"I know, baby," he says.

I love him for being real with me now.

"You stay alive, Mira. It's what we do. It's built in."

"Like animals." I feel crazy suddenly, like everything is upside down. "That's what I am. This is what it really is, isn't it? When you appeared at the boathouse, I thought you were the fucking animal. Child of the Black Lion. But I am, too."

"Mira-"

"No, listen. This shit with me going around putting bullets in people's bellies? Maybe this is the first time I've acted with any real honesty."

"You know that's bullshit. What you did doesn't change what's inside you, Mira."

I feel like it does, though-I feel like things will never be okay again. I want to crawl out of my skin. I flatten my hand to his chest. "Make me forget. Fuck me like an animal. I want you to turn me inside out and fuck me on the dirty floor. Make me feel the dirt."

He takes hold of my hair and turns my face to his.

"Fuck me the way I like."

He sucks in a slow breath, then kisses me long and slow. Much too soft.

I reach for his cock. He's hard. Steely through his jeans. "Tell me what a fucking whore I am until I forget. Until I can't feel."

"Mira." He kisses my ear. Shivers go through me.

"I want you to use me until I'm completely twisted up and worn out. Like a piece of trash for you to-"

He shuts me up with another kiss.

"Harder," I say.

"Baby, I want to just love you," he says.

"Do it, then. Right here on the mat."

"No, I mean, I want to hold on to you and feel how much I fucking actually love you."

My blood races. He loves me.

He tightens his arms around me. "I love using you like a whore, don't get me wrong. It's one of the hottest things on the planet, but I only call you that because you're so hot and I'm so fucking in love with you. I'm not gonna call you a whore when you feel shitty and want to feel shittier. Fuck that."

I melt into him. Something falls away. I don't know what. Like ice melting away.

"Okay?"

I close my eyes. "Okay."

"Breathe, baby. You're not breathing."

I suck in a breath, then heave it out. "It hurts to know what I did."

"I know," he says.

"But you're here."

"Always."

"You love me."

"I love the fuck out of you."

I should feel happy about that, but us together is another thing that's doomed. "Sometimes love isn't enough, is it?"

The engine rumbles. There's nothing to say to that. Our lives run in opposite and opposing directions-I care about the rule of law. He lives to break it. I'm all about rescuing kids from a lifestyle he promotes.

The air inside the van is cold except where he holds me. It's like a metaphor: Us together against the cold, dark world.

But his breath is warm on my neck. He kisses me on the tingly, breath-warmed spot, letting his lips linger, hot and soft. He trails a finger down my neck. I stifle a gasp-it's still powerful when he touches me. As powerful as that first day in the boathouse.

"What are you doing?"

"You make me crazy. I can't ever let you go." The fact that he even says it shows me that he knows, deep down, that we're doomed.

My pulse pounds. His hands tremble; his lust is wild as wolves, barely restrained.

I've never had a man want me like this. I've never wanted a man back like this.

He pulls down my bra, baring my breasts. The cold air freezes my nipples until he sets his warm mouth on one, his fingers on the other. It's a dark kind of heaven.

He sets his free hand on my bare knee under my skirt. "Baby," he says.

The van shifts as though we took a corner too fast. It feels dangerous in this van. Was I honestly just begging for sex? The phone wobbles, making the light strobe briefly over his cheekbone, his dark curls. He takes my wrists in one hand and pins them above my head, the way he always likes to do. He slides his other hand up my thigh.

My pulse skitters.

He shoves my skirt up and cups me between my legs, hand strong and firm. He just holds me there, moving slightly with the careening van. Everything is falling out of my brain. I'm forgetting everything in the wake of the forbidden sensation of being held and controlled by him.

He finds the elastic of my panties and presses his fingers to my dripping wet pussy.

"Aleksio, we're in a car chase. Be reasonable."

"Be reasonable? Fuck reasonable. I won't be reasonable about you-not ever. That's a promise." Slowly he begins to slide and stroke. "Not ever." He slides and strokes between my legs, and when he hits a certain momentum, I gasp. "You are so sensitive."

To you, I think.

"Jerk your hands. Feel how I'm holding you. Feel how you can't ever get away from me."

I jerk and twist, needing him with a hunger that feels wild and wrong. He pushes a finger into my core, and I gasp.

"Feel how I'll never let you go." He has his hand between my legs, stroking me. "Feel it."

"Aleksio-"

"Say it. Don't let me go."

He tightens his grip on me, and instinctively I try to pull away-but I can't. The way he holds my wrists with one hand while he roams his free hand all over me is intoxicating as pure grain alcohol.

