Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76222 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Yup. Now, she knew, too.
But like a negative and positive magnet, my eyes were drawn back to Gio. Yet, it was Claudia and Dmitry talking beside me, loudly enough I could hear their words, that had my ears focused on them. And since I was a nosy bitch, I eavesdropped.
“Why don’t you look surprised, little wife?”
“I wasn’t snooping!” Claudia blurted out, and I could tell she hadn’t meant to say it.
Even though I was staring at my tattooed dream man inside the ring, I was totally focused on the two people beside me. I felt my eyebrows rise a little in surprise at Claudia’s high-pitched yet haughty tone. To say I was eager to hear the rest was an understatement.
“But I found paperwork.”
Paperwork?
“And I realized D'yavol was Gio. Figured it out from his signature.”
What in the hell are they talking about? How could Claudia find out D'yavol’s identity from paperwork?
I looked at Nikolai and then Dmitry, and then it clicked.
Even if this was illegal underground fighting, my brothers would have made sure they had their asses covered. So there had to be some kind of contract between my brothers and Gio for him to fight for Nikolai and Dmitry, and why the Head of the West Coast Italian Mafia had chosen a Russian name as his alias.
“We sign the letter A of our last name with the same flourish at the top. Always have, ever since I saw his signature when I was young and thought it was pretty, so I started doing it, too. It was the same stylized A in D’yavol’s signature,” Claudia murmured but not soft enough that I didn’t hear her. In fact, really being nosy, I leaned toward her so I could catch the words clearly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Dmitry was the one to speak now, his voice even. “Before marrying you, it wasn’t my place to tell you what your brother did in his free time.”
“And after marrying me?” Claudia asked, her tone accusing.
I glanced out the corner of my eye to see Dmitry looking at Gio. My brother exhaled roughly, and I was shocked to see he looked almost… guilty—an emotion I didn’t know he could feel—before speaking. “I would’ve told you everything. I planned on doing it, but then Nikolai pulled his shit at dinner after our wedding. This wasn’t how I wanted you to find out, even though I knew you would eventually.”
The noise rose slightly, so I couldn’t make out whatever Dmitry was now saying, but I picked up on the last bit, and my heart raced because I knew… I knew it was the truth.
“Some people need an outlet, sweet girl. Some people need to feel like they are nobody and the same as everybody else all in the same breath.”
I closed my eyes after he spoke, remembering the intimate conversation I had with Gio, when he’d said as much to me. He bared his soul in that moment, revealing things I knew he’d always kept buried.
It made me love him even more in this moment, hearing the same thing from my big brother.
The fight started, and I opened my eyes to take in all the carnage.
The way Gio fought was vicious. He was strategic with his moves, yet the fight seemed to go on forever. But before I knew it, the fight ended, and my man stood over the unmoving body of his opponent.
For a moment, I thought he killed the other man, but I could see the slight twitching of the beaten fighter’s fingers and the irregular rise and fall of his chest.
A few men came into the cage and pulled the loser out, dragging his nearly lifeless body off and out of sight. Blood smeared along the already stained, white mat in a showcase of the brutality we all just witnessed.
The crowd went insane, and I couldn't look away from the father of the baby he didn’t yet know that grew inside me. He stood in the center of the ring, his chest covered with a mixture of sweat and blood. His head was slightly lowered, and he gazed at me.
And then Gio was out of the cage and disappeared into the crowd.
After a suspended moment, the five of us stood, and we were led through the sea of bodies into a darkened hallway.
My heart was racing because the sight of Gio all sweaty and bloody had me wet.
I was good and fucked up for that man.
And I loved it.
26
TATIANA
We only walked for a few minutes before we found ourselves in a crudely erected locker room.
There was a shower room I spotted down a short hallway off to the side that we passed. There were several rows of lockers on either side of us, the majority of them dented, rusty, and banged the hell up. Towels were stacked on benches and spread out on the ground and there were a few duffle bags that belonged to the fighters.