I toy with it for a long, quiet spell, dragging my finger in slow circles through the condensation. She finishes most of her drink before I’ve even taken a sip of mine.

  “Heard anything from Dima yet?” I ask when she sets the glass down.

  “Still undercover,” she explains. “I got a text from him a few hours ago, but nothing since. Said he’s got a lead. He’s following it as we speak.”

  I nod. “I’ll need you to keep an eye on Taylor for me.”

  Mila sighs. “I thought you might. What do you want me to extract?”

  “I don’t want you to extract anything,” I tell her. “I just need you to look after her.”

  She frowns. “Look after her?”

  “She lost her mother tonight.”

  “Oh.” Her voice falls flat.

  Mother. As far as Mila is concerned, it’s a dirty word.

  “We’re going to have to help her bury Fiona, and I don’t think Celine or Archie are going to be around to support her through the process.”

  “So I have to?” She snorts. “Ilarion, you know I’m not good with that type of thing. You’re setting me up for failure here.”

  “It might help you. You know, to have a woman your own age to spend some time with.”

  She narrows her eyes. “Are you trying to set me up with the mother of your child?”

  “I’m trying to keep her here. It’s not safe for her out in the wild with the Bellasios running rampant. If it was just her, that would be one thing. But she’s carrying my baby.”

  “Ah, I see,” Mila muses shrewdly. “You want me to do it so that you don’t have to.”

  I bristle and say nothing. She’s got me there and she knows it. No point adding kindling to her fire.

  “She’s really made an impact on you, hasn’t she?”

  I bristle. “She’s pregnant. My interest in her ends there.”

  “You haven’t been with a woman in months, dear brother,” she says with a playful smirk. “What was it about this particular specimen that caught your interest?”

  “You don’t know a damn thing about who I’ve been with.”

  “Dima talks,” she answers dismissively. “Like an old fishwife, actually.”

  “That fucking—”

  She raises her hands. “Oh, calm down. We were just worried about you.”

  “You were worried I wasn’t getting laid?”

  “Well, Dima was worried about that. I was just worried that you were fixating too much on Benedict Bellasio. I don’t actually give two shits about your sex life.”

  “The two of you need to get lives of your own.”

  She rolls her eyes. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I didn’t hear any questions in there.”

  “What about Taylor caught your interest?”

  I don’t expect a dozen different answers to float up to my lips the moment the question leaves Mila’s.

  Her warm eyes. Her luscious lips. How her moan sounds in a sweat-slicked car when the rain is pounding on the roof overhead…

  But even as I rattle off the list in my head, I realize it had more to do with the way she’d fought back. The way she’d matched me, stride for stride, without any fear. The way she tempered that strength with enough vulnerability to make me understand what was fueling all her rage.

  The way she’d opened up and let me in. The way she’d made me feel like a man. Not a mob boss. Not a killer.

  Just a man.

  “Well?” Mila presses. “I’m all ears.”

  “Nothing. Nothing about her interested me,” I growl. “I was just horny.”

  30

  TAYLOR

  It’s an ocean of flowers in front of me. Pastel pinks and eye-burning oranges and whites in cream, ivory, and eggshell. The color cacophony is making my head swim.

  “Do you want to go carnations or gladioli?”

  I blink at Mila, wondering why she’s here at all. She clearly doesn’t want to be. Not that she’s said anything to that effect. It’s just this distant look in her eyes that gives me the impression she’d rather be anywhere else than here.

  I don’t blame her; I don’t want to be here, either.

  The display window has Chapman’s Floral Boutique printed in elegant gold script across the glass. I’ve passed this place before, more than once. Three years ago, I walked in to buy Mom flowers for her forty-sixth birthday. They were so expensive that I walked right back out, with only a single red rose in hand because it was all I could afford on my college-student budget.

