Before long, she didn’t even realize how much time had passed since they’d arrived.

  “What’s he told you about London?” Lachlan asked, finishing off the last of his drink before raising his hand and catching the eye of the passing waitress who nodded at his silent request for another.

  He might have been on his third glass of whiskey, but Vera was still nursing the same glass of wine she’d been sipping since the appetizers arrived. “Not very much,” she admitted, smiling when she saw the look on Alfie’s face. “You don’t want me to know about London?”

  Now that she thought about it, Alfie tended not to discuss himself very much. Sure, she now knew what he did for a living, and about a few of the businesses he ran, but he hardly ever shared anything about his life in London, and what little he had was only ever in passing.

  She wondered why.

  Alfie glanced down at his plate. “London was a long time ago.”

  “Not long enough, mate. You see, Vera, we were on top of the world. Business was good, and we always said we were gonna rule London. I’n’t that right, Alfie?”

  “Things change.”

  “Don’t I fucking know it,” Lachlan muttered as a fresh whiskey was set in front of him.

  They continued back and forth, reminiscing about days long past.

  Vera was distracted by a boisterous laugh that sounded far too familiar despite how long it had been since she last heard it.

  She turned before she even meant to, glancing over her shoulder to find the source of it, and the moment she saw the man coming upstairs, it felt like her heart dropped right out of her chest.

  Years had passed since she’d last seen the man’s face despite how small New York tended to feel most days, but even that didn’t feel long enough.

  She was over him, completely and irrevocably, but that didn’t stop her from reacting to the sight of him.

  Camden Stevens.

  A man she had once loved, but time had proven that he hadn’t felt the same way about her.

  Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken her father up on his offer to walk away from everything they had.

  And as if he sensed her as she had him, his gaze turned in her direction, and though she quickly looked away, she didn’t doubt that he had spotted her.

  She tried to focus on Lachlan—the smile on his face, the animated way he told his story—but every part of her was waiting. Alert.

  Anticipating the moment when—

  “Vera? I thought that was you.”

  For a brief second, she closed her eyes, hoping that if she willed him to leave now, he would just turn and walk back in the opposite direction. But when she opened her eyes again and found him and the man he was with standing next to her table, she knew she wouldn’t be that lucky.

  While Lachlan merely looked curious at the intrusion—though there was a dark gleam in his eyes—Alfie didn’t appear nearly as welcoming.

  The hand he had resting on her thigh beneath the table curled around a little tighter. She wasn’t sure if it was because he was offering comfort, or he was reminding himself that she was here with him.

  “I hardly recognized you.”

  A lie if she ever heard one. Her hair might have grown a few inches, but that was the only change about her person since the last time she had laid eyes on him.

  Figuring it would be rude not to respond, she forced a tight-lipped smile. “Camden.” It was the only greeting he would get out of her.

  Not that it seemed to make much of a difference with him. He still smiled wider as if she’d given him exactly what he wanted.

  “You’re well away from Brighton, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Though, judging from the expression on his face, he didn’t mean that as innocently as he tried to portray.

  Alfie had yet to speak.

  “You must be one of those Wall Street blokes,” Lachlan said, eyeing Camden first, then his friend. “I never did like the look of banks. Squirrelly lot, you are.”

  That was nearly enough to make her rethink her dislike of him.

  Camden didn’t take the hint, however. Not that he would. He thought he was safe now. He wasn’t the same man she had met in an art museum years ago when she was still blinded by her desire to get away from her father and anyone like him.

  He thought with his newly earned money, he was somehow better than her, even as it was her father’s money that got him his new position.

  “Ah, so you’re one of them. Can’t say I’m surprised, considering who she is.”

  Alfie pulled out his wallet, removing three crisp hundred-dollar bills and placing them on the table.

  He was so calm that Vera started to wonder if this was the version of him people should fear.

  The sound of his chair scraping across the floor as he got to his feet was painfully loud, but he seemed to be making it a point to ignore Camden as he retrieved his cane before offering his hand to her. She quickly took it.

  Then she saw it.

  His barely checked anger.

  The same flicker of emotion she often saw reflected in Lachlan’s gaze.

  For her, she knew.

  Camden, the dense idiot, didn’t seem to recognize the danger he courted as he looked from the hand Alfie had wrapped around hers, then back at her.

  It couldn’t have escaped his notice that Alfie not only had at least fifty pounds on him but three inches of height as well.

  “You might want to be careful with that one,” Camden said as he faced Alfie, though that arrogant facade dimmed a bit when he finally seemed to realize the size of the man she was with.

  Alfie turned so abruptly, Camden jerked back a step, but it was her hand on his arm that stilled him. “Alfie, don’t.”

  The tension she had felt inside him seemed to ratchet up a degree. She squeezed his hand, silently begging him to walk away. Leave him standing there, and they could be on their way.

  Lachlan, who was still casually sitting with his legs outstretched, smiled a bit wider.

  She was almost certain they would make it out of the restaurant without incident. That they could walk away and pretend none of this had ever happened.

