I just hoped it didn’t end up killing me.

  11

  ANTHONY

  The gas tank was full, thank God, and I paused for long enough to send a prayer of thanks heavenward for that one. I almost never monitored the amount of fuel in my tanks, and it was pure dumb luck that I had enough now to do anything more than start the ship.

  I was going to have to do a whole lot more than that. I needed to not only start it but also get as far as I could safely go from shore. I’d blown through the market on my way here and had bags and bags full of food and water, the better to stock the place, and I’d arrived on my ship with one goal: Get out into the open water and hunker down until things got calm again.

  Until my uncle had done whatever he was going to do in retaliation for what had just happened.

  I ran through it again as I went downstairs to the galley and started to unpack the food. The attack had happened in a neighborhood where we’d thought we were safe, and where my uncle had felt secure enough to build his own personal house. It had taken out several people in the family—lesser cousins—and a few of our soldiers. One of the biggest businessmen in the family. No one I was close to, and I’d breathed a sigh about that, then felt awful for having discounted the people who did die.

  My uncle, when he called, didn’t know what was going on or why. And that right there made me nervous. He’d told me to get onto my ship and get out to sea, and that had made me even more nervous. My uncle didn’t believe in running from problems.

  He believed in killing them.

  I didn’t think I was at fault for what had happened, but I couldn’t stop my brain from mulling over the possibility that he was blaming me anyhow. I’d been in charge of getting close to Joseph Rossi and brokering a deal, and I’d failed at that. In the process of failing at that, I’d gotten far too close to Brooks Peterson. I couldn’t remember what I’d said to her that first night and couldn’t shake the feeling that I might have said too much. She was involved with the Rossis and this attack happened days after she stumbled back into my life. She’d known where I was going to be—or at least she’d thought she did—and the attack had happened within half an hour of me inviting her to the bar.

  It fit too neatly for me to ignore. A member of the Rossi clan comes calling and gets friendly, flashing her body and fluttering her eyelashes and doing her damnedest to remind me of what we’d once had. For what, though? Why? If the Rossis had wanted to attack us, did they have to use Brooks as an entry?

  I didn’t think so. I’d thought at first that she must have been behind the whole thing, but the longer I considered it, the more I wondered.

  I didn’t think my uncle would see it that way, though. I’d cozied up to a Rossi no matter how you cut it, and our family had been attacked. My uncle might have virtually demanded I do what I did, but he might also ignore that part if he needed a scapegoat.

  He might pin the whole thing on me.

  Which meant that getting out of town—and off land entirely—was my best shot at staying alive. This ship’s paperwork was registered under an alias and I’d bought it myself, with money I inherited from my father.

  If I was out on the water, I didn’t think my uncle would be able to track me down.

  Though I didn’t like being out on the water when so much was happening in the city. If Brooks was the mole and had somehow turned us over, I might be the only one who realized it.

  If Brooks wasn’t the mole, but had been in the wrong place at the wrong time... she might also be in a world of trouble. I didn’t know for sure that the Rossis were behind the attack, but if my uncle thought they were, and he thought Brooks might have been gathering information through her relationship with me...

  “She’ll be the first one he hits,” I murmured, the pieces on the board suddenly rearranging themselves into a picture that terrified me.

  This. This was why I hated being a part of this world. There were a million different things that might happen, and I would never be able to guess at the truth because I only had half the facts. I didn’t know who I could trust or who might be my enemy.

  I didn’t know who might be my friend, but wearing an enemy’s clothes simply because that was the family she came from.

  Now that I was slowing down, I realized I didn’t want to think Brooks had done anything wrong. I’d never known her to be straightforward, exactly, but I’d also never seen her stab anyone she loved in the back.

  Which, I guessed, begged the question of whether she loved me enough to take care of me. I would have thought so, once. These days, I had no way of knowing.

  Suddenly, I heard my name. Not once, but twice, and then a third time.

  Someone outside was screaming for me.

  I dashed up the steps, my hand on the gun at my belt and my ears attuned to what was going on outside. Who the hell was outside yelling my name after dark at the harbor? And were they insane?

  I got to the top of the stairs and ran along the deck toward the back of the boat, my pace increasing as I went. Because now that I was out here, I recognized the voice that was yelling my name.

  Brooks had come to my ship.

  And I had no idea why she was here.

  12

  BROOKS

  By the time I got to his boat, courtesy of a bike I’d stolen back at the bar, I’d changed my mind once again. I wanted whatever information he could give me, yes. But I also wanted to make sure he was okay and he knew what was going down out there. He definitely knew his family had been hit, because he’d high-tailed it for a secure location. But I didn’t know if he’d have taken the jump all the way to realizing the Rossis might assume the Massimos thought it was them, and hit before the Massimos could hit them.

  Too many Italians doing too much crazy shit, honestly.

  But I understood every piece of it. We were all in this for one reason: We wanted to protect our family, and we’d do whatever it took to make sure we did that.

