The Arrangement (16 page)

Viviana decided she loved him even more because of that. There had been no respect shown to her father, mother, or brother. There had been none for her when she was made to hold Sonny’s hand at her father’s funeral, probably the same hand that was used to hold the gun and pulled the trigger to end Roman’s life. It made her weak and unsure, taught her that even blood didn’t hold a flame to greed. Her learned respect was created from nothing more than fear. She didn’t want to be that girl anymore, and she sure as hell knew she wasn’t, but it had taken a lot to get there, starting with Anton.

“I didn’t want to lose mine, either,” she heard herself admitting. Reaching down to find his hand holding her knee tightly, she uncurled the fingers and weaved them with hers. Viviana allowed them both a moment to breathe before she spoke again. “I didn’t want to be scared; I was so tired of crying. It won’t matter if I’m thirty or eighty, it’ll never really go away. It’s always going to hurt.”

Viviana swore she felt wetness smear from his cheek to hers, but she didn’t acknowledge his tears. It was more than likely he wouldn’t want her to anyway. His grasp on her leg released just long enough to rub his face.

Anton cleared his throat, voice turning hoarse when he said, “So, on Sunday …”

“What about it?”

“There’s a baker that’s always made the cakes for our family whenever we had special occasions. He’s opened up his shop to us personally for that day. If you want to go with me at noon, we’ll have one more thing crossed off your list.”

“I can do that,” she agreed, settling back into his hold with a sigh. “So I guess there won’t be a party tomorrow, huh?”

“Oh, there’ll be a party, and we’ll still have to go. Actually, it’ll give them a chance to celebrate my father in one way or another, too. All the more reason to drink good vodka. Like they need an excuse to drink.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Viviana noticed a very mousey looking nurse standing with a clipboard in her hand and staring wide-eyed at the sudden influx of men in the small waiting room. With a nod in the woman’s direction, Anton coughed to gain her attention.

The woman startled at his simple look. Viviana guessed then that the last name on the clipboard probably spoke volumes as to who the woman thought she was dealing with, and everything she thought, well, it’d probably be right.

“Immediate family for a Mr. Daniil Avdonin?”

Every Bratva man who wasn’t already standing did. Viviana couldn’t help but snort under her breath at the sight. More than once she’d spent nights like this in the hospital when she was younger, watching her father’s men rush in with wives and children bundled up. The Bratva was not the Cosa Nostra, but they were still a family in every way that counted for them.

Sasha was back at her son’s side in a flash, her hand resting atop his on Viviana’s knee. “I’m his wife. This is his son.”

“Could you come with me for a moment, ma’am? A more private area—”

Anton spoke up, tone gruff and low when he interrupted with, “Here is just fine. Whatever you have to say, they’ll be told regardless.”

The nurse was once again looking like she wanted to bolt. Viviana was left wondering where in the hell the doctor was. “Yes, okay then. Uh, so a viral infection has settled in his lungs. There’s a lot of fluid that they’re attempting to remove, but we had a collapse. By the looks of the x-rays, there is a good chance pneumonia has started in as well. He can go home …”

“Go home?” Anton growled.

“In a few days,” the nurse finished quietly. “If everything goes fine with removing the fluid and getting rid of the infection. Otherwise, he’ll probably be here for at least the next few months.”

Two sets of hands squeezed painfully tight on Viviana’s leg.

“A few
months
.”

“That is the best time frame the doctor could give, considering his current state. He has a good appetite, has gained weight since coming off the chemo, and besides this, health-wise Mr. Avdonin has done considerably well. But yes, a few months, and at the most if his health remains somewhat well, a year. The cancer is beginning to spread through his blood if the latest blood work is any indication. We think it is best that he does go home, and repeatedly, he’s voiced that very wish.”

Sasha’s broken laugh hurt Viviana to hear. “I would like to see him, please.”

The nurse nodded. “Absolutely, they’re just moving him into a private room now.”

When Anton didn’t immediately move, his arms still locked tight around Viviana while his mother followed behind the nurse, she turned in his grasp. In his eyes, she could see the pain, all the things he didn’t want to say or admit, but she also knew he didn’t have a choice.

