Ambition, page 3
She used the tool to…
I blink away the memory. I think of ones that built me up for that moment of finding her there.
Seeing my mom come home covered in blood. My dad with his arm in a sling. Watching as my father put stitches in my mother’s thigh after an overzealous target tried to shred an artery and a hospital visit might spread too much information.
I know this life.
It is the furthest thing from okay. And if Isadora could drop just an ounce of her fucking ambition, I could provide for us. I could take the risks and keep her safe, doing other jobs, less dangerous shit than fucking a crime lord in his own armed compound.
A drug in her drink. A blow to the head. A dog mauling her limbs. Her, where that man lay, in the warehouse.
Those things circled my brain last night as I waited for her, praying, and I don’t even like God.
Something inside my head gives.
I bite her thumb. Hard. I have never been good at pretending with her, and while I’ve shot a man in cold blood and beat another in warm gore, while I’ve used a knife to cut through the tendons of a stranger’s throat and shoved a different blade into a target’s abdomen, all without so much as a blink, I can’t let Isadora Croft walk out of here marked in someone who isn’t me, not without telling me she won’t do it again.
I want to ensure she’s safe and I don’t think Theo is that. I tried to convince my dad of this, but Mads Bentzen is too busy preparing for Solemn, a cult thing I’m not yet invited to.
It’s up to me to stop this.
Isa’s breath hitches with my teeth on her skin, her pupils edging into the darkness of her irises, one hand coming to press flat against my abs, like she might push me away.
I dare you. I fucking dare you.
“Von,” she whispers, more warning than anything.
I nip at her thumb again, then lick the pad of her finger, all while leaning down closer, getting into her space. She moves her hand, but at the last minute, she doesn’t drop it by her side.
She curls it around the curve of my neck, her thumb pressing lightly against the hollow of my throat. “Von,” she says again, but she sounds different this time.
I press my forehead to hers. “I don’t want you…fucking him.” It kills me.
She breathes a laugh, mint along my lips. “It’s a little too late for—”
Shut the fuck up.
I kiss her instead of saying that because she’d slap me if I did, and I don’t feel like getting hit right now.
My mouth devours her swollen lips.
For a moment, a heartbeat in time, she doesn’t react, except to dig her nails into the side of my neck.
Then she opens for me.
And I don’t hesitate.
My tongue twines with hers before I suck on it, listening to the ghost of a moan course through my own mouth from her. I step closer as she presses onto her toes, arching her body into mine like she was made to fit right there.
Right here. This is where you belong.
I drop my hand to her waist, pulling her even closer, no space between us. Her palm slides up my abs, hot against my chest, fingers of her other hand playing with the strands at the nape of my neck.
I bite her bottom lip, pulling away only so we can breathe, my eyes fluttering open to lock onto hers. Her lips are parted, jagged inhales uneven.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she whispers against my mouth. “This doesn’t change my job. This doesn’t stop me from going to him again tomorrow night—”
I clamp my fingers around the back of her neck, beneath her hair, tilting her cervical spine backward, exposing her throat. I dip my head and scrape my teeth against the spot Theo’s fingers left imprints. She moans, her body stiff, but she doesn’t try to get away.
I don’t want to hurt her.
I really, truly don’t. Even when she’s asked me to, I don’t like it, but I do it, because I love her.
Yet she is the only one who can break through my control, and sometimes I wonder if I will one day do all these things I don’t want to do.
How far do you want me to go for you? Am I not cruel enough to have you?
Fuck you. I want to say that to her but I’m not brave enough. Throw your life away for a fucking druggie. Because Theo is that; partly why his control is such shit. Cocaine, for him, because everyone who does coke thinks it makes them a better sort of addict. Fuck. You, Isa. Pretending with a man like that.
She is trembling in my arms, and I lick a line up her throat, hopelessness and lust and despair all clawing their way through my mind.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she whispers again before a gasp leaves her lips as she flexes her fingers so her nails scratch down my chest. “We can do this, but it cannot mean—”
I clamp my teeth down harder and for one moment, she only moans the breath of my name. “Von.”
