Deadly Desires

Revenge kisses

"You're asking me to work with her?" I asked, echoing Domanic's words back to him.

"I am not asking you to do anything Nikolai, I'm telling you. This mission getting completed serves Shadowborn's interests just as much as it serves Lotus. We need our best on the case which is you and they wanted their best which is Miss St. Claire."

"How is she their best? She was stabbed six months ago she's been back at work for a month." I ask, more to myself than him. Dominic bit my head off when he found out I had stabbed Ivy. Not because I killed one of our rival's most treasured agents but because I had failed to finish her off.

He was under the impression I had stabbed her poorly because she was able to survive her injuries. He was a fool, of course, Ivy was alive and killing again because I willed it to be not because I was an incompetent assassin.

"How about you ask her that when you see her? You will be picked up at seven and driven to Elliot's home. I cannot express this enough if you harm her or fail to kill him I will take five fingers and the life of your nephew. Are we clear?" Dominic asked me, I gave him a sharp look and nodded.

And that was how Shadowborn ensured the compliance and loyalty of its agents. Torture and death, what it specialised in. I had failed to complete an extremely important case once, in my second year with the company. They hadn't killed anyone because it had only been my first fuck up but they had used more physical methods on me. 

I still had the scars on my back to remind me, they went nicely with the one Ivy had etched into my skin. I bit back a smile as I made my way outside, the warm May air hitting me.

 I was a complicated man and most likely a sociopath, but god damn did she look good holding a knife to my throat. In a twisted way, I was glad she'd think of me every time she looked down at herself and saw the scar I'd left behind.  I needed to haunt Ivy in the same way she haunted me.

"What are you grinning about?" Alex asked as he fell into step beside me. I shook my head dissolving all thoughts of Poison. I wouldn't tell him about her, she was my secret and mine only.

"Thinking about murder," I replied lazily as Alex and I climbed into the backseat of one of Shadowborn's cars. "Take me back to my place," I said to the driver as we pulled away. Alex rolled his eyes at my previous comment.

"Heard a rumour you're working with the devil herself, excited to see your girlfriend after you gutted her?" Alex asked, smirking. He was the closest thing I allowed myself to get to having a best friend. And because of that, he was able to pick up my attraction to Ivy.

Of course, he didn't know that I'd seen her twice since the night I'd stabbed her. Once when she gave me a matching wound and once when I caught my father's gang pinning her to a table.

My thoughts turned dark as I remembered seeing her pinned to the table with a man forcing her legs apart. My father ran multiple gangs back in Russia and he had one operating here in New York. I had no idea how Ivy had found out about them but I imagine she didn't know the full extent of who those people were. After I'd shot them all dead and let her and her friend run I called my father.

Better he hear from his favourite son that I'd killed half his men in America than someone else. As predicted he didn't take the news well, he threatened me with about every torture method possible before moving past it.

 Victor Romanov knew better. He had once had three children.

One was dead, one was working for the FBI and one was an assassin. All untouchable, all separate from him and all willing to murder him if he came for them. My family loyalties started and died with my brother and my father knew it.