Sometimes, those strong men needed an even stronger woman to make them see it.

“I can’t—”

Viviana shook her head, steeling her emotions and frowning. “Go. Right now.”

• • •

“You should tell her.”

Daniil’s voice was so low that Anton strained to hear his father above the beeping monitors. The tube in his lung had been removed two hours before, and after a brief nap induced by something a little stronger than morphine, the sick man was once again awake. Anton’s mother, on the other hand, had finally fallen asleep in the lounging chair in the corner of the room.

Anton had spent the last bit of daylight moving back and forth between his father’s room and the waiting room, allowing the few visitors the hospital agreed could go in. No one who was sick, had been sick, or had come in contact with someone else who might have been sick was allowed in. That cut out well over half of the men.

“Dad …”

“You
should
,” the older man insisted, before he fell into yet another coughing fit.

Knowing his father wouldn’t want him to fuss over the cough, Anton settled back into his chair with blurred vision and stared at the wall. “Is this Daniil, my father speaking, or Daniil, the man raised by Nicoli and the Bratva?”

“I am one and the same, Ant.”

No, he disagreed. Too many times he’d seen his father’s personality flip a switch when it needed to. Just like his did. Just like Nicoli’s had. There were separate men who lived inside them from the time they walked out of their homes with a gun in their waistband, to the time they walked back in it. The men who handled money made from laundering, drugs, prostitution, trafficking, and anything else illegal were not the same men who laid their wives and children down at night. At least, not in their hearts.

“That’s bullshit.”

“Right now,” Daniil said softly, “I am the same. Dying, yes. Hurting for you, yes. Thinking of the difference it may make to the Bratva, yes. And I do not think telling Viviana the truth will hurt them a bit. The Cosa Nostra are a different story. It may make her reconsider a few things—”

“
Me
,” Anton interrupted sharply, ignoring the wince his father responded with. “It will damn well make her reconsider me, Dad.”

Once more, wetness slipped down his cheeks, betraying him. Anton didn’t cry. He just didn’t. Fuck, his chest hurt like nothing else at just the thought of what could happen if Viviana knew the truth that had been hidden from her for years. It damn near killed him when he found out, but it didn’t make a difference to the things he already felt for her.

“He was clear on his instructions,” Anton muttered, wiping at his face and hiding it from view. “Nicoli didn’t want her to know for her own safety and because she already loved Roman. If she figured it out, that was different. Don’t tell me she wouldn’t stop and think for a moment if that was the only reason why I wanted her married to me; she absolutely would.”

“You’re not giving her enough credit.”

“I love her. I won’t have her believe my desire to marry her is based on whose blood runs through her veins and past mistakes. I won’t fucking do it, and you better not, either.”

Daniil’s chest rattled and Anton immediately felt guilty for pulling the boss rank on his father. This was the time when he should have been nothing more than a worried, saddened son.

That didn’t matter though, because switches got flipped.

They just did.

He would always be Boss first, and Anton second.

• • •

Golden whiskey swirled in the glass as Anton placed the tumbler back down to his desk. After his mother refused to come home and midnight began to approach, he’d found Viviana sleeping with her head on the shoulder of one of her bulls before he took his love home.

They didn’t say a thing on the drive. He white knuckled the steering wheel while pretty brown eyes watched him, all wary and concerned. At his insistence, she showered and readied for bed, but Anton hadn’t joined her when she slipped under their sheets well over an hour before.

The time on his cell phone blinked
2 A.M.
The device crashed into the wall seconds later, glass from the screen splintering to the floor. Too much time and too many things on his mind led Anton to the worst place possible.

One glass of whiskey followed two, then three. Three quarters of the bottle was downed and the heavy buzz had settled around his heart and senses. When his fists cracked into the oak of his desk, teeth clenching, the quiet whine of Rocco outside of the office told him he wasn’t quite so alone anymore.

“Fuck,” Anton hissed, watching red bloom so painfully sweet across his knuckles.

