He was inspecting me – every inch of me – right through my clothes. Fuck.
Yep. My skin was on fire, roasting in his baby blue beams.
“All right. I'll talk. Let's make this quick, clean, and easy.”
Shit. If I thought I was going to keep my breathing steady, I'd just lost my last chance. I held my breath, reached for my marker, and pressed it to the paper, waiting.
“It was a simple job. We were gonna decapitate the Ligiottis in one strike, finish this little war going on between their fucked up family and mine. Gioulio and his boys were gonna be there. Our intel was always good, never failed us before – until that night. The old bastard decided to host a big dinner party for his biggest, best clients. We ended up with a buncha dead businessmen, a couple fucks on the city council and the school board, some Naperville high rollers. No Italians, though – unless you count the bartender, who was supposedly a distant cousin or something.”
Distant was right. I heard about Raphael getting killed in the attack, but Uncle Gioulio wouldn't let me attend his funeral. Too dangerous, he said, and why did I want to waste my day on a second cousin I'd only met three times at reunions anyway?
That was before Anton was singled out on the security footage, backing the explosive into the club's loading dock. The danger faded everyday after he was arrested, and soon my Uncle wasn't handing out constant warnings. If only he knew I'd gone right into the tiger's den.
“So, you slipped up?” I asked, tapping the marker on my notepad. Wasn't much good for writing anyway, and I was too glued to his rough face to remember to move it.
“Yep. Me and my brothers fucked up bad. Worst mistake we ever made, short of giving the go ahead plastered after our last bash. We were drunk and naked. Took turns on every one of those bitches just flown in from Europe. I fucked them deep, Sabrina. Took my time railing 'em, feeling my balls bouncing on their asses, gave 'em a hello and welcome to America they'll never forget. Damned good thing too, considering where I'm at now. Last hot piece of * I might ever have.”
I blinked. The fire his eyes kindled on my skin became an inferno. I shook my head, wondering what the hell just happened.
He's talking about sex. Fucking. Trying to throw you off.
“Um, you want to say that again?”
Anton threw his big head back and laughed, fixing his gemstone eyes on me when he came back down. “What? You think all this fucking and killing makes me a bad man, don't you? I'm waiting. You gonna call me on my shit, or just lay down and take it like those Latvian whores?”
Bastard! He was testing me after all, making me sort the truth from fiction. And, so far, I'd been too frozen in his bad boy good looks to be anything more than a toy.
I bit my tongue, pumped my hips to get myself an inch closer to the glass. “Tell me about your regrets, Anton. You killed twenty people, many of them highly respected in their community...”
“Regrets are for civvy fucks, Sabrina. Not outlaws. When Ivankovs go to war, they don't regret shit. You think my grandpa regretted cutting German throats out at Stalingrad? He personally killed a hundred men defending his country, his family. You can check the records if you think I'm bullshitting, though record keeping in the motherland has always been shit, and I never learned the language.”
I didn't answer. The smile was gone, and now he looked truly serious. His fists hit the table on his side, rocking the wood between us, deafeningly loud with the steel chain slapping wood.
I jumped. I gasped. The second I caught myself, I wanted to hate him for making me crack, but I was too busy fighting the dizzy tingle pure adrenaline pumped into my blood.
He was too good at this. The very second I'd tried to take back a little control, he'd ripped it away from me, and now the ball was in his court again.
“You're a shit interviewer, Sabrina. Look at you,” he said quietly, almost a whisper, voice filled with disgust. “I've got this whole fucking thing by the balls. I'm asking the questions. I'm steering you like a bitch on a leash. When I got your note asking for this shit, I thought I'd get a young, plucky, hot little thing who's hungry for my story. I was ready. Instead, I've got some chick who can barely talk because she's too fucking busy trying to put out the fire in her *.”
Asshole! It was my turn to curl fists.
Criminal or not, Ivankov or not, nobody talked to me that way. There was more truth in his words than I wanted to acknowledge, sure – plenty to leave me ashamed for the next ten years – but there was no way I was walking out of here after letting him walk all over me.