The Life (8 page)

“I’m sorry.”

His arms tightened around her frame. “Hmm, don’t be.”

“I like having access to you whenever I need you, Anton.”

“I know.”

Swallowing the lump forming in her throat, Viviana asked, “I’m going to have to steer clear of the club, huh?”

That was usually his request of her when something like this happened. At least then it looked like she’d been properly chastised for her behavior to someone on the outside looking in. Viviana understood, and followed along with it for Anton’s benefit, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“Yeah, for a little while, anyway,” Anton said sadly. “Kiss me?”

Damn, he didn’t have to ask a second time. Seeking out the heat of his mouth, Viviana let her body melt into his as Anton’s fingers traced up her sides to find her cheeks. Holding his gaze, she lost herself in the wide open blue of his eyes locked onto hers as his tongue swept over the seam of her lips, wanting entrance to her mouth.

Like this, their kisses were always so slow. Tantalizing enough to feel every swipe of his tongue exploring her mouth. Sweet enough to taste the coffee he’d been sipping on. Gentle enough to know he was apologizing for things he wouldn’t say out loud.

Pulling away, Anton cleared his throat sexily, smirking as he bumped his nose to hers.

“So, why aren’t you in class?” Anton asked.

“Yeah, about that,” Viviana said bitingly. Poking a finger into his chest, and enjoying the look of shock he wore, she scowled at her husband. “We need to talk.”

Chapter Five

“And our best conversations always come from those words.”

Viviana frowned at him again. “I’m serious, Anton.”

“Me, too,” he grumbled under his breath.

Anton had been so worried when Viviana flew into his office unannounced. Usually one of her bulls called ahead of time to say she was on her way over to the club. They hadn’t this time, for whatever reason.

With that finger of hers still pointed at his chest like a gun ready to blow, Viviana spoke through clenched teeth as she asked, “What did you do?”

Anton blinked, surprised at the venom in his wife’s tone. “Me?”

“Well who the hell else am I asking, Anton?”

“I’m confu—”

“
Vanessa
,” she interrupted with a cock of her brow.

“Oh.”

From Erik’s accounts, the girl in question was readying to leave New York. It had only been three days before that Anton had approached her. He was satisfied with that result.

“Yeah,
oh
.”

Keeping his face blank, Anton said, “I didn’t hurt that girl.”

“Obviously,” Viviana replied shortly. “She was very much alive when I visited her apartment earlier. So unless something happened between an hour ago and now, then she’s probably on her way out of town as we speak, frightened she might not make it out alive otherwise.”

“You did
what
?”

Viviana refused to meet his stare, but her next words were enough to say exactly what she felt about his choice in actions regarding Vanessa Macey. “You can’t just go around doing whatever it was that you did, Anton.”

“I didn’t
do
anything,” he argued, annoyance seeping into his tone.

“Right.”

“Okay,” Anton said with a roll of his eyes. “So, let me rephrase. I didn’t do anything that wasn’t to her benefit. Does that make you feel better?”

“No.”

The word was suspiciously whiney. That wasn’t like Viviana at all. Forcing his wife to look at him, Anton searched her gaze for some kind of hint as to what was going on inside that crazy beautiful mind of hers. Instead, he got nothing but the bat of her long lashes and confused brown eyes staring back.

“I won’t say I’m sorry,” he finally said quietly. “But, I would love to know how you found out anything.”

Viviana shrugged, but even the action looked weak. “I didn’t find out very much from her. She wouldn’t even speak to me when I visited her place, just shut the door on me and said I wasn’t supposed to be there. Something about her promise to you and I had to go immediately. I didn’t understand what in hell she was talking about, but her apartment was filled with boxes—packing boxes.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“When she didn’t show up for class today, I thought it was odd. She doesn’t miss class. I asked George, and all he had to say was that she wasn’t answering his calls. He didn’t seem all too worried, but he’s not me, Anton.”

Biting the inside of his cheek, Anton understood what she was getting at. “You assumed I had the girl killed.”

“Would you blame me?”

“Is that the first place your mind goes whenever you think about how I handle issues?”