  The problem was, I had a foot on each side of that particular line. Half of me—and more than half my heart—was on the Rossi/Brennan side. It was where I’d grown up, their families welcoming me when my own family proved too difficult to deal with. I loved them with everything I had in me and would have done anything for them. Including go to war with the Massimos.

  Except that I had a foot in their camp, too, courtesy of fucking Anthony Massimo.

  I jumped from the motorcycle, letting it fall behind me, and ran for the Ally, which was already starting to pull away from the dock. The fucker was going to leave without even a single glance back, and though I couldn’t blame him for that, a part of me was screaming bloody murder about him leaving without bothering to return any of my texts.

  Or wait for me.

  Because if he was in trouble, then so was I. It had taken two for us to meet up again—at least that second time—and Joseph had come far too close to catching us. If that was the situation that had somehow caused all of this—I didn’t know how it could be, but if it was—then it meant we were both in hot water. And he wasn’t even fucking waiting for me before taking himself off land and into hiding.

  Asshole.

  I hit the end of the dock in full stride and leapt, not bothering to think about whether I could seriously make it from the dock to the boat without taking a cold bath in the ocean. I came down on the deck of the ship a moment later, though, hitting hard and throwing myself into a roll to try to save my knees. I’d just come out of the roll when I felt hands grabbing me and yanking me to my feet.

  Then turning and slamming me back against the first wall available.

  “Brooks, what the hell are you doing here?”

  I looked up, still a bit disoriented from the jump and roll, and found Anthony Massimo in front of me.

  Looking furious.

  “What am I doing here?” I snarled. “What are you doing running away without even checking your texts? Did you even realize I was trying to get in touch with you? Did you care? Or did you see them and just blow right past them?”

  I grabbed his shoulders, threw my weight against him, and caught him by surprise, managing to reverse our positions and throw him up against the wall. His eyes narrowed, and he snarled in response.

  “Text you? You think I’m going to text you when my family’s being attacked and I’m being left out in the cold? You think I want to talk to you when I think there’s a good chance that you’re the one who turned us in and sent the Rossis after us?”

  He did a quick dance and suddenly our positions were reversed again, my head hitting the wall with a solid thunk when he turned me. I twitched, furious, and made to reach for my gun, but he caught my wrists and pinned them to the wall above me.

  “No guns,” he snapped. “I know you have at least one on you, but this isn’t the time, Brooks.”

  I almost spat right in his face. How the fuck had I thought this was going to go? Anthony was a Massimo and his family had just been attacked. I’d known—or guessed— they would have thought it was the Rossis, and with that in mind it made sense that he thought I was behind it.

  I wasn’t.

  But he didn’t know that.

  Though maybe he should have. I’d never sold him out, no matter what we did or who was asking, and he knew it. I’d always had his back. even when I shouldn’t have. I’d always covered for him.

  Did he think that had changed?

  “Why are you here, Brooks?” he asked again, his eyes aflame with suspicion.

  Right. Time to be the bigger person. Because what I’d just thought was true. No, it wasn’t my fault if he was too fucking stupid to figure it out. It just meant I had to actually tell him.

  “I came,” I ground out, “to make sure you were fucking safe, you asshole. You actually think the Rossis came after your family, or that I sent them? Don’t make me laugh, Anthony. I’ve always had your back. I’ve always covered for you. And when I heard the Massimos were hit, you were the first thing I thought of. I hauled ass to the bar to make sure you were okay. And when you weren’t there, I knew you’d come here. And I came after you. Because if the Rossis decide to hit the Massimos before the Massimos hit the Rossis, I’m the only thing that’s going to stand between you and the business end of Joseph Rossi’s gun. Don’t be an idiot, Anthony. If I’d wanted you dead, I would have done the job myself.”

  I left out the part about wanting to come to see if he had more information on what his family might do.

  Honestly, this just didn’t seem like the time to bring that up.

  He stared into my eyes like he was trying to see right into my brain to tell whether I was telling him the truth... and I stared right back.

  “Call me a liar,” I hissed. “I dare you.”

  His eyes got even narrower as he considered doing just that.

  And then he slammed his mouth down on mine and kissed me like his entire body was a weapon and he was trying to kill me with it. I froze, so shocked that I couldn’t move for a moment, and then my body remembered who this was and what we were going through and came alive like a flame bursting to life. I yanked my hands from his grasp and tangled my fingers in his hair, holding his head still while I let his mouth ravage mine. It wasn’t a kiss, really. It was a battle. All tongues and teeth and harsh, rasping breaths as we tore at each other.

  I’d never been so aroused in my life. My body hummed with the tension we’d been building between us and the memory of what we’d once been, and his rocking hips and hard cock told me he was erect and ready, his body seeming to answer whatever mine was telling it.

  I groaned deep in my throat and took one hand down his chest and stomach, finding his cock and pressing against it. He returned the groan and I felt his mouth curve in a wicked smile against my lips.

  God, this man.