He whispers warm in my ear. "Say it."

Forbidden warmth blossoms inside me. And I want him. "I love you."

His breath hitches. "Mira the rebel." He tightens his grip. It hurts in a way that's beautiful and good, the pressure of him holding me in place.

The van takes another turn.

"This is so wrong," I say.

He strokes me higher, up, up, to the edge of oblivion. He nuzzles the side of my neck. "Nothing's right. Nothing will ever be right."

He slides his finger inside me now, and my laugh turns to a groan of pleasure. He lays me over the top of a cooler and pushes up my skirt and pulls down my panties so that they bunch around my ankles.

"You're beautiful," he says. The freezing air chills my skin except where he puts his hand.

"I need to be in you." He slides his fingers between my legs, and the feeling rises with every stroke. I think to tell him to stop, because it's too much, too good. I'm moving with his fingers, fucking his fingers.

"Spread," he gasps.

I do what he says. A condom wrapper crinkles. His hands are inside my folds, and then the fat knob of his cock is there, penetrating me, filling me completely. He feels huge, and I cry out. He thrusts in again and again, keeping hold of my hair, my shoulder, and I never want him to stop.

And out there is war, but in here I'm lost with the man who consumes me utterly. He thrusts into me, owning me, using me, loving me.

"Aleksio," I say. His name is a velvet glove on my cheek.

He fucks me hard and deep, pushing me over the edge until my mind explodes with color and light. He shoves into me and groans until he unravels inside me.

The van rumbles on. We have this space for ourselves. For now.

Eventually he pulls out.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"North. Keep an eye on the guy who might have the lead on Kiro. Make sure nobody else is on him."

"Get to him before Lazarus can get to him."

"Lazarus knows nothing about him. It's a good head start that we have here."

"Wait-" I pull away. "You didn't kill Lazarus."

He looks grim. "No, I didn't."

"Lazarus helped kill your parents."

No reply.

"You left him alive. You could've killed him right there."

"Yeah, I might come to regret that."

"Be serious. You spared Bloody Lazarus himself."

"I looked into his eyes, and I thought about killing him. I wanted to. But I didn't."

"Why?"

His face is shrouded in shadow, but I feel his eyes on me. "I couldn't," he says simply.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

Aleksio I send three of my best guys to guard Konstantin and his nurse. I doubt Lazarus could ever find him, but I'm not taking chances.

Our group waits for Viktor and his guys in a mall parking lot an hour north of Chicago. They roll up in three black Mercedes SUVs, like matched black stallions. Viktor steps out of the lead vehicle.

"What the fuck?" I say.

"I'm done hotwiring cars, brat." He tells me he paid cash for them. As if they were an impulse item, like chocolate mints at a grocery checkout. He's getting into the role of returned prince, a crime royal with bank accounts to rival a small country. The role he was born to-the role we both were born to.

I can't give him shit. Now that we've officially reappeared, we have access to millions of dollars our father hid away-offshore accounts Konstantin helped recover with the aid of our DNA and our fingerprints. It's as if Dad hedged his bets against people who might betray us, only he certainly never suspected it would be Lazarus and Aldo Nikolla. Konstantin has a lawyer working on unearthing even more money.

Mira rolls her eyes at the flashiness. Mira. I love her in a way that feels too vast and huge to explain, and I know she loves me, too, but using the law to help create a more just society is her life. And I'm a mafia prince. Our paths run in opposite directions. I watch her standing there in the sunshine, loving her, trying not to think about that.

The group piles in and heads north to personally protect Noah, the social worker and our only link to Kiro. I have this sense that Kiro is up there somewhere, and I have this vision of riding back with him, three brothers together to finish this thing.

Eight hours later we arrive at the Sky Slope Hotel, a five-star resort outside of Duluth, Minnesota, the only luxury hotel for hundreds of miles. There's a giant pine tree and a waterfall inside the ornate lobby. Light streams in from a sky-high glass ceiling.

We take over the top floor. I grab the best room for Mira and me-all white marble, green linen, and million-dollar views. China cups with fresh hot chocolate waiting for us on the table. She passes them up and goes to the window.

I close the door and walk up behind her, wrapping her tight. The Sky Slope is on a bluff, and you can see miles of endless wilderness with Lake Superior in the distance.

I'm guessing she's focused on the scene out there, but my focus is on our reflection in the glass. There's a haunted expression in Mira's eyes that I've never seen before. Sure, I look like hell-my lip is puffy, and my eye is bruised-but my injuries will heal.