  I’d filled a champagne flute with water and stuck the rose in there. Celine and I put it on the side of her breakfast tray, and I vowed that I’d go back to Chapman’s one day and buy Mom a proper bouquet of flowers when I could afford it.

  Now, here I am.

  Too little, too late.

  “Taylor?” When I don’t turn around, Mila steps in front of me, forcing herself into my eyeline. “I need you to make some decisions here. What kinds of flowers do you want on your mother’s funeral wreath?”

  I cringe and shake my head. “I don’t care,” I whisper. “You choose.”

  “She’s not my mother.”

  “Well, maybe if she had been, you’d have been a fuck-ton nicer,” I snap viciously before I twist around and walk to the opposite end of the store.

  I stop in front of a trough filled with orchids. They’re gorgeous. Whisper-soft and ethereal. But as beautiful as they are, my eye goes to the yellow sunflowers sitting next to them in a rough cement vase.

  A tear slips down my cheek. It’s a dark world sometimes. I think it could use some brightening. Mom’s words, not mine. As always, I hated them whenever I heard them. As always, she was right.

  “Here.”

  I look down and realize that Mila is offering me a tissue. I take it gingerly and wipe away my tears. I’m so wrecked right now that I don’t even care that I’m crying in front of her. I don’t give a damn who sees me sobbing. Her or her brother or the whole damn world—let them all watch.

  Let them all know I loved her.

  “I’m sorry,” Mila says in the awkward, curt voice of someone unused to apologizing. “I… I’m not good with this kind of thing.”

  “Death?” I mumble. I hold back the urge to arch a brow. I’ve seen just how much death she should be “good with.”

  “No,” she says. “Not death, per se. Just the sensitivity that should come with it. I’ve buried two parents now, and I didn’t cry at either one of their funerals. I didn’t even go to my mother’s.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugs. “I was only nine when she died. I guess I was more interested in playing with my dolls. I didn’t really process that it was a permanent sort of thing, anyway.” She scowls when she sees my jaw drop. “You don’t need to feel sorry for me. She wasn’t really cut out to be a mother.”

  “Still, it can’t have been easy.”

  She lifts her eyes to mine, and for just a second, I glimpse a flash of her inner trauma. Scars seen from a distance, but ugly and twisted enough to trigger a moment of sympathy pain.

  “I had Ilarion,” she says softly. “He made things easy for me.”

  It’s the first thing she’s said that makes her feel human. It’s also the first time I realize that her love for Ilarion goes far deeper than I realized. It’s just hidden behind a veneer of aloof disinterest.

  “I wish Celine were here with me,” I admit. We finally have some common ground and I'm going to take advantage. “Sometimes, I don’t realize how much she supports me, until she’s not around to do it.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” Mila suggests. “Relying on other people is a good way to get—to be disappointed.”

  To get hurt. Those were the words she’d just avoided saying. And it begs the question: how many people have hurt her?

  Enough to have broken the naive little girl who used to play with dolls, clearly.

  Mila clears her throat, an obvious ploy to change the subject. “Do you really want me to choose the flowers?”

  “I…” I trail off as I continue staring at the sunflowers. They’re pretty, but altogether too happy a flower for a funeral. “You’re right. I should be the one to choose them.”

  And then I burst into tears.

  It’s a pattern I’ve been dealing with over the last twenty-four hours: I’m fine, I’m handling it all, and then I’m not. It’s just worse right now because I’m in public.

  A few heads swivel in my direction, but I can’t stop the shaking sobs from pouring out. The dam is broken, and I have enough experience to know that trying to stop the tears will only make them come harder.

  “Blyat’,” I hear Mila mutter under her breath as she steers me to a secluded corner of the store.

  She sits me down in a cushioned chair beside a large clay pot filled with lilies. “Everyone here probably thinks I’m crazy,” I mumble once I’ve exhausted Mila’s tissue supply.

  “Oh, fuck them.” She rolls her eyes, pulling up a chair next to me. “Caring about what other people think is a waste of time.”