I think I might faint, the flood of warmth that single sound ushers through me as I softly bite her.
Her body is limp in my arms.
She is all mine.
You are always mine.
But as I suck her skin, then lap against where I bit her, soothing it, she…changes.
She lifts her knee, driving it right into my groin without warning.
I groan, jerking backward but I don’t let my grip on her waist go.
I think I taste iron in my mouth as I breathe heavily, staring at her.
She glares back, her eyes vicious slits.
“I’m sorry—” I start to say, but she shakes her head, cutting me off.
“You think I can have you?” Her eyes are glazed with lust, but she fights through it as she glares at me. “Are you deluded enough to believe I can simply become yours, and suddenly, Mads isn’t giving me work, my dad doesn’t assign me to jobs, the 6 look at me as something to breed, and you get to do everything I have spent my entire fucking life training for? You really believe that’s how this is all going to go down for your goddamn happily ever after?”
I’ve never seen her this angry, spilling truths like these, but I have seen her switch so fast, many times before when her logic catches up to her.
My own jealousy rises up to meet the way she is shaking as she tears her hands from me, curling them into fists at her side, her mouth red from him.
“Is that so bad?” I ask, voice vicious. “For you to belong to me?” Who else has been there for you like I have? Who the fuck else has seen what you really are?
“I don’t belong to anyone, Von.”
I breathe in. Out. I want to put my hands all over her and show her exactly who she belongs to. I want to fuck the feel of Theo goddamn Sancte out of her.
I want her to let me love her.
But just as I open my mouth, just as I think maybe I can find the words to say something like that, a sentiment I’ve held onto since the warehouse, the gym door opens with a soft creak.
I straighten, immediately pivoting so my body shields Isadora’s. In a place like Nox, anything could happen.
I meet dark eyes belonging to a tall, built man. One who could probably twist me into a fucking pretzel if I’m being honest.
Cain Bonavich glances at Isadora and I tense. I would give my life for her, of course, but against Cain… I might actually have to prove it.
“I need this room,” Cain finally says, his voice quiet but full of a power I aspire to have.
I nod once, then turn to Isadora and take her arm. No way in fuck am I leaving her in here with an Unsaint. They would give her exactly what she likes but she might not survive it.
“Fine,” I say quietly.
And while Isadora’s eyes trace the frame of Cain’s body, she doesn’t argue, and I know this conversation between us isn’t fucking over.
ISADORA
We only make it half a foot from the door before Cain Bonavich reacts to the departure. The one he more or less ordered. If not in so many words.
Casually, Cain holds up a hand, the sign to stop. I feel Von’s strong and calloused fingers tighten around my wrist. I don’t appreciate being led like a child to the exit, but my apprehension toward the Unsaint ensures I say nothing about Von’s ridiculous behavior.
As if I can’t kill a man as easily as he can. As if I haven’t.
But the Unsaints are a different sort of human, so maybe Von’s protectiveness is warranted. Just this once.
Bonavich’s eyes are as dark as mine, and it’s me he’s looking at when he lowers his hand by his side and slips both into his pockets. I have the fleeting impression that he does not look like a person come to exercise—what, with his deep green slacks and black cashmere shirt—but I can see the outline of each muscle in his arm, veins running under brown skin. A shade lighter than mine; I know that his dad, Callum, is white, but his mother must not be, I just assume. It’s the same for me. My mother is Black, and my dad is white.
I glance at Von’s pale fingers latched onto my wrist. Dad isn’t that shade of white, though. He’s more olive. Von is very fair, with red hair, and for only the briefest moment with the comparison in my mind, I want to smile.
I forget last night with Theo Sancte, the fear down my spine as I walked through the corridors of his home, heavily guarded by men with guns nearly as long as my arm. The trepidation that crawled through my stomach as Theo himself shut the door to his palatial bedroom, decorated in varying blue tones. He clicked the lock too.
