some clothes. It would be easier for me to sneak out of there than to escape Vasiliy’s house. Angelo would be waiting in a cab on the next street over at exactly noon. I’d run to him, we’d drive straight to the airport and we’d have disappeared before anyone could stop us.

Yuri had been assigned to drive me to my house and Mikhail had insisted on coming along too. He didn’t dare touch me or degrade me in front of Yuri, but I’d had to suffer his thigh pressed against mine for the whole journey. And what Angelo had told me made it worse. I’d had to sit there knowing the evil that lay inside him, that the man touching me was the sort of monster who’d rape a woman and beat her half to death. Thinking of Angelo was the only thing that kept me from screaming.
Just a little longer,
I’d promised myself,
and then we can be together.

It had worked. Yuri and Mikhail were now downstairs and I was in my bedroom. My bag was packed, my passport was in my hand. I was ready.

So why was I still sitting there, at three minutes to noon? I had to go,
now,
to meet Angelo.

This is everything you ever wanted,
I told myself. Angelo was going to give up being a gangster. I would finally be free of my family. We could live out our lives somewhere where the sun could warm my skin. It could be paradise….

Two minutes to noon.

I kept thinking about what Yuri had said. As his surrogate daughter, I’d moderated Vasiliy, kept him warm—kept him
human
. When I’d pushed him away, Mikhail had stepped in to fill the void. He was gradually turning Vasiliy into a monster, no better than him. When Vasiliy had discovered my betrayal, it had pushed him even closer to Mikhail. If I walked away, soon there’d be nothing left of the man who’d raised me.

One minute to noon.

I opened the doors to the balcony and picked up my bag. I took a long look at myself in the mirror….

And then I slowly put the bag down in the middle of the floor and climbed down off the balcony without it.

* * *

A
ngelo let
out a long sigh of relief when I ran up. He pushed the cab’s door open for me, then slammed it as soon as I was inside. “Go!” he told the cabbie. “Airport!”

Before I could speak, he gathered me into his arms and his lips found mine. Those big, warm hands slid up to tangle in my hair and he kissed me as if to make up for every second we’d been apart. I melted against his chest, his pecs like slabs of rock. God, he felt so good!

“But where’s your bag?” he asked when he finally broke the kiss. Then he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We can buy you new stuff.”

He looked so different. It was the first time I’d seen him in anything other than a suit. He looked younger, as if a massive weight had been lifted from his shoulders. How could I possibly suggest that he take it back?

The cab sped on towards the airport. It was bliss, sitting there beside him, soaking up the warmth from his body, our whole lives before us...but inside, my soul was screaming at me. Every minute that ticked by was making it worse.
Tell him, tell him, tell him!

“We can’t leave,” I said at last, my face buried in his chest.

I felt him look down at me. “The hell we can’t.”

I swallowed. “I don’t have my passport.”

He pushed me back from him. “
What?!”

I bit my lip. “I knew if I brought it, you’d talk me round.
We can’t leave.”
I glanced out of the window. We were on the highway, now, and the airport was close enough that we could hear the jets in the distance. “We have to talk.” I looked meaningfully at the cabbie—what I had to say, I didn’t want to say in front of him.

Angelo was still staring at me, aghast. “Pull over,” he told the cabbie at last.

The cabbie craned around. “
Here?”

“Do it.”

The cabbie cursed and pulled over by the side of the highway. Angelo tossed him some bills and we got out. It wasn’t snowing, but a thick layer coated everything, giving even the crash barriers beside the highway a soft edge. The traffic was too loud for us to talk so I started walking up the grassy rise that lay alongside the highway. Angelo followed.  “What is this bullshit?” he asked.

I shook my head. “We can’t leave.”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me around to face him. “
Yes we can.
We can go anywhere we want. Paris. Rome. Fucking Kuala Lumpur!”

I couldn’t meet his eyes. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to just go with him and, if I looked into those brown and amber eyes one more time, I’d give in. “You always told me how important this was. How people need you in Little Italy. How it was your dad’s legacy.” I pulled free and started walking up the rise again.

“Fuck all that!” he snapped. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s all just bullshit.
You
were right. Russians aren’t any different to Italians. We shouldn’t be killing each other.”

My heart was breaking. He’d changed so much, he’d come around to everything I’d tried to convince him of, and now I had to undo it all. Because the truth was, we were both right. I reached the top of the rise: ahead, it sloped steeply down to an empty field covered in crisp, unbroken snow.

I took Angelo’s hand and led him down the slope with me, the traffic noise dying away behind us. It felt ridiculous, leading him along: he was so big and his whole body was tense and straining with anger. He could have so easily pulled away or towed me along with him, but he followed. When I looked across at him, the need I saw in his expression almost made me crumble before I got a word out. All he wanted in the entire world was for me to run away with him.
Why can’t I just go?

Because I’d finally figured out what my destiny was. Vasiliy had been trying to tell me all along and I’d refused to listen: I was a Malakov and I had a role to play.

“We have to stay,” I said, “because we’re the only ones who can stop this thing. I’m the only one who can come between Mikhail and Vasiliy and get Vasiliy to talk peace. You’re the only one who can control your guys and stop this getting worse and worse.”

“Vasiliy hates me,” Angelo said. “He’ll never talk peace with me. If I leave and someone new comes in, maybe they’ll do better.”

We reached the bottom of the slope and stood looking out across the field. It was surprisingly quiet here, the hill doing a good job of blocking the traffic noise. “Who’ll pick your replacement, if you leave?” I asked gently.

“My bosses. The Saints.”