  I glance at her sidelong. The question has been on the tip of my tongue this whole time, but now it feels more appropriate to ask. “Mila, why are you here?”

  “You’d prefer to be alone?”

  “No, I mean, why did you come out with me today? You don’t even like me.”

  “I don’t like anyone,” she says, like it’s a self-evident fact. In a way, it is. “So don’t take that personally. And as for why I came with you today…” She sighs. “No one should have to be alone in their grief.”

  “Is that code for ‘my brother made me’?” I guess with a pained laugh.

  She smiles. “Both things can be true at the same time.”

  I gnaw at the inside of my cheek and pick the beds of my nails simultaneously. All my nervous habits coming to play at once. “Your brother knows what he’s doing, right?”

  She nods with understanding of the question behind the question. “You’re worried he won’t be able to rescue your sister.”

  “And my dad,” I remind her. “I want them both back.”

  She nods again, her expression falling back into impassivity. “If anyone can get them back, it’s Ilarion.” She says it like she believes it. That makes me believe it, too.

  Somewhat.

  I run a hand over my face. “I’ve been going over that day over and over again in my head,” I whisper hoarsely. “Why would they take Celine? She doesn’t have anything to do with whatever dispute they have with Ilarion.”

  “Yes, but the Bellasios got wind of their engagement. They see Celine as a bargaining chip they can use to control Ilarion,” she explains.

  I hate that it makes so much sense.

  “What about my dad?”

  Her expression remains hard to read, but I get the feeling she’s trying not to upset me further. “I don’t know, Taylor,” she hedges after a long, hesitant pause. “Maybe they took him as insurance. I can’t claim to know what Benedict Bellasio’s plan is.”

  I shake my head. “Celine can’t have known about all this. The Bellasios, the feud, any of it. She would never have gotten involved with Ilarion if she’d known.”

  Mila raises an eyebrow. “Or maybe you don’t know your sister as well as you think you do.”

  “You know, I’m getting really sick of people telling me that,” I snap, jumping to my feet. “Maybe you guys are the ones who don’t know us.”

  “Okay.” Mila follows me with her calculating gaze. “You think you know your sister so well? Tell me: how will she react to your pregnancy?”

  My hands flutters to my stomach automatically. “I… That…” I take a deep breath. “As far as I’m concerned, Celine doesn’t have to know who the father of this baby is. But she’ll be happy for me nonetheless.”

  I feel like an asshole for even thinking it, but that’s the only path forward that I can see.

  Mila nods. “There’s things you don’t tell your sister. Well, maybe the same is true for her, too. You can know a person your entire life and still not really know them.”

  “Who hurt you?” The question flies out of my mouth before my brain can even register it.

  I expect her to avoid answering, but she meets my eyes levelly. “My mother was the first. My father was the second and the last. The only person who has ever had my back is Ilarion. Which is how I know he’ll get your sister back. Whatever my brother does, he does for the family. For his Bratva. And he doesn’t let emotion get in the way of what he knows he must do.” She sighs and rises to her feet. “Now, I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to pick the flowers for your mother’s funeral. We can’t linger here forever.”

  Something nags at my brain as I follow Mila to the front of the store. He doesn’t let emotion get in the way of what he knows he must do. Mila might think that’s a positive characteristic.

  But it scares the shit out of me.

  “Well?” Mila says when we’re faced with the florist. “What’s it going to be?”

  “I want yellow,” I tell the lady behind the counter. “Yellow sunflowers. As many as you have.”

  “Yellow?” The florist looks at me, a bit uncertain. “Are you sure, ma’am? People usually go with white for funerals.”

  Given how I feel right now, I’d be picking out rotting black flowers if I could find them. But this is not about me or what I want. This is about what my mother would have wanted.

  And she wanted to go.

  The least I can do is make her last moments above ground a little bit brighter.

  31

  ILARION

  I’m in the gym pushing through the burn of a bench press when Dima finds me.