There was no escape, which was a good thing because otherwise I might have bolted through that bullet-proof door.
But what came next was easy, in some ways. We both knew what I was there for; the daughter of a neighboring crime syndicate, pawned off in exchange for potential future favor for Writhe. It sounds horrible but sex sells and sometimes it pays in something more than money. So the arrangement wasn’t that crazy; it’s just Theo Sancte has no idea what I’m really there for because he doesn’t know what Writhe really does. Act as the vassal of the 6 and the Unsaints.
But despite Von’s puppy dog eyes when I walked in here and his later fury, I don’t hate what I did last night. Not the act itself. His reputation aside, it wasn’t as if Theo had ever done anything horrible to me, and the things he did do, well, they were brutal, but I set the pace and he just happened to be that type of sadistic. Maybe if I wasn’t this sort of person it would feel like an assault, but everything was consensual, which I know Von finds some twisted relief in, but he hates it too. The girl he loves whoring herself out. He does the same though, putting his body in danger for kills, he just looks at it differently, because men do love to skew everything.
My pulse jumps now as Cain’s dark brows lift, almost as if he is reading my mind while he continues to stare at me. Impossible, of course, but I quickly school my expression all the same to the mask of indifference I actually learned so well from Von. Naturally, I’m unable to hide my feelings from my face. But Von does it all the time, every day, and I caught on from him.
I don’t look away from the Unsaint. He is my employer, so to speak. While as far as I know he’s not directly involved in my work with Theo, he is part of the Unsaints and they rank above Writhe.
Von’s fingertips circle tighter around my wrist, but he does not otherwise react to Cain’s assessment of me, thankfully. They are as tall as each other, and while Cain is thicker than Von, my best friend is muscular, too, with broad shoulders, large hands, and an ability to compartmentalize his pain and keep fighting through it.
Unless it comes to me, but I try not to think of that now. Anything between us was doomed from the start and I won’t give up my career in much the same way I won’t break his heart again and again, so I make sure he knows we are not actually together. Any sex between us, any kissing or passion, was the result of alcohol or marijuana, combined with my own high sex drive and tendency to become reckless when I haven’t fucked someone in too long. I often feel like an obligation to him then, and I usually leave his room before morning comes to dissolve him of it. I feel more like a whore those nights than I did last, and I’m not even sure why.
“Do you mind if I speak to you alone for a moment?” Cain asks, his eyes on me. It’s a question, but from the rumble of his voice and the twitch of his full lips after he speaks, I know it’s more of a statement. Crime lords can be oddly polite that way. Might smile after they shoot you between the eyes, too, so it’s not anything genuinely kind.
“She just got off work and she needs to—”
“No. I don’t mind.” I twist my arm and free myself from Von’s protective grip, at the same time I dart my gaze toward him. Shut the hell up.
But his eyes… They meet mine and ugh. They’re a deep gray, completely void of color. Spears of paler silver dart toward his pupils and I’ve always found if I study the lack of color too long, it feels as if I’m falling.
I blink, tracing the thick scatter of freckles along his white skin instead. The pinched look to his expression, his upturned nose drawn slightly. “Wait for me. I’ll be right there.” I glance at Cain. “Correct?”
His expression is unreadable, a mask, but he nods once, giving nothing else.
I glance back to Von to find him watching me carefully, making sure I’m really okay for him to leave me in here alone. A heartbeat of time passes, and I see his coldness lock itself back into place. His smooth lips press together, chin tilts upward, and he lifts a brow in condescension. He pretends he doesn’t care.
“Sure,” he says coolly. And without another word to either of us, he leaves through the open door into the darkened corridor of Nox. Other rooms for sparring, weights, meditation, and meetings exist along the halls and I wonder if he will find one of those while he waits, or simply exit the building, get into his Bentley, and leave me here. I kind of hope he doesn’t because I’m nervous; the way one gets when a higher-up criminal and known fighter wants to talk to you alone in a room.
