Page 104 of The Mafia Assassin's Redemption-

She snorts, and I know she’s mostly out of subspace now.

“Yeah, well,” Harry says, “I want to see your blood outside your body.”

“I know, but you missed that opportunity tonight, didn’t you?”

She starts to rise and I move the bottle and glass out of the way and stand up. I lift her out of the bath, holding her wet, hot, naked body against mine for a long beat before letting her slide down to the tile.

“You were too busy being the perfect brat sub,” I murmur against her lips.

“I hate you,” she whispers.

I stop breathing. Because Harry whispers those words like they’re words of endearment and love, not dislike. Not hate. And it does something inside of me.

I kiss her softly, sweetly, tasting the whiskey on her tongue, the clean taste of her that I crave so deeply, and I whisper back, “I hate you, too.”

Harry wraps her arms around me and shudders.

I stand there, drinking in the wild moment. Holding her, not moving.

As she begins to pull away, I lift her in my arms again and carry her to the bedroom, setting her down on the sofa in the middle of the big bath sheet.

I wrap her in it and pull back the covers of the bed. I carry her over and dry her off. “I’ll be back,” I say, dropping a kiss on her forehead.

But to be honest, I’m not sure when.Something shifted between us, something that grates at my insides with sharp, jagged edges, and I don’t know what the fuck to do with it.

So I bury it, head down to the basement, and work until it doesn’t consume me anymore.

And that takes a very fucking long time.

The next day, Harry and Lucie volunteer together at one of the animal shelters. This time they’ve got a guard, as well as Mikey, with them every step of the way. Liam drives them. I can’t lock her up every hour of every day the way I’d like to, but I can make sure she’s watched carefully by people I trust when she’s out.

I’d hit the weights and treadmill in the basement in the early hours of the morning before succumbing to ‘Harryitis’ and crawling into bed with her. I held her against me for hours, listening to her breathe, wondering how the hell I got to this place.

Callahan comes into my office after his morning run and shower as I’m poring over data collected last night.

He adjusts his tie and straightens his suit jacket as he walks inside.

“Going somewhere?” I ask.

“Fucking lunch with agobshiteI’m not going to make a deal with. He likes his boots licked.”

“He should get that kink some attention. There are plenty of people at sex clubs who are into that.”

Cal snorts with laughter. “I don’t have to go if we’ve got something more important to do.”

“Not sure. The club we went to last night,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “I spoke to a pakhan. That gun of Dec’s? I canalmost guarantee it’s one of his. One of his that was skimmed off the top.”

“Fucking…”

“I let him know we happened to find a few. And that we’d buy them outright.”

He nods and we both know, regardless what my brother paid, it’s not worth it to piss off bratva we’ve got no beef with. We don’t insult them by giving the guns back, and we don’t anger them by not offering payment. Double payment opens doors, and bringing the problem to his attention keeps them unlocked.

“What did he say?”

I shrug. “The kid was new and he disappeared with some inventory… the kid being a guy in his late twenties, by the way, but new equals kid, I guess. They’ve been looking for both the kid and the guns. Said we’d let them know if we find out more.”

“Will we?” he asks, putting a cigarette between his lips as he sits in front of my desk.