  At least until Camden smirked and said something he really shouldn’t have said.

  “You can keep the Russian whore.”

  Vera had been called many things in her life, all variations of that remark in some regard from people who didn't know her, people who just hated her family, and men she refused to go home with, so it shouldn't have bothered her the way it did when Camden said it.

  Except she had loved him more than she had ever loved any other man. He was the man she had hoped to marry and have children with. He was the man she had forsaken her father for.

  He had meant everything to her.

  Yet he spoke about her as if she was nothing—as if she had never meant anything to him at all.

  Because while he was the son of some prominent official, Vasily had been willing to scare him off, but he hadn't caused irrevocable damage to the family. In fact, after ruining her relationship, he had gone on to strike a business deal with them.

  That had meant more to him than her own happiness. In many ways, he had saved her from the trouble, though neither had known it at the time.

  Camden didn't seem to recognize the danger he was in, so instead of walking away, he continued to stand there with his clueless friend right beside him.

  Vera was almost sure that Alfie would, in fact, just walk away without uttering a word. Rein his temper back in and leave this fight for another day.

  Maybe Camden thought he was safe because of his father, or perhaps he thought Vera wouldn't let him be harmed, but neither stopped Alfie from suddenly lifting his cane higher, his entire face twisting with rage before he swung it with all the power of a former boxer and smashed it across Camden’s friend’s face.

  He made an oomph sound before slamming into the table, knocking plates and glasses to the floor that shattered on impact before he landed on top of the mess.

  Screams sounded. More than a few people hurried away from their tables to put more distance between them and what was happening, but no one left, too engrossed by what was happening in front of them.

  The arrogance bled right out of Camden's face, turning him into nothing more than a ghost as his mouth opened and closed over and over, words seeming to fail him as he looked from his friend on the floor—whose face was bleeding profusely and who’d resorted to a slobbering mess down there—then back at Alfie who now took a step toward him, all hundred and eighty pounds of pissed off Cockney man.

  "He'll wake up," Alfie said with a tilt of his head in the bleeding man's direction. "Yeah? Probably gonna be drinking through a straw, but he’ll live to do it, won’t he? And the only fucking thing he's gonna remember is your funny little fucking quip, i'n't that right?"

  Camden was trembling, his face bleached of color, his gaze darting back and forth. It was clear from the look of sheer horror on his face that he didn't know what to make of Alfie. How he had gone from enraged to completely calm in a matter of seconds.

  Even though his friend was still helpless on the ground and all, Camden wanted to run, but he was too afraid to move before Alfie dismissed him for fear of what he might do next.

  "You see, mate, I, like fucking you, don't deserve Russian women. But if you're lucky, yeah?" Alfie tapped the side of Camden's face to get his attention back on him. "And find one who's willing to give you her time, you don't fuck that up, do you, mate? You hold on to it. You fucking protect it. Now, that's your warning there, that is. Every day for the rest of your miserable, measly life, I want you to look at that bloke there and remember that should you come anywhere near Vera fucking Markovic again, it'll be a fucking butcher's shop in your future. D'you get me?"

  Camden nodded quickly, too afraid to even glance in Vera's direction.

  She watched with wide eyes. As quickly as they had been the focus of everyone's attention, some went back to their meals while others paid and left in a hurry.

  Alfie finally turned, brushing off a few shards of glass from his shirt, and faced her. She'd thought wrong now that she was looking at him. He might have appeared calm to anyone else, but a certain darkness in his gaze promised violence if he was provoked again.

  He was waiting for an excuse.

  "We should leave," Vera whispered for only him to hear.

  She wasn't embarrassed or even angry for what he had done.

  The only thing she was thinking about was preventing him from being arrested.

  Lachlan stared down at the prone man on the floor, nudging him with the toe of his boot, and only once he was sure the man wasn’t moving did he finally stand and quite literally walk over him.

  Camden didn’t hesitate in gathering the man off the floor, dragging him out as he drooled blood and at least a few teeth out of his mouth.

  Lachlan watched them go as impassive as ever. “A bit rude, wasn’t he?”

  “Have someone clean this up,” Alfie said, his gaze still trained in the direction Camden had gone.

  She was sure, at that moment, that had she not been with him, neither Camden nor his friend would have made it out of this place alive.

  Alfie was still angry.

  She could tell from the silence they'd ridden in back to his place and how quickly he had disappeared into his closet to undress once they arrived.

  Vera sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for him to come out, wondering what she would say once he did. Camden was the last person on her mind now, and though she was sure his friend was probably in a hospital somewhere at the moment, she wasn't thinking about him either.

  As quickly as they had come in and disrupted her world, they had fled just as fast.

  When he came out and spotted her waiting for him, he glanced away just as fast. "I'm not going to apologize for what happened."

  "I didn't ask you to. That isn't what I want to talk about."

  Not in all the time she had known him did Vera think he had ever looked as unsure as he did at this moment. She didn't think anything could pierce that outer layer of calmness that seemed to envelop him at all times. But now, at this moment, she saw the cracks.

