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“Do you regret it, then? Marrying me?”
I shake my head. “I have not regretted anything when it comes to you, since the ink dried on our contract or our marriage license. I am proud to be your husband. I only hope I can one day make you proud to be my wife.”
Her wet hand comes up to my cheek, and her thumb swipes across my lips as a smile crosses her face. She hums softly. “I will say, there is something swoony about the way people are startled when they learn my husband is Maksim Giordano,” she says my name in perfect Italian, “the most dangerous man in New York.” she giggles again, “It’s almost enough to make me want to change my last name.”
I bark out a laugh. “Almost, huh?”
She bites her lip, failing to contain her smirk, and lets it go with a nod. “Almost.”
“Before I leave, I have to ask you, if you didn’t get that degree, since you’re so stubborn about changing your last name, what would you have done as an adult?”
Her clammy hand leaves my face, and she sits up, bracing her forearm on the lip, resting her chin on it. “Oh, that’s a good question. I’m sure you think it would be a baker, but that’s more of a hobby. It relaxes me. I think, if I could go back, and do it all over again, I’d be a doctor." That surprises me. “I actually took a few pre-med classes at Rayne-Moore for fun, along with theater.”
“For fun, huh?” although it makes sense now, how easily she puts on a mask for the rest of the world.
She nods; another beautiful, genuine smile graces her face. She looks behind me just as I see Parker standing there in my periphery. “Being a lawyer was always Charlie’s dream. He’d often go to the office with dad. We were born here in New York, but we bounced back and forth from here and London, as children. That’s why the accent stuck. I’d spend a year there at the manor in Wales with a governess, come here for a year, so on and so forth. It wasn’t until Charlie passed that I stayed here, I couldn’t go back to Wales. He was all over the manor and its grounds. Trees we climbed, forts in the living room we built. Everywhere I looked, he was there. Even when Mama and my father divorced, it somehow still felt like he was everywhere. On every street corner from Chelsea to Kensington.”
I hum, knowing exactly how that feels. Tildy already mentioned that the home in Kensington was her familial home. The one in Chelsea was purchased by her and Derek when they first married.
“So, my sophomore year at Rayne-Moore, after what happened to Raven, I decided law was for me. I don’t know what I would have done if someone I knew was brought to me… like that. I couldn’t fathom it. And so, I spoke to the dean and the counselor, and found some of my credits could be transferred to a law degree. So, that’s how that happened. But, thankfully, I've kept my Basic Life Support certifications up to date.”
“How did your brother die?”
She hums again. “Drowning accident. He and a group of friends took their daddy’s yacht out and… they were to go scuba diving. Something happened to his oxygen tank, some sort of malfunction.” she shakes her head. “He didn’t come back up with them. So they went back down. By the time they found him, it was too late.”
Christ.
“I’m sorry.”
She blinks. “Me too.”
“My mother was killed while she was running at Central Park. Something she did every day. It was planned by a small rival Russian gang.”
“Oh Maksim, I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head. “My father and I hunted down every single one of them, tore apart their little mob, and then sent parts of them back to Moscow.” The back of my skull tingles.
Oh shit.
We took out their American soldiers, but not the ones in Moscow. At least, not completely.
I look at my wife. “So when I tell you, Sabrina, that I’m going to kill the motherfucker that touched you, or watch you kill him – I mean it.” I kiss her temple, not missing the shiver that runs through her and then stand, needing to get to my phone. “When I tell you, that I will raise hell on anyone who dares to eventryto harm you, I mean it. Take your bath. I need to call Niko.”
“Maksim? What is it?”
“I think I know who’s delivering drugs into my club.”
“I think I knowhow, husband.”
I stop in my tracks and turn to face her with a brow lifted.
“The crates that your mother’s vodka comes through. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. They’re the only thing that stops at a port,aren’t they? The rest of the liquor you sell is American. Your mother’s vodka is not.”
My brilliant, beautiful, mesmerizing, funny, gorgeous, incredible fucking wife. “I adore every millimeter of your brain, my clever wife. When I come back, I’m going to fuck you into oblivion.Afterwe eat dinner.”
She looks at me expectantly, as though she doesn’t want me to go. “So you’re not leaving?”
I shake my head. After the strides we made tonight, how could I dare to leave her? “No, I'm only making a call from my burner. It’s down in the office. I’ll be back when I'm done. I don’t want to bring business into the bedroom. This is our safe haven, Sabrina.”