Avenge: #3 Romanian Mob Chronicles by Kaye Blue Page B

at me, his clear appreciation stifling any nerves. He kissed me one last time, then left, though I didn’t hear his steps until after I’d bolted the door.
    I exhaled when he left, not having realized that I’d been holding my breath.
    I made my way back to my bedroom and fell into my bed, my body the best kind of tired it had ever felt, my mind racing.
    Being with him, enjoying it, craving it again…it was wrong.
    Being with him, enjoying it, craving it again…it felt so very right.
    Calling it physical, tossing it off as a simple sex act, a base human action detached from feeling, would have been easy, and preferable, but that felt wrong. Untrue. Because what had happened here tonight was more than that.
    The way he’d touched me, kissed me, talked to me. The way he’d cared for me. All of it had been more than sex.
    And that was terrifying.
    Because in those moments, I’d seen beyond the tattoos, beyond Clan Constantin, beyond my hate, seen a man, a kind one, one I could care about.
    One who could put my heart and my quest at risk.
     

Twelve
     
     
    L ily

     
    “ L ily .”
    Christoph’s voice came out weak, gravelly, and I could hear the effort it took for him to speak. I stood, crossed over to him, my eyes locked with his, and it hit me again. They were Anton’s eyes. They were dulled with age, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Anton had said that no one ever spoke of their relationship, but they didn’t really have to. One look at Christoph, and I knew, and I didn’t doubt everyone else did too.
    My mind accepted the truth of it, but not the reality. My sworn enemy, the person who had destroyed my life, had fathered the man who’d made me wonder if a new life was possible, made me wish, hope that it was. The irony was grim enough to make me want to laugh.
    “Are you in pain?” I asked when I stood beside him.
    It was a moot question, and his hoarse, almost guttural grunt said as much. In his state, pain was inevitable.
    “Yes, but it reminds me that I’m alive,” he said.
    “You’ll tell me if it gets too bad?” I asked.
    He didn’t speak, but I took note of the way he trembled. “I’ll give you some medication,” I said, turning.
    His hand on my arm, grip surprisingly strong, stopped me.
    “No drugs. But I am cold.”
    He dropped his hand then, the speaking and his movement clearly tiring him out.
    “I’ll get a blanket,” I said.
    He shook his head.
    “No. I don’t want blankets around me like I’m some feeble old man. I am, but at least allow me the illusion,” he said, his voice still gravelly, the words heavy with his breath, but I heard the pride in them nonetheless.
    I hated him, I told myself, hated his family, his clan, all that he stood for. I screamed the mantra in my mind as loud as I could, but it was drowned out, almost swallowed by the grudging respect for Christoph that had wormed its way into me. Drowned out by the feeling his unacknowledged son, the one whose hands I could still feel on my body, whose lips I would forever remember pressed against mine, had awakened.
    “I’ll find something suitable,” I said.
    He nodded, fell back against the pillows.
    I left the room, distracted by my own warring thoughts.
    I owed him nothing, should have been excited about him lying there in pain, anxious to dish out humiliation. Braden deserved that, had suffered Christoph’s degradations even if he was unaware of them. Which meant Christoph Constantin deserved so much worse. A warm blanket around his shoulders, the accompanying blow to his dignity, was nothing in the face of all the pain that he had caused.
    And yet…the glimpses of decency I’d seen in him, the ones I had seen in his son, made me wonder if possibly, somewhere, there had been good in Christoph, good in this life I so despised.
    I paused, the war still raging in my mind, but when I saw the stairs, my decision was made. I had been looking for a reason to go up there, a chance to poke around, and maybe