Emerald Malice - A Mafia Romance

I hang up to find my phone blowing up with texts from Viktor.

VIKTOR: What the fuck? Where are you? Ceremony's about to start!

VIKTOR: Bro-you're the fucking best man. Not to mention the goddamn pakhan. You need to be here.

VIKTOR: I can't believe you're not here after YOU forced me to marry the bitch.

Sometimes, I forget what an asshole my little brother can be. Luckily, I can always rely on him to remind me.

I ignore all his messages and turn my focus back on the quivering woman in the elevator with me. Good timing, too, because apparently, the two-minute call with Shura is all it took to completely unravel her.

She's back to being a sweaty, clammy mess, scraping at the wall padding like a cat going through withdrawals.

Real or fake? I still haven't fully made up my mind. This could be real. It could also be an attempt to distract me from the fact that she's obviously not supposed to be at this wedding at all.

"Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Those green eyes of hers go wide and trembly. Then, without any warning, she collapses in a dead faint.

"Oh, fucking hell."

I drop to one knee beside her. I tap her face, but she doesn't so much as stir.

Her chest is heaving, though. Stuttering, almost, like the stitching in the dress where it binds across her chest is handcuffing her lungs.

It's pure survival instinct that moves me next.

Not lust. Definitely not lust.

No, I tell myself as I gather two fistfuls of the fabric. This is solely to help her breathe.

Then I rip her dress apart like tissue paper.

Her exposed skin is pale and cold to the touch. When I hover a palm over her mouth to feel her breathing, it's too still.

Only one way to go from here.

But it's not lust. It's definitely not lust.

I lower my face to the girl's. Her lips part as I get close, like she knows what's coming and she wants it.

Closer.

Closer.

Her scent is sweet and my dick has never been harder.

And then, just like that, I'm ripped back in time.

Because I've been here before. In exactly this situation, kneeling beside a cold, shivering woman and preparing to give her my breath.

I know how that ended. I feel the grief of it in the pit of my stomach every single day of my fucking life.

This kiss is to heal; that one was nothing more than a belated goodbye.

My lips seal to the girl's. I exhale to fill her lungs. Turn and feel her heartbeat. Exhale again. Check her pulse. I do it all one more time, and just when I'm wondering if I ought to be preparing last rites instead-why won't this fucking elevator move, goddammit?!-she makes a noise.

"Mmmm..."

It's a moan. There's no other word for it. It's a moan. Low and dreamy and undeniable.

And, like magic, it brings her back to life.

The emerald lastochka's eyes fly open and she shoves herself upright, just barely missing cracking her skull against mine. She scrambles backward to a hunched seat in the corner. "Oh my God." She slaps a hand over her mouth like she can shove the moan back in there. "W-what the hell...?"

Before I can explain, the elevator shudders into motion. Like it has a mind of its own, it takes us back to where we came from.

Ping. "Fifth floor."

The doors open onto the ballroom. I can see my brother standing amidst a throng of his useless, half-drunk friends. One of them spots me and claps Viktor on the back.

I feel a blur of motion at my side. In the second it takes me to signal to him that I'm coming, the little lastochka has darted out of the elevator, ducked between two security guards, and careened out of sight.

I let her go-for now.

My mind was made up as soon as I tasted her, so her quick getaway is just the nail in her coffin.

I've never met a mystery I couldn't solve.

And she's a mystery I'm determined to get to the bottom of.

3

NATALIA

"Watch where you're going!"

I stumble backwards, wilting on the spot at the murderous glance I'm getting from the six-foot-tall woman I just ran right into. She pulls her white fur stole tighter around her body and skewers me with a disdainful glare.

I follow her gaze to the ruined neckline of my dress. Is my boob hanging out? Well, would ya look at that? It sure is. Nice going, Nat. Way to be an upstanding member of polite society.

"S-sorry," I mutter awkwardly as I shove the girls back in place.

The haughty woman rolls her eyes and walks away, talking loudly enough for me to hear. "Honestly, if I'd known they'd be inviting the riff-raff, I'd have stayed home. I expect more from the Kuznetsovs."

Katya would have tackled the snobby bitch to the floor and strangled her with her own chinchilla. But all I can muster in my current state of flustered undress is a pathetic sniffle in her direction before I run off in search of a place to hide.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. My thoughts are as much of a mess as my dress is.

Is security following me?

Is he following me?

Where the fuck is Katya?!

As though I've pulled her from thin air by the strength of my thoughts, a door opens to the side. Katya's slim arm darts out, grabs me, and hauls me in after her like Satan himself dragging me down into hell.

Where the hell have you been?" she breathes in my face. "I've been looking for you everywhere!"

This is so typical of Katya. Usually, I just laugh it off.

But nothing about today is "usual." Today, I've been forced into crashing a wedding, chased by security guards, trapped in an elevator. And the cherry on top of the shit sundae? I completely and totally humiliated myself in front of the most beautiful man I've ever laid eyes on.

That moan will be echoing in my nightmares for the rest of eternity.

"Me?" I explode. "Me?!"

Katya takes a startled step back. Only then does she seem to notice that my clothes aren't sitting right. "Your, uh... your dress is a little torn up there, babe."

"Thanks, Captain Obvious." I grab the neckline and try to pull it into place. For a moment, it obeys-but as soon as I let go, it withers right back like a dying flower.

"Okay, calm down. Let me try." She toys with it for a second, then magically produces some safety pins from a box on the shelves at our elbows and works some witchcraft that fixes it right up.

"There! Good as new." She wiggles her eyebrows at me. "You wanna tell me why you're running around half-dressed with sex hair and smudged lipstick?"

"Is my lipstick smudged?" I pivot on the spot in search of a mirror, but of course, the utility closet is fresh out of those. Just as well-I can't bear looking at myself right now.

"Only a little."

I whimper and cover my face with my hands for a three-second pity party. It's all we have time for. "We have to get the hell out of here. Now!"

Katya has the audacity to look puzzled. "But the ceremony's about to start!"

I feel insane. Am I? Or is she?

"For fuck's sake, Kat-you seriously wanna watch your ex-boyfriend get married to the woman he cheated on you with?"

"Yes! Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Call me a masochist, but I wanna see it and I can't do it alone."

"Since when?"

"Since I decided everything's more fun in twos," she explains dismissively. Like that just about settles things, she opens the door a crack. "Look at all those rich assholes... Is that Leo?"

"As in DiCaprio?"

"What other Leo matters?" she sighs as if I'm a lost cause. "Wouldn't it be just a terrible tragedy if he and I met and we fell in love and got married in a ceremony twice as expensive as this one?"

I roll my eyes. She's joking-mostly. "Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you're almost twenty-eight now. You've aged out of Leo's dating pool."

"Have you seen my ass?" Katya counters, sticking it out for my benefit.

What I'd prefer to see instead of my insane best friend's posterior is some hope that we can get out of here unscathed.