  "What'd you ever see in him?" he asked, dropping onto the bed and flexing his fingers before he tucked his hands beneath his head, his gaze focused on the ceiling.

  "Sometimes we see what we want to see," she whispered, having wondered the same thing once upon a time.

  She'd been blinded by what she hoped he could be rather than who he was.

  Alfie made a low sound in the back of his throat. "You deserved better than that. Can't say I disagree with Vasily on that."

  Maybe ... "What was that you were saying about Russian women?"

  "What was what?"

  Even as he asked the question, she knew he understood what she was actually asking, and it was clear this was just a deflection so he wouldn't have to answer. But she wasn't ready to leave it at that.

  "Tell me," she said softly.

  He seemed to consider her request a moment before he finally gave in. "My mother is Russian, as you know, but my father was as English as they come. She worked as a maid for years after immigrating from Moscow, and he ... took advantage."

  Resentment colored his tone, wrapping around each word that told her while he loved his mother dearly, he hated his father.

  "He had a family before her, the whole wife and children bit. A flat just down the street from where my mother was staying. He didn't tell her about that, though, when he courted her and all," he said with a wave of his hand as if to say you get the point. "Three months after she met him, she got pregnant with me. That was when she found out about his family and that fucking cunt of a wife of his. See, she never told me how bad it was before I came. Mum was too nice for that. But I saw it once I was old enough."

  He didn't elaborate, not that he needed to.

  She could only imagine how a woman would take out her anger at her philandering husband on an innocent woman and child.

  "She and the other wives in the neighborhood treated her worse than an animal. Called her names, threw trash at her when she was too fucking nice to stand up for herself. I didn't give a shit that they were calling me a bastard or treating me like the scum of the earth. But not her. Not when I was around." Alfie drew in a breath as if the memory still haunted him.

  "See, men like that, they never realize how lucky they are, do they? Because if I didn't think it would make my mum cry, I would have killed them all without thinking twice about it. And Camden ..." He rolled them over until he was on top of her. "I would have bashed his skull in."

  She didn't doubt him, not when his anger seemed to be manifesting all over again.

  "He wasn't worth it."

  "But you are."

  "Then show me," she said, pulling him deeper into the cradle of her body.

  She didn't have to tell him twice.

  He shoved her dress up, then yanked at her panties until they were down her legs and discarded somewhere on the floor. The harshness of it should have scared her, but the only thing it did was fan the flames of her arousal.

  God help her, she liked this side of him.

  And if he wanted to use her to calm himself down, she didn't mind.

  She didn't mind at all.

  Alfie was a better man than he had ever given himself credit for because instead of feeding that fucker his teeth, he'd managed to leave him breathing and in one piece.

  That didn't mean he was happy about it.

  And in his current state, he was liable to hurt anyone who currently crossed him.

  While Vera was sleeping and tucked away in his bed—a fact that cooled the worst of his anger—he'd remained wide-awake. His thoughts too chaotic to sleep.

  It wasn't enough that he had gotten his point across. That he doubted Camden would be showing his face anytime soon. It was the principle of it all. Breaking that dickhead's jaw wasn't enough even though it had felt fucking good at the time.

  He couldn't remember the last time he had been this on edge—when he had felt the flickers of rage flare to life inside him, and there was fuck all he could do to snuff the flames.

  Fucking Vera, hearing her sigh and scream his name, begging for more and more and more had helped ... some.

  Except all he could think about now was what he hadn't done.

  The old him would have killed him right where he stood, witnesses be fucking damned.

  And those two sides of him, the rational and irrational, were at war with each other.

  Because Camden Stevens was supposed to be a dead man, one who wished he had never come by their table and opened his mouth. He was supposed to be in an unmarked grave in a field somewhere where his body would rot for the rest of time, but the other side of Alfie also knew that in the end, it would have hurt Vera more.

  Not because she still had feelings for the git, he knew, but because he would have surely been arrested, and that was the last thing he wanted her to see. He was supposed to be different.

  Smarter.

  Even if he didn't feel it at the moment.

  "You've gotten soft, mate," Lachlan announced as he entered his office with a dire shake of his head.

  At first, Alfie had been glad he'd come to the warehouse to be alone with his thoughts. Finish working through the rest of his anger before he went home and climbed back into bed, but somehow, Lachlan was here now. Another reminder of how differently this night would have turned out five years ago.

  “The Alfie fucking Shelby I knew, yeah? He'd've taken his pound of flesh before the cocky bloke made it a foot out the door."

  While he did his best to ignore him, Alfie also knew he wasn't wrong. The man he used to be—the one who terrorized the streets of London—would have never tolerated the disrespect. He would have never given the man a chance to say even half as much as he had.

  Fucking hell, he wouldn't have even given him a chance to approach, let alone spew shite out of his mouth. It just wasn't done.

  But that wasn't the man he was supposed to be now.

  He was supposed to think with his head first. Rationalize. Make the smarter decision, but for once, that wasn't what he wanted.