Page 38 of Only for Him (Starkov Bratva #1)

GISELLE

On the third morning, Roman finally returns.

The days have crawled by like a hangover. Each morning I wake with a jolt, waiting for the sky to fall. It hasn’t yet. Maybe tomorrow.

I’m not a “vacation” type of person. I’ve never had more than two days off in a row. I teach Dakota to play spit and we watch TV until she falls asleep. Sometimes I hear Rosa and her talking behind closed doors in words I can’t understand other than a random one here and there.

The mansion feels less like a fortress and more like a series of interconnected cells: I pace the halls, run the perimeter, eat what’s in the kitchen, and wonder where the fuck Roman is.

He left the morning after we talked and hasn’t returned since.

So much for partnership.

The mark on my shoulder is fading. Too soon to say if it’ll leave a scar.

Maybe he won’t come back. Maybe he doesn’t want me anymore, now that he knows who I am.

What I’ve done.

Not to him. He still doesn’t know that, as far as I can tell. I don’t think he would have left me here with Rosa and Dakota if he knew that I’d betrayed him. I mean the role I played in what happened to Serena.

He told me it wasn’t my fault, but isn’t that just what you’re supposed to say?

Those thoughts are just me being cruel to myself, but the silence stretches longer each day, gives me more space to ruminate and regret.

And to miss him. Because I do. I miss the weight of him.

The space he takes up when he enters a room.

I miss being watched. Wanted. His smell, the sound of his footsteps, the way he eats me up each time those blue eyes rake over me.

The way I just know his heart beats in time to mine, the fluttering pleasure in my belly whenever he’s near.

He’s just a man, and I’ve had men before, but none of them ever made me feel like this.

I miss the way I see myself through his eyes.

I spend a lot of time thinking about why I told him about Serena. Was it because he told me about his own past? Did it make me feel like I owed him my truth?

Or did I need him to know so he could give me what I actually need?

Not justice in an abstract sense or revenge for girls who haven’t been hurt yet.

Justice for Serena. Vengeance for me.

He finds me in the conservatory. I’m nursing bitter coffee, staring out at the garden wondering who keeps it alive. There are rosebushes out there, and I wonder if that’s where he gets the roses he used to leave me.

That feels like a very long time ago now.

Was I a different woman then, or was I just pretending to be?

Seeing him sparks anger in me for being left alone in this goddamn crypt of a mansion.

But it also reopens the wound I’ve carried ever since I met him.

The raw, beating part of me that wants him so badly.

Underneath all the terror and rage, something about being close to him—it brings me a comfort I’ve never known.

It’s like coming home.

“Where the fuck have you been? I thought we were going to work together from now on. And then you go off and?—"

“I have a gift for you,” he says, cutting me off. His voice is soft, but the air goes hard the second he speaks.

I reach for Serena’s earrings, twist them. These were the last gift he gave me. I’m not sure what else he has to offer at this point.

He’s wearing the same dark shirt as yesterday. No blood, no stains, but the sleeves are rolled up and his hands are restless, flexing.

I brace myself. “What is it?”

“A man. Blake Skinner. Middleman for Starkov Bratva outposts in Brighton Beach and Bensonhurst. He arranges safehouses, cash drops, and the movement of girls from one city to the next. He was at the auction. He’s a crucial player.”

“Was he one of the men Dakota named?” I ask, trying to recall if the name tracks for me at all, if I’ve ever seen it pop up in a file, during an investigation, anywhere. Nothing pings.

But if he was at the auction, he’s a monster, and he deserves whatever Roman is going to do to him.

That is, if we’re sure it’s him.

“No. He took your sister,” Roman says. “He sold Serena.”

My vision pulses black for a second.

Motherfucker. I’m going to fucking kill him. I’m going to rip his fucking face off.

I bite down on the inside of my cheek so hard I taste blood.

Shit. This is really happening.

That promise we made over dinner wasn’t just us being swept up in the moment.

We’re doing this.

I’m doing this.

Fuck!

“You’re sure? How do you know? You have proof?”

I want to believe he’s wrong. I want justice, but if I wait long enough, maybe my rational mind will return and I’ll be able to settle for a courtroom.

“He ran the safehouse where she was kept before the auction. He took payment for the transport. He signed the paperwork.”

My brain boils in my skull. Kinetic energy sparks at my joints. I want to lunge across the universe to get to this bastard, rip him apart and sew him back together so I can do it again.

And again. And again.

How did Roman figure out he was involved with Serena?

What if he’s wrong?

