And why I suddenly felt less safe on a college campus.
Than at the fists of five of the most ruthless mafia bosses in history.
CHAPTER EIGHT
El
I WAS GOING to be late.
I hated being late.
People stared when you showed up to class with a note.
I had no note.
I had nothing.
Mouth dry, I tried to hold my head high as I turned the knob to the door leading to my business marketing class.
It creaked open.
I sucked in a breath when every head in the room turned in my direction. The professor’s face was a mask of complete boredom as he looked up from his book and finally scowled.
“Hi, I’m—”
“Late,” he finished with an irritated edge. He couldn’t be more than forty, with dark brown hair and dead blue eyes. “Find a seat. Now.”
I gulped and quickly weaved my way around desks, finally locating an empty seat toward the back.
He continued droning on in this bored tone that already had me inwardly yawning.
I set my bag on the floor, pulled out my book, and froze.
The guy sitting to my left was the one who had picked a fight with Dante.
He leaned toward me, so close I had to keep myself from flinching or just running away. So close I could make out the strands of his wavy black hair that fell over a cut on the side of his eyebrow. Blood had dried to the corner of his mouth, a mouth that lifted up at the corner in a mocking smile.
“So.” His voice was husky. “Do they at least pay you?”
I didn’t answer.
Mainly because I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
“Open your books to Chapter One, you’ll find the assignment in your syllabus. I’ll just be five minutes.” The professor gave the guy next to me a knowing look before he quickly left the classroom, coffee cup in hand.
“That’s pretty cheap if you ask me… they won’t even pay you and they force you to go to school on top of it?” He grunted, then stood, his chair scraping across the floor making my ears ring. He swaggered toward the front of the class and stood.
Everyone seemed to lean in.
I held my breath and watched.
Slowly, he rolled up the white sleeves of his shirt, leaning back against the teacher’s desk as if he owned it.
His muscled forearms flexed as he gripped the edge of the wood then hopped backward into a sitting position, all casual, like this was normal, like students always took control of college classrooms.
My anxious gaze darted around the room.
Nobody moved.
So I didn’t either.
“Try outs.” He said the two words slowly like he was waiting for them to sink in as a ripple of excitement filled the room. “Will be tonight at midnight, at The Spot… remember, if you fight and lose you’re out, if you fight and win…” As his voice trailed off, he spread his hands, palms up and gave a casual shrug.
One of the guys in front of me rubbed his hands together. “Been training all summer.”
His friend made a face. “Training doesn’t do shit if they kill you.”
“That was one time, and it was a freak accident. Plus the kid was asking for it and didn’t know when to shut his mouth.”
“Kind of like that guy this morning.” He shuddered. “It’s like he wants to die.”
I glanced back to the front of the classroom my eyes slammed into his cold depths. Soulless. They were soulless, and locked onto me in a way that said he’d bargained with the devil a long time ago.
And lost.
“Midnight,” he repeated with finality. “Oh, and welcome back everyone, summer was so… incredibly, dull without you.”
The class broke into cheers as he made his way back to his seat next me, sauntered was more like it.
The professor walked in the minute the crazy guy’s ass touched the seat next to mine and then he was leaning in again. “So, if they don’t pay you… does that mean you’re free?”
I gritted my teeth and flashed him a glare. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
A cocky grin spread across his face. I’d probably find him attractive if I wasn’t so worried that he was going to pull a knife on me at any given moment, or worse, just embarrass me, make me cry. I had a long list of things that I wanted to accomplish that school year.
Survival was at the top, right along with a nice heavy cloak of invisibility.
“Nobody takes what’s ours and lives to talk about it.” His hand jerked out, strong fingers dug into my forearm.
Directly onto the tattoo that had been etched there despite my screams of pain.
Despite the kicking.
Clawing.
Fighting.
Drawn with such burning slowness that I’d almost passed out a number of times.
I inwardly flinched, clenched my teeth, and met his stare.
I’d seen eyes like that before.
Eyes of a monster.
Eyes of the one who’d tried to wreck me.
And I knew what the monster wanted, what it fed on.
Weakness.
So I stared back, without blinking, tilting my head in that bored amusement I knew would piss him off.
His fingers let up just enough for me to jerk my arm back.
“You belong to us,” he hissed under his breath. “And we don’t share.”
CHAPTER NINE
Dante
I SKIPPED CLASS.
Something told me that what I needed to learn about the school sure as hell wasn’t going to just magically appear during chemistry.
So far, I was a half a day in.
And found I actually preferred getting tortured by all five of the guys.
I was ready to beg for starvation by the end of the day.
Nobody would look at me.
Girls would stare only to glance down and whisper in those fucking giggles that set my blood boiling.
I waited for El outside her class.
I was her ride.
And even though most days I wanted to ignore her existence, I at least still had one shred of human decency, enough to recognize that if she walked in the shitty boots she was wearing she’d most likely sprain her ankle.
The door to the business building surged open.
Kids.
Because that was what they were, piled out, laughing, raising their phones, tweeting whatever the hell they tweeted when they assumed the world was their oyster.
It made me sick.
Pissed.
Agitated.
I’d never fit into that life — even back in New York everything had been a ruse to keep my sister in the dark. Hell, I’d even gone as far as to practice my smile in the mirror, relaxing the muscles around my mouth.
The perfect liar.
That’s what I was.
Because ever since my sixth birthday when I found out my family was shit deep in the mafia that was what I’d been living.
A fucking lie.
El finally appeared, her dark hair a curtain across her face as she hurried past the crowds.
A guy chased after her.
I rolled my eyes. Wow, and on the first day.
Her scars were gone.
Any idiot with two eyes could see she was gorgeous and she knew it, that was why she always met my stare with a challenging one of her own. She knew she had power — and that the only way to wield it was her body.
Once a Petrov, always a Petrov.
I hated the Russians for having a hand in killing my father.
Almost as much as I hated El for sleeping with one of their bosses before Frank ripped his throat out.