Viviana snapped back away from him as if she’d been burned. “No, of course not.”

“Then why did you automatically think that would be my solution with her?”

The silence that followed his question felt wrought with tension. Those expressive eyes of Viviana’s didn’t waver from the stare he was leveling on her. Sometimes their arguments were loud and fueled with heavy emotions, and other times, like now, they were silent and pushing against invisible barriers. Regardless, they all ended the same, and it hurt just as much. Perhaps Anton had crossed a line with his wife, but if that was really how she felt in regards to him, he wanted to know.

“I’m so—”

Viviana raised a hand, stopping him. “If you don’t mean it, I don’t want to hear it.”

Anton leaned back in his seat, allowing her to move off his lap. Seated at the edge of his desk, she crossed her ankles and stared up at the ceiling. “Christ, you’ve got to let me finish a sentence,” he said into the palm of his hand. “I certainly don’t mean to apologize for handling Vanessa how I felt comfortable with.
Nevertheless
, I am sorry that you must think I am so much of a monster that the first thing you consider above all else is that I had her whacked.”

“I didn’t say that exactly.”

“You didn’t have to,” he replied.

The next words she spoke were barely breathed above a whisper, and they all but slithered to his spot like a snake in cold grass. “Did you want to kill her? Would you have done it if you thought I wouldn’t have been hurt and angry?”

Anton froze, the arms crossed over his chest falling limply to the chair. Did Viviana really want the answer to that? He supposed if she asked, she did. After all, she knew better than to ask things when they were in private, as the words he spoke to her then were safe should she invoke spousal privilege in any trial.

And his wife would invoke the privilege; she loved him.

When Viviana asked for honesty, he gave it back to her tenfold.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Viviana all but spat the question out as she finally regarded him again. The intense expression that had taken over her features weakened Anton’s emotions for a moment. Sometimes he hated that his wife had such a profound effect on his soul—a soul that was never meant to feel. All at once, with just one of those blinks of hers, every feeling running through her heart and veins seemed to flit over her face.

“
Why
, Anton?”

The shock that had previously taken hold of his body and emotions left in one fell swoop. In a flash, Anton was off his chair and standing in front of his wife, hands on either side of her hips as he leaned in close enough to her face that their noses touched. This time, Viviana didn’t shy away from the sudden change in his temperament or demeanor.

“Because I can,” he said.

“You’re lying.”

She was right.

“How could you possibly know that?”

Viviana’s tongue peeked out to wet her lips before she said, “Your pupils. They dilate when you lie.”

Anton forced back the frown threatening to form, replacing it with yet another sneer. “That would have been a great little tidbit of information to know a decade ago when I had Roman Carducci’s fist in my face while he asked me if I had fucked his daughter.”

“And your voice,” Viviana continued, ignoring the scorn coating his words that were only meant to deflect. “When you lie to me, and only me, it shakes. Tell me why you wanted to kill her, Anton.”

His palms slammed down to the desk hard, rattling the items setting atop the precious, antique oak. Goddamn it, this was not the conversation he wanted to have with his wife. If there was any time he wished she would turn her cheek to something he’d done, it was now. It certainly wasn’t because he was ashamed of his actions, but because he was feeling enough shit as it was and this was something he simply didn’t want to dredge up.

“Don’t—”

“Why?”
Viviana interjected, softer, her eyes kinder.

“Because!”
Anton swore he felt every nerve in his body snap, tension building to the point of no return. “Because she doesn’t have a fucking clue about you, or me, or
us
, okay? She doesn’t know that I love to kiss the spot over your heart just because it beats. She doesn’t know that every part of my world revolves around you. She doesn’t know that the best gift you ever gave me was
life
, Vine.”

“Anton—”

“What does she know?” he asked, knowing very well he sounded cruel. “Does she know that every day you’re with me is dangerous? That having my last name makes you a target in more ways than one? That sometimes loving me hurts? No, and she sure as
fuck
doesn’t get the goddamn right to, either.”

“Okay,” Viviana said, her hands coming down to rest atop his.