Then, the softest knock had him sighing. Despite his rules about the office, Viviana opened the door and slipped in without his permission. Crossing the floor in silence, he found her hands curving up under the suit jacket he still wore. Her mouth trailed gently over his shoulder before her lips pressed to the side of his throat. He swallowed thickly.

“What is it?” Viviana asked. “I’ve been listening to you for the last hour and a half.”

“Nothing. Go back to bed.”

“Are you coming, too?”

Anton scowled at the ceiling, avoiding her gaze. “Not right now.”

“Are you coming at all?”

That stopped his breath up short. “Excuse me?”

“You’d always be there with me in the morning, that’s what you said. But you’re just about ready to drink yourself to sleep in here by the looks of it, and I’ll wake up alone. What’s wrong, Anton? It’s more than just your dad, right?”

“I said it was—”

“Stop lying to me!”

The hurt in her tone rang so clear to him, but his anger had risen, too. Anger for lying, anger for hiding, and anger for not being strong enough to tell her the truth because of his own selfish fears.

“What do you want me to say? You don’t know what it’s like to hide this shit from you. I acted like a shitty son to my father earlier when all he wanted to do was help me! To help
us
!”

At the widening of her eyes, Anton realized what he had blurted out in his drunkenness. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. I’m just … tired, Vine. Really.”

“Bullshit. I thought you were upset over Daniil, but clearly it’s something else, too. This isn’t the first time you’ve hid something from me. Do you think by omitting it, it’s not a lie?”

“You don’t know a damn—”

An opened hand struck his jaw with aimed precision. Fire burned through those beautiful eyes of hers. The faintest trace of blood skimmed over his tongue. Oh, fuck, her slap stung like a son of a bitch. That was just about the last thing Anton expected her to do.

“Don’t tell me that. Don’t ever tell me what I don’t know when you won’t speak to me. You wanted me just as I was, remember?”

Fists clenched at his sides, anger exhaling from the strangled breath he released. The air seemed to turn a little thicker when she looked up at him so openly unhappy with tears brimming. “You going to hit me back now, put me in my place and show me how to behave, Anton?”

“No.”

Never
, his mind screamed, but he was awfully goddamn angry.

His dick was as hard as a rock and his mind was hazy with whiskey, so when her fingers started loosening up those buttons on his dress shirt, switches just flipped all over again. He had her ass up on the edge of his desk in a second. The glass of whiskey and opened liquor bottle skidded across the desk before falling to the floor, sending glass shards scattering and golden liquor pooling at his shoes. A laptop and lamp crashed to the floor as well.

Sweet kisses dotted the side of his mouth before her teeth cut into his jaw, her fingers scoring lines down his throat with sharp nails. Fuck, he’d take feeling anything from her at that point. If it was hurt she wanted him to feel, Anton was already filled.

“This is what you needed?” Viviana demanded, popping the buttons on his shirt. When his mouth came dangerously close to hers with a growl forming at the back of his throat, she bit out at him. “Come on, then.
Fuck
me
.”

Anton ached. From his chest, to his cock, to his heart, it damn well throbbed. “Jesus—”

“There’s no God here, only me.” Tears slipped over her trembling lips as Viviana looked up through her lashes and frowned. “But that’s just what you want, right?”

Another drag of her nails across his bare middle had Anton shuddering. And he gave it back just as hard, forcing her thighs wider, knowing it had to have burned. She only tilted her head back to expose the silken flesh of her neck and sighed. That shirt of his she wore had nothing underneath it, just her bare sex on the wood of his desk, wetness seeping from her pink pussy, and she reached down to spread those silken lips open for him.

“You’re not even sorry, are you?”

“What do you want me to say?” he ground out, teeth gnashing on the words.

Her gaze met his bluntly. “Don’t treat me like the woman you don’t want me to be.”

Raven hair twisted in his fist, tugging her head back so he could watch her face for just a moment. There wasn’t a lick of fear there, no hesitation or worry. A ragged exhale left his lungs in the most painful way. The smell of whiskey washed over her lips and jaw as her hands started working at the belt and zipper of his pants.

“Can you even say it to me?” Viviana said, voice wavering.

“Sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”