“And will they pick someone who’ll talk peace? Or will they pick someone who’ll keep the war going?”

I could see him struggling with it. He wanted to deny it, but he knew I was right. “They hate the Russians. Shit. They’ll keep it going until we’re all dead.”

I nodded. “And hundreds of Russians will die, too.”

Angelo stood and turned from me, his massive shoulders hunched in rage. He suddenly turned and kicked the snow, a huge fantail of it flying through the air. “I don’t want this fucking job!” he bellowed. “Not anymore! I just want you!”

“I never wanted to be a Malakov,” I said, lifting my chin. “But I’ve finally realized that the only thing worse than being involved in this stuff is running from it. We can’t run because
we’re part of it,
Angelo. We’re holding up the freakin’ building. If we run, like I tried to when I came to New York,
it all comes down.”

He took a long breath in. “What about us?” he said at last.

“We wait. We go home and we do what we have to do. I talk Vasiliy into stopping the attacks. If you can hold your guys back from retaliating, maybe we can get a ceasefire. Then maybe,
maybe,
I can get Vasiliy to talk peace. And when it’s all done...maybe we can be together. But this is more important than us.”

He took my face between his hands. “
Nothing
is more important! Nothing is more important than you!” He looked away. Looked back at me. “I love you.”

I wasn’t ready for how hard that hit me. It struck me square in the chest and lit me up, the warmth radiating out to every cell of my body. And instead of dissipating and fading, it
glowed,
a deep, fiery heat that made me ache and pulse every time I looked at him. Despite everything, I couldn’t stop myself grinning. “I love you, too,” I managed, my voice breaking. And I saw his whole face soften, those brown and amber eyes suddenly vulnerable for a second.

I swallowed. “There are lives at stake. A lot of lives. We started this; we have to finish it.” I lifted my chin and looked at him defiantly. “Because what’s the alternative? Are you
really
going to get on a plane knowing
that everything you said you’d protect is burning? Because that’s not the Angelo I know. That’s not the guy I fell for.”

He ducked his head and pressed his cheek to mine, the heat of him warming me as the freezing wind whipped my hair against the other cheek. “
Irina,”
he said simply. But my name contained all the anger, all the pain, all the lust that I’d brought to him.

“Do you wish you’d never met me?” I asked. My eyes were suddenly wet, burning saltiness threatening to overspill.

His big hands squeezed my shoulders hard and he crushed me against his chest. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me
.”
He kissed the soft skin below my ear, then followed the line of my jaw to my lips and kissed me, long and deep. “Alright, we’ll wait. We’ll sort this mess out. But you’ve got to promise me: when all this is done, we’re going to be together.”

I pressed my face to his chest and snuggled my cheek into the deep, hard line between his pecs. “I promise.”

He pushed me back from him and his lips met mine, hard against my softness. The raw heat of him made me melt, my body wilting against his and my mouth flowering open. He took possession of me, hands stroking across my cheeks and into my hair, fingers sinking deep into it as if it was the best thing he’d ever felt. His tongue sought out mine and I came alive, flexing and writhing against him as we twisted and danced, my breasts soft against his chest. The kiss changed. The mood changed. I could feel the outline of his cock against his thigh, already hot and hard and still swelling.

It felt like weeks since we’d seen each other. We didn’t know when we’d see each other again.

Suddenly, his hands were on the buttons of my coat, popping them one by one with quick efficiency. By the time I broke the kiss, it was already open to my waist. “We can’t,” I panted, looking around. We were two black-clad figures at the edge of a vast white space. We must have been visible for miles. “Not
here!”

“Fuck ‘em,” panted Angelo. “If anyone’s watching, let’s give them a good show.” And he unbuttoned my coat the rest of the way, flinging the sides open. Underneath, I was in a rust-colored sweater and black skirt with black leggings. He shoved the coat down my arms and then tossed it down on the snow.

He started kissing me again, this time open-mouthed and hungry, and I groaned as I felt his hands slide down over my ass and squeeze. Then they were rising, slipping beneath the hem of my sweater to stroke the bare skin beneath. God, his warmth felt so good, his palms sliding over my back as if sculpting it, then his thumbs circling on my stomach. “We
can’t,”
I gasped again, having to twist my head to the side to escape his furious kissing. “It’s
freezing!”
I left a cloud of white in the air when I said it, proving my point.

“I thought you didn’t mind the cold?” he growled. “Besides, I’ll warm you up.” And his hands rose higher, up over my back, stroking over the elastic of my bra, then around to my front, cupping my breasts, squeezing them lightly, thumbs finding the nipples through the bra and rubbing,
Oh God….

His hands slid behind me again. Suddenly the clasp was free and my bra went loose across my breasts. His hands were on me in an instant, palming my breasts, the nipples stiffening automatically at his touch. My breath quickened, hitching faster and faster with each brush of his hands—God, I was aching for him. He never stopped kissing me, first sucking my top lip into his mouth and nibbling gently on it, then drawing my lower lip oh-so-slowly down, leaving me quivering. My nipples were between his thumbs and forefingers now, the nubs tight and hard as he rolled and stroked, the heat pumping straight down between my legs….

Angelo growled as if he couldn’t wait any longer. He grabbed the hem of my sweater and drew it slowly upwards, taking my bra with it. I lifted my arms over my head to help him but he didn’t speed up: he drew the fabric up over me as slowly as if he was unveiling a statue. I could feel his eyes on each inch of my bare skin as it was revealed: my stomach, my chest...when the sweater’s hem reached my breasts, he slowed down almost to a stop, the fabric rising millimeter by slow millimeter.