“Proof, Roman. I need proof. I’m doing things your way, but I can’t live with it if you got the wrong man.”

I’m not stalling, it’s the truth. I promise myself I’m not that far gone. I will be ruthless, but I won’t take cheap shots into the void just to rid myself of this rage.

“You’re right, little viper.” His eyes darken. “Which is why you’re going to be the one to peel the truth from him.”

My blood freezes.

I remember the bodies Roman has left for me: MacDougal, Ivan, the pianist, the day trader, the restauranteur. The ways he tortured them.

He wants me to do that to this one.

But I’m a fucking cop!

Not anymore you’re not. You stopped being a cop the moment you got a pair of severed hands on your doorstep and kept it to yourself.

The moment you first lied for him.

Roman knows what I feel about the men who hurt my sister. He’s seen it in me since the very beginning.

He thinks—maybe knows —I can do this.

Just like he knew I’d be willing to stay here, knew I’d lie for him, knew I’d come for him.

It’s time to find out if he’s right about this, too.

“Show him to me,” I say, and he smiles. Not triumphant or smug, thank God, but certain.

There’s no coming back from this Giselle. You do this, and you’re never going to feel the same.

But I haven’t felt the same, have I? Not since he showed up.

And I don’t want to feel the same.

The same is shitty.

The same is pain.

I used to feel so lonely in my rage and grief. I don’t feel lonely anymore. And I want to know what else I can feel with him.

Maybe, finally, alive.

Roman takes my arm and steers me out of the room. The rest of the house is silent. My heart starts pounding, but my feet are steady as I follow him to the basement stairs.

He unlocks the door and lets it drift open. The smell is musty and cold. I can see the edge of the concrete landing, the single bulb dangling on a wire. I hesitate.

“After you, little viper,” he says, his voice low. There’s no threat in it, just inevitability.

He knew you’d be here eventually. This was always going to happen. He chose you for a reason.

The stairs are cold under my bare feet. Halfway down, I hear it: the faint scrape of metal, the wet snuffle of someone struggling.

The room is small with cinder block walls and a drain in the center of the floor.

A man slumps in a chair, wrists tied, hair matted to his scalp, stripped to his boxers.

His head lifts when we enter.

His eyes are washed-out, ringed with red. He bares his teeth at me and spits on the floor.

“Detective Cantiano,” Roman says, “Blake Skinner.”

Skinner laughs, a wet, broken sound. “Detective? You gotta be fucking kidding me. You got nothing on me, bitch.”

My hands shake. What am I doing here? How did this happen? Am I really about to torture a suspect? I have to run, call someone, and do it the right way.

The way that’s never fucking worked.

I imagine this man with his hands on my sister and a chasm roars open inside me.

I hate him. If it’s him, he deserves everything that’s coming. It won’t compare to the pain I’ve lived with.

Fuck him. Fuck every man like him.

Give him what he fucking deserves. Show him what happens to men who think they have a right to other people’s lives. He’s fucking begging for it, Giselle.

Before I can stop myself, I’ve hit him, hard enough for his head to snap to the side and the sound to echo against concrete.

“Prove it,” I hiss.

No. No, no, no…

Roman smiles. “That’s the spirit.” He walks over to the wall, opens a metal cabinet, and pulls out a small, zippered pouch. He sets it in my hands.

Inside is a knife. Not the one he fucked me with but a thin, razor-edged blade with a black handle and nothing flashy. The kind that can do a lot of work in a small space.

“I want the truth,” I say, but my voice is thin. I’m mostly saying it to myself. My heart pounds in my ears. I want the truth, and I deserve it, and this man needs to be punished, and I can’t do this, I can’t do what Roman does.

I’m not him. But maybe he picked exactly right.

If Russo saw you right now, if Ida knew you were doing this, if Teddy was here…

But none of them are. It’s Roman who stands behind me, close enough to feel the heat from his chest. To melt into it, into his smell and the blue wave of his eyes sweeping over me. Holding me.

He believes that this is right, and even more importantly, believes that it’s right for me.

“Does he know why he’s here?” I ask.

“Why are you asking me?” Roman says, nodding his chin towards our captive.

Our captive. Christ.

I turn towards Blake, and think of those hands on Serena again. She was so young. I was so young.

She was my whole world.

And this has become my whole life.

My whole fucking life!

“Do you know why you’re here, Skinner?” I ask.

My voice doesn’t shake. That scares me more than anything. I should be horrified.

“For some bullshit I didn’t do,” he spits.