  He’s dressed in a scruffy black hoodie and ripped jean shorts that end just above his knees. “What the hell are you wearing?” I scoff, looking at his clothes with distaste as I rack the weights.

  “Kiss my ass, man. I was undercover.”

  “As what? A douche-y high school jock with a room temperature IQ?”

  Dima rolls his dark eyes and sits on the bench across from me. “Do you want to know what I found out or not?”

  “Fine.”

  He pushes up his sleeves and cracks his knuckles as he launches into his report. “My intel suggests that they’re being held in separate locations. I’ve got a lead that’s close to cracking. I just have to find the right incentive to make him talk.”

  “Fists usually work.”

  “You’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” Dima says, running his hand over his fresh crew cut.

  “I had a vor who used to say that. He’s dead now.”

  Dima picks at a fraying thread on the bench. “Don’t worry; I’ll use my fists if I have to. The guy’s weak. He’s on the verge of singing like the fat lady, and when he does, I’ll be able to deliver you both Celine and Archie.”

  “If it comes to a choice—”

  “Don’t worry.” He very obviously resists rolling his eyes again. “I know which one to choose.”

  “Good.” I load a hundred more pounds onto the bar and get in position for another set. My arms are trembling and burning, but I know better than anyone that pain is a hungry bitch. If you give into it, it only asks for more and more, until you have nothing left to give and nothing to show for your effort.

  You ignore pain. You never feed it.

  Lust is exactly the same.

  Dima watches me with a sour expression. “You don’t need to show off, you know. We get it. You’re strong.” He sighs and scratches at the back of his head. “How are things here, by the way?”

  I tense and sit up, abandoning the weights altogether. “Mila’s helping Taylor plan her mother’s funeral.”

  He winces. “Fuck. Fiona’s dead?”

  “I forget how much you miss when you go undercover,” I muse. “She died yesterday. Punctured her carotid after extracting a promise from me on her deathbed.”

  “Christ,” Dima curses, his eyes going wide. “What was the promise?”

  “That I’d take care of her daughter.”

  “Yeah? Which one?” I narrow my eyes and he gives me an apologetic smile. “Come on, brother, I’ve seen the way you look at Taylor.”

  That rankles, because I do not look at her in any specific way. In fact, I take pains to avoid looking at her altogether.

  “Tell me: how do I ‘look at her’?” I drawl.

  “Like a man who hates the fact that he can’t stop looking at her,” he says with a shrug. “I saw the two of you in the corridor talking during the engagement party.”

  “So?” I say. “It was small talk.”

  “Brother,” Dima chides, “it didn’t look like small talk. It looked like a full-blown argument between two…”

  “Two what?”

  “Well…two lovers,” he explains. “And, just a heads up, I wasn’t the only one who noticed you. Celine was watching when I walked up to her. I tried to talk to her, get her attention off you, but she was definitely…distracted.”

  “Who was distracted?” Mila asks, walking in. She stops short when she catches sight of Dima. “Dima!” she cries, flying to him and throwing herself into his arms.

  He catches her in a bear hug and presses a kiss to her cheek. “You been keeping busy while I was away?”

  “I guess,” she says, releasing him and sitting down on the bench next to him. “Boss man stuck me with the boring job. I think this is the first time in my life I’ve had to pretend like I cared about flowers. It went about as expected.”

  “I heard about the funeral,” Dima says, turning to me. “When’s it gonna be?”

  “Tomorrow,” I reply. “Arrangements have been made.”

  “You’re going to do it without Celine?” Dima asks. He sounds as incredulous as he looks.

  “That was Taylor’s decision.” I lift my hands up in self-defense. “Apparently, Fiona wanted to be buried as soon as possible after her death. I told her we could keep her on ice, wait it out. She refused. Vocally.”

  I watch Mila, waiting for her to supply more information on their day together, but she remains tight-lipped about the outing.