"Hard and fast and mean. How's that sound? Because you liked it fucked-up."

She gets this thoughtful look. "I did kind of like it fucked-up," she confesses. "I don't know what to think about that."

My heart pounds. Only Mira would repel an insult with an honest confession. Most people put the shields down, but not Mira. She lifts them. She shows you her heart.

You can never have her. I repeat Viktor's words like a mantra. You can never have her. Never have her.

"I'll be honest, part of me is just a little horrified I was into it, but I was," she continues. "I mean, what is that, right? At first I didn't know what to think. Then it just took me. I felt like we went somewhere, or just were weirdly connected in this new way and-"

I close my fist around the ponytail and pull-not hard like last night, but just enough to make her look up at me. Her eyes have caramel-colored flecks in the sunshine. Like shards of beer glass. "You think we had a connection? Wake up. I fucked your face and took a movie of it."

Pain in her eyes.

I don't know why I do it. I just think she needs to not have that candor, that vulnerability. It's how people get hurt. It's how people get hurt by me.

She pulls her hair from my grip and puts her napkin in her lap and picks up her fork. She pivots it on the end tine, making a little arc. "Oh, Aleksio."

My pulse races. I don't even know what she means by that. Oh, Aleksio. It means everything and nothing, and my fucking pulse races. I swallow down my emotions and take my seat across from her. "Didn't anybody ever tell you not to play with your silverware?"

She stops with the fork and presses it into the side of the frittata.

Tito and Viktor ate theirs with their hands, but she has perfect manners in everything. I remind myself she's Aldo's spoiled daughter, with her smiles and her safe life.

I have this insane impulse to kiss her and promise I'll protect her, but I can't protect her and save Kiro both at the same time. My pulse races with the torment of that. I want to protect her. I want to kiss her. I want to get lost with her.

She takes a small bite.

I should look down, but it's too late. I'm watching her. I'm holding my fucking breath.

Contrary to what you might think, when somebody first tastes something they find delicious, you'll rarely see a blissful look on their face; it's more like stunned horror. I don't know why people go with stunned horror when they taste something delicious, but they always do.

So when I see her getting that stunned-horror look, I'm stupidly gratified. I lower my gaze like I don't care, but I'm a fucking hound panting at her feet.

"Oh my God," she says. "Who made this?"

"Didn't I tell you? We kidnapped Wolfgang Puck, too. Got him back there cooking up a storm. I'm gonna buttfuck him with a baseball bat later."

She snorts. "Come on, Aleksio, be serious."

I turn my eyes down to my plate. I shouldn't be striving to give her good things. I should be doing the opposite, that's the whole point here.

She takes another bite. This time her eyes drift closed.

"Oh wow. Does this have hazelnuts?"

"What are you, a reporter for Gourmet Magazine?"

"It's delicious."

I look down at my plate with my heart soaring because I made her feel good. Stupid. It'll just make hurting her harder.

Don't let the breaking game break you, Viktor said.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Mira Aleksio has unfairly long, lush eyelashes-giraffe fringes, Mom used to call them-and when he gazes down at his food, those fringes hide his eyes completely. He knows it, of course. He wants to cut me off, shut me out.

He's not that good kid anymore-I know that. He's no longer my friend. But he held me as I cried-that was real. The way he told me about his burn felt like a secret just for me.

And the way I felt with him was real.

And I know something else-he won't cut off my finger. There's still some of that mischievous but good-hearted boy inside him. I wouldn't feel that connection with him if there wasn't.

Which is good, because the shock of seeing my finger could kill Dad-for real. Aleksio doesn't know it, and I can't tell him, but Dad gets violently ill at the sight of blood. And that's the kind of shock that's dangerous to his heart.

Nobody knows about Dad's aversion to blood. It's a secret he guards even from his closest associates. A secret he asked Mom and me never to divulge. An aversion to blood makes him look weak in the world of the Albanian clans, and it's especially bad for the supposedly fierce leader of the vicious Black Lion clan.

My guess is that he's been around blood plenty of times in his life, but that he never looks directly at it-he pretends. That's how he hides it. But if he opens a box with my bloody finger in it? The shock would be too much for his heart. The shock would kill him.

But the film clip could kill him, too.

No-we'll find the key code. It's out there somewhere. Their guy tracked down the director already.

Nobody can see that fucking clip.

Except maybe me. What would it be like to watch us like that?