“So yeah,” Anton murmured, nodding once. “Yeah, baby, I’d have killed her if I thought you wouldn’t have cared. I would have because despite the fact that you’re strong enough to handle it yourself, and I know that you did, she still hurt the
only
thing I protect with
everything
I am. I’d have done it for the simple fact that she made you cry and it made me
ache
. In a roundabout way, it was really me who made you do it, if you think about it, and that shit isn’t okay.”

“But you didn’t kill her,” his wife added.

“No.”

“For me.”

“No,” Anton repeated.

Surprise blinked back in her wide eyes as she asked, “What?”

“I said
no
. One way or another, you would have forgiven me. That’s how we work. We fight hard, fuck harder, and love like crazy. We’re predictable that way, and I love it like you don’t even know. You can’t hate the things you love, Viviana, even if you wish you could. So, no, I didn’t spare the girl’s life simply because I knew it would make you angry with me for a little while.”

Swallowing audibly, Anton said, “I didn’t kill her because she’s just a
girl
. Nothing to me, or you, or
us
. She didn’t
know
and I couldn’t expect her to. Something wholly irrelevant and stupidly unimportant to the things we share. So, I took her haughty fucking attitude and her arrogant fucking morals and made her
choke
on them.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. She didn’t blink a lash at cutting out at our life; at the money she called filth; at the innocent child you carry. No, she didn’t have a problem with thinking she was above that at all. I put that girl in her place, and all it took was a little bit of my
filth
to do it. There isn’t a soul on this earth that can’t be bought away, regardless of where the money comes from or how it was made. Vanessa Macey isn’t any different than one of my girls who work the poles across town. She’ll do anything for a price, just like them.”

“You bought her off.”

Anton nodded, shrugging his shoulders like it didn’t matter. “Absolutely. Her father is in a wheelchair; he needs a lot more care than she is able to give. What he doesn’t need is to be on the fourth floor of an apartment building with an elevator that doesn’t work. The girl is intelligent, dean’s list all the way, and she’s going to make one hell of a lawyer someday—I guarantee now she’ll be a first-rate defense attorney, though. Let her have whatever opinion she wants to spit, baby, because I stripped every bit of pride she had left away.

“And I’d do it again, too,” Anton said, finishing with a smirk. “So I repeat
, I didn’t do a thing that wasn’t to that girl’s benefit, even if that meant I had to scare the hell out of her and beat down her ego while I was at it.”

*

“Now, I answered your questions, so I’d love to have you answer mine,” Anton said, canting his head. “Why did my wife automatically assume I would have had that girl killed?”

With Viviana’s hands still resting on top of her husband’s, she almost felt as though he grounded her. Taking the moment he gave her, she gathered her thoughts, took his frank honesty about the situation for what it was, and steeled herself to give him exactly the same.

Anton didn’t give her the chance. “Have I ever given you that idea before?”

“No,” she said instantly.

There was the issue of her uncle Sonny, but she didn’t lump that into the same category.

“Do you get a front row seat to the business on a daily basis?”

“No.”

“Do I come home with blood on my hands, wake you up with late night issues, or worry your mind when it’s unfounded?” Anton asked.

Blowing out a heavy sigh of resignation, Viviana knew he was right. “No.”

“So,
why
, baby? Why, when I’ve never given you the impression before, do you think I am that much of a monster, huh?”

“Because I’m me.” Viviana’s fingers curling around his hands and squeezed tightly. “I’m not like every other person to you, and we both know it. Vanessa might not be one of the guys you’re running, or some man getting a little too close to your wife, but she can hurt me all the same.”

Anton tried to take a step away, but her grip rooted him in place. “And when I hurt, you hurt. You don’t like to hurt, Anton.”

“I don’t like you to hurt,” he corrected.

“Call a spade a spade. If this was anyone else, you wouldn’t have blinked twice about it, but it’s not, so you reacted. I never called you a monster—wouldn’t
ever
. Are you going to be like this for him, too?” Viviana asked, finally releasing one of his hands to wave hers over her midsection.

Anton cringed away from her view.
“Maybe.”