Cain smoothly steps away from the open door, letting it softly close, the latch clicking into place when it does, sealing us inside.
He still has his hands in his pockets and he assesses me in silence, his dark gaze starting at my feet—white sneakers—and trailing up my burgundy sweats, the sliver of my waist, white shirt, the column of my throat, when a wry smile twists his lips. I kind of feel calmer when he does that, to be honest, before he rests his gaze on my face.
Despite the few feet between us, he is still looking down on me and my pulse flutters for a moment at his physicality. The dip of muscle in his shoulders is visible even through his shirt. His dark hair is buzzed, and there’s stubble along his defined jaw. Everything about him is so incredibly masculine and for half a second I imagine him shoving me against the wall like Theo did last night—loved it—and fucking me so hard, Von hears my moans and comes back in this room to do something about it.
I shouldn’t want to play with his obsessive crush, but I do want to, because I love him, too. I’m just more pragmatic about it.
“Are you done?” Cain asks softly, like he’s seen the movie zipping through my brain, his dark, thick brow arched.
I don’t blush. Unlike with Von, I don’t particularly care what Cain thinks of me aside from respecting me enough to know I can be good at my job.
“What do you want to discuss?” I counter, voice even.
“Last night. How was it?”
My eyes narrow and I think of Von. “I don’t report to you.” And aside from that bit about the Unsaints being above Writhe, I don’t. As awkward as it might seem from the outside, I answer to Mads, Von’s father. I’ve already told him how it went on the drive over here, skipping the more salacious details. He doesn’t want those, and I have no inclination to share them with a pseudo-uncle figure.
Cain looks down his nose at me. “Mads Bentzen is beneath me. You are under him.” He doesn’t connect the dots out loud but I follow along and he adds, “Pretend you do. Report to me, that is. How was it?” he asks again, tone even.
I swallow but refuse to cross my arms or hunch my shoulders and make myself small. I know how men fill up rooms with their ego, even when they’re the smallest fish in the pond. I’ve learned how to mimic their delusions. And perhaps this is a test. I will pass.
“Fine. I now know the layout of Vipera’s compound, that security is very lax past the main gate, and—”
“We already have that. Mapped, in fact. In detail. Including the positions of the guards.”
Frustration climbs up my throat but I force my body to remain relaxed, sure of myself. “And I’m meeting Sancte again tomorrow night.”
“Did you ask questions?”
A test. “No. Not anything overt.”
He nods once, as if this is the right answer. “And what did he ask you?” Again, his tone is emotionless. He implies nothing.
If I consented to non-consent. If he could choke me. What I thought about knife play. Would I call him daddy (no; and he laughed when I said that and moved on). All these things run through my head, but I know that’s not what Cain Bonavich is asking.
Unless he…is.
I scroll through other lines of questioning Theo directed my way. He was very inquisitive but that is how charming, ruthless men are. The more secrets they can form into a sharp knife, the easier to stab you with. “My birthday,” I answer Cain. July 27th. “What sort of training I do. My favorite sport to watch and to play. If I enjoy books, my favorite movie, favorite band.” Breaking Benjamin, yes, even still. “Where I was born, where I grew up.”
“Many of those things he would know already. Did you lie?”
“No,” I counter, feeling defensive. “As you said, he likely already had this information.”
“So, why ask?” He gives away nothing. No indication of how I should answer.
It frustrates me, being unable to read his angle. “To confirm I won’t lie.”
“No.” That’s all he says. Then he stares at me.
I realize I need to try again but my pulse starts to beat faster, and I have to resist the urge to look at the door. To look for Von. I hate that instinct cradled inside of me. But Von would end this line of questioning. He would tell Cain I needed to rest and maybe this time I wouldn’t talk over him. Because I do need it. Rest, I mean. I barely slept last night. Lying next to a lion doesn’t make for peaceful slumber.