I flash on the way he looked down at me when I had him in my mouth, like I was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen. Like we were connected in this crazy, wrong way. Aleksio, sitting over me in all his brutal glory, familiar old Aleksio grown into a dangerous man. Fuck, it did something to me.

Moving up Aleksio's legs felt wrong and good. I had no choice. And I was glad I had no choice. I was into it.

How twisted is that? Into it. All my life I've been trying to get out from under the thumb of men like him, and suddenly I'm crawling up his legs, begging to be used. But that's the thing about having no choice-you do it no matter what. You do it if you hate it, and you do it if it's a twisted thing you find out that you enjoy.

It took me by surprise when he grabbed my hair, taking control so violently. My whole body came to attention. His cock tasted of man and secrets and sweat and need. I wanted him to push me harder. And he did.

God, the way he talked to me. The names. The intensity of his breath as the whole thing spun out of control. The roughness of him.

His roughness a forbidden gift. Aleksio always went too far. The roughness felt beautiful. I know you, I thought.

And then he turned it into something ugly with the camera and the gun.

I sigh and twirl my fork.

He doesn't have his suit jacket on; just a loose tie over his white button-down shirt. All that white in contrast with his chocolaty hair that's a little too long. He went on a run earlier, and he apparently shaved after; his cheeks are smooth and clear, making him look deceptively innocent. Angelic.

"We're showing it to him as soon as he wakes up."

"It'll kill him."

He stabs his fork into the greens. "You should pray we find the key, then."

"It's just a matter of time."

He cuts a bit of frittata and holds it up, examining it. "How does a spoiled princess who does international shopping as an extreme sport know about anatomization keys or whatever?"

My face burns. But that was the whole goal, wasn't it? Aleksio is the exactly kind of person we don't want knowing about my real life.

I shrug. "Are you telling me you never picked up any useless information in life?"

If he realizes I'm answering a question with a question, he doesn't show it.

I take another bite of the best meal I've eaten all year, not that Aleksio seems to care.

Little Vik comes out. Whatever he has to say, it's bad.

Aleksio sees it, too. "What?"

He shakes his head.

Aleksio stands and pulls his brother away. I sense trouble, chaos. Doors slam inside the house. Guys moving out.

I stare at Aleksio's phone, still on the table. His phone.

I look from Aleksio and Viktor to the phone and back to Aleksio. I could grab it and delete the video-this is my chance. He may have backed it up, but I have a feeling he didn't, considering how busy he's been.

He'll be angry. And it's a gamble, but I don't believe Aleksio will take my finger in the end. I snatch the phone and figure out what he used. Fuse. I find the file, hit delete, confirm delete. Just like that it's gone. I set it back down and pick up my fork.

Aleksio comes back and grabs his phone and suit jacket. He swings it on and fixes his shirt cuffs.

Blood whooshes in my ears. I hope I made the right choice. "What's going on?"

"Ligne is dead."

My jaw drops. "Frankie? Frankie Ligne?"

Aleksio nods.

"Are you sure?"

"Most certainly dead, yes," Viktor says.

"He's just a sweet old man. Why would you-"

"We didn't kill him," Viktor spits.

"Who?"

"Bloody Lazarus," he growls.

"Why would Lazarus kill somebody from his own organization? My father's confidante..."

Viktor gives me a jaded look. Like, really? Two of the Russians come out, all suited up and holstered.

It can't be true. "Lazarus wouldn't kill Ligne. They're on the same side."

"Take it up with the witnesses Viktor rounded up," Aleksio says. "In other news, we got the key to the code."

"We can read the files now?"

"Yeah," he says. "If we had the right files. The illegal adoptions were hidden in the basement in the fucking maintenance record files."

"That whole raid and you took the wrong files?"

Tito comes out, Glock in hand.

"Wait! What are you doing? You're not going back to the Worland..."

"Until Daddy wakes up, it's what we have."

Of course. He'll do anything to find his brother, and when he does, he'll love him barbarically and unconditionally.

Aleksio's love is the dangerous kind of love that breaks all the rules. It's him killing and kidnapping as he goes after his brother. It's him pulling my hair and shoving his cock in my mouth.

I shouldn't think it's beautiful.

He turns and leaves with his guys, through the patio door, through the house.

The front door slams. Car doors slam. I stand there alone, stupidly wistful.

CHAPTER NINE.

Viktor The area around Worland is quiet on a Sunday afternoon. We find free spaces at meters. We park a few blocks away and split up, moving through the neighborhood like shadows.