  A few quick flicks of his hands and his belt was undone, the hard length of his erection pushing up over the waistband of his jeans. I brushed my fingers over the soft velvet of the tip, feeling him wet and ready, and my knees turned to jelly. When his fingers went to work on my own belt and slid downward, their tips hot and demanding against the flesh of my belly, I almost cried with need.

  I’d wanted a lot of men in my life, but the want I felt for Anthony was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was full of the tension and need of this moment, yes. But it also held the echoes of everything we’d ever been to each other. Echoes of that one night we spent together, when we fit up against each other like we should have always been side by side. This moment, this need, held everything I’d ever felt for him, since we were too young to realize what we had between us.

  It held the desperation of knowing that we might die at any moment. The realization that this might be our only chance to finally make good on a lifetime’s worth of promises.

  I yanked his jeans down over his hips and cupped his ass, yanking him close enough to feel the wetness on the tip of his cock, and he grunted.

  “Do I need to remind you we’re on the deck of my ship and well within sight of anyone who might be standing on the dock?” he asked, biting at my ear and letting his breath mist over my neck.

  “Does it feel to you like I fucking care?” I answered, guiding one of his hands between my legs. I was wet and hot and ready, and it didn’t have anything to do with being on the dock of his ship or in a place where people might see us.

  It had everything to do with Anthony Massimo finally having his hands all over my body.

  “God, woman,” he moaned.

  I threw my head back and lived for a moment at the point where his fingers were caressing me, everything else disappearing in the need building inside me. “Don’t stop,” I breathed. “Fuck everything else.”

  “I actually thought,” he whispered, “that this would be me fucking you.”

  He propped his hands under my ass and lifted me, forcing me to spread my legs and wrap them around him to keep from falling. The moment I was high enough, he brought me down on his cock, sliding in to the hilt and taking what he knew was his. I threw my head back and cried out, my body already riding higher than I’d ever felt it at the fullness inside me.

  And then he started fucking me. In and out, holding me against the wall as he spread my legs further to allow him better access. There was no rhythm to it. No smooth, easy flow of people who’ve had sex before. This was all raw need, animal magnetism. Screaming lust and all the history that had come between us before. He pounded into me and I took every thrust, my nails digging into his shoulders and my teeth buried in his neck.

  It was exactly what I would have said sex between us would be, if I’d been able to think clearly enough to have an opinion.

  I couldn’t. I was too busy taking him in deeper and deeper and focusing on the spot he kept hitting inside me. The spot that was taking me up and up and up, toward a glass ceiling that was going to explode into a million pieces in three... two... one.

  I came apart for him, breathing his name into his neck and going so still that I thought the world might have ended. Moments later, he joined me, pumping into me one last time and then growling my name like an animal. He held me tight and buried himself in me, everything still as he emptied himself, his cock twitching and making my own orgasm extend on and on.

  It was all over far too quickly, and the moment my brain came back online, I realized how fucking exposed we were. As far as we knew, we were both wanted by various mob families in the city.

  And we were out here fucking on the deck of a ship where any sharpshooter could take us out.

  “We need to get into shelter,” I whispered.

  “I know,” he whispered. “But I don’t particularly want to move.”

  I drew his head back so I could look into his eyes. “Maybe not. But I’m assuming you have a bedroom somewhere on this beast, and it would be a whole lot safer to continue this there.”

  His mouth twitched. “Leave it to you to take a beating like that and come out of it strategizing how to make it even better.”

  I touched one fingertip to his lips. “You know you love me,” I said. “Don’t try to deny it.”

  I had no idea whether that was true. But we were on the same side of the line, now, and that felt awfully right. Was that what love was? Finding yourself allied with someone else and feeling so right with them they felt like the home you’d never really had?

  I didn’t know. I would have liked to have said that we’d have the time to figure that out.

  But I wasn’t stupid enough to think that was true.

  Right now, I didn’t even know if either of us was going to live through the night.

  13

  ANTHONY

  We didn’t get to enjoy our moment of peace for very long.

  Not that the night was peaceful. Being with Brooks was like being at war, every move a battle of wills, every statement the start of an argument. She was so fiery that I wondered if she actually had been born with red hair, so aggressive that I was constantly on my guard for what she would try next.

  It was like meeting my other half. The fire to my peace. The fight to my mellow outlook on life. And it was good.

  Beyond good.

  But I was trying very hard not to put a label on it. And when she woke up at 5 in the morning to take a phone call, I knew I needed to come back to the real world. Brooks and I might have had a moment here on this boat, but it was never meant to last. We were never meant to last. We’d been born in the wrong universe for that.

  “Sloane,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep and sex. She listened for several long moments, then closed her eyes and nodded. “Got it. Yes, I’m with him. Yes, we’ll head in.”

  She hung up and turned to me, the shadows in her eyes deeper than they had been half an hour ago.

  “What?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

  “That was Sloane.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “So I heard. Get to the point, Brooks.”