Chapter 12: Chapter Twelve

Present Day

Frankie stood in the doorway of the room Gloria had chosen to sleep the day away. She was on her side, facing the windows that looked out on the city. Her legs were pulled up to her chest, her hands interlocked under her chin. She looked peaceful, apart from the fluttering of her eyelids and the twitching of her feet as though she were running from something. Him?

He shoved off the doorway and approached her in socked feet. He stopped at the foot of the bed and crossed his arms over his chest. She wasn’t bruised. She wasn’t bleeding. She was whole. She was here. She was finally his. And she wasn’t going away. Ever. Frankie’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he sighed. He had to tear his eyes away from the woman he’d just stolen and walk back to the living room where the news was covering his little stunt from the night before.

He couldn’t help but smile when he saw the news anchor discussing how the large mansion was set ablaze due to a possible gas leak.

“That’s how you’re going to play it? A gas leak?” Frankie said to no one.

He shook his head. Only the Butcher would set his house on fire to cover up the carnage. He supposed it was easier than having to explain to nearly 60 families how a single man had managed to break in and kill them all in one fell swoop. Not that it had been easy.

It had taken every second of those five days and then some while still in lock up to plan the entire operation out. He performed three dry runs to get the timing down and even then the convoy had been thirty seconds late, making him wonder if it was going to come together.

Frankie threw his duffel onto the coffee table and sat heavily on the couch. He touched the sore spot on his head and winced. He looked at the blood on his fingers and glanced toward her open doorway. He could doctor it himself. Lord knew how many times he’d stitched himself up before her. But why would he choose to do that when it was the best excuse to get her hands on him?

Frankie groaned, irritated at himself for becoming this person. He pulled his faithful rifle, Tracy, from the duffel bag and started placing the different components around the table so he could clean her. He should probably be getting sleep but he knew it would end with him staring up at the ceiling. He wouldn’t be able to sleep until he was in his own bed where he knew they were both safe.

As if on cue, his phone buzzed again. Frankie sat it on the coffee table and opened it to the security feed that had just alerted him. He continued to methodically clean Tracy while he smirked down at the feed.

It had only taken Sergei about three hours to get men to Frankie’s apartment in New York. The first notice had been from Juniper, the lovely manager of the building, to warn him that a few dangerous looking men were saying they were supposed to have a meeting with him. She knew better. No one visited Frankie at home. Not even his boss. Not even… Stephen. A deep pang of grief knocked him square in the chest. He cleared his throat and shoved the feeling deep into his belly. He wouldn’t allow himself to think of his brother, not yet. Not until he’d rid the world of the man who’d killed him. Then, then he could grieve.

Instead he focused back on the screen as Sergei’s men were trying to get into the apartment through the windows. He could see the repelling equipment, the high-grade glass cutter, the men waiting to enter with guns strapped to their chests.

“Don’t worry, Baby, their guns have nothing on you,” Frankie told Tracy with a light pat of reassurance.

Frankie waited until the glass saw started whirring, then he activated the spot lights on the roof and the security system alarms. He couldn’t hear the alarms, as he had his phone on silent, but he could see Sergei’s men jerk with surprise. Their heads whipped up, their hands shielding their eyes, as they frantically yelled at each other. One was so startled that he lost his grip on the repelling line and dropped past where his security camera could view. His repelling line went taut and Frankie sighed. He caught himself. The fucker.

Frankie sat back and clicked the timer on his watch. The police he paid extra to be on call would get there within four minutes and thirty seconds. Any later and he could dock their pay. Not to mention the security guards at the building who Frankie had hired and trained himself would be at his door in less than one minute. He watched with satisfaction as Sergei’s men clambered back up to the roof. He only hoped they felt the sweet taste of freedom before the cops or guards grabbed them. It was always sweeter if they thought they’d won for a moment before it was snuffed out.

More men would come. He knew that. He wanted that. He wanted Sergei to see who the hell he was dealing with. It had been a long time since they’d interacted and Frankie was much younger then. More naive. More gullible. Not anymore. He was practiced, skilled, deadly. Could he have walked into the house and gotten Gloria out without a sound? Of course he could. That’s what Accardi had expected him to do. But, where was the fun in that? Where was the intrigue? No, he needed Sergei to know what he was capable of. He needed to know his lackeys would get him nowhere. He wanted that moment when Sergei would shove up from his desk and say, “I’ll do it.” Frankie wanted Sergei to knock on his door. He wanted to look the man in the eye and present his prize: Gloria. It would take a few days for that to happen. A few days for Frankie to defile the woman in the next room. To ruin her for any other man. To make her see that she was his… and she wasn’t going fucking anywhere without him again.

The shuffling of feet drew his eyes toward her open door. He sat back and turned the TV off as she cocked her heel, elongating her leg and making his t-shirt ride up her thigh. Her honey eyes narrowed as she brushed her chestnut hair behind her shoulders.

“You drugged me.”

“We already went through this, remember?” he asked, flashing his best ‘let me fuck you and I promise you’ll forgive me’ smile. “Look at you. The sleep clearly helped. I can see that defiance back in your eyes.”

She crossed her arms, drawing his eyes to her chest. She strode forward until she stood on the opposite side of the coffee table. “Don’t drug me again.”

“I won’t make a habit of it, if you don’t make it necessary.”

“Necessary?”

Frankie sat forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “You’ve lied to me from the first moment we spoke.”

“I had to,” she argued.

Frankie scoffed. “Maybe at first. Later though? Yesterday?”

A knock came at the door. Frankie stood and shook himself off, ignoring Gloria’s muttering insults as she went for the bathroom. Frankie called out to the hotel employee to hold the fuck on as another barrage of knocks came. With quick practiced ease, Frankie reassembled Tracy. He propped the gun up on his shoulder and made his way to the door. After peeking through the peephole and making sure it was indeed one of the girls from downstairs rather than one of Sergei’s men having a lucky day, Frankie disengaged the security bar he'd put in place and opened the door.

Frankie smiled as the poor girl’s face drained of all color. Her eyes widened and she took an involuntary step back as Frankie set Tracy down on the ground beside the door.

“I… I brought…”

“Food?” Frankie asked, tilting his lips in the way that normally made women question whether fear was a new kink of theirs. She nodded a few times. “Clothes, like I asked?” The girl nodded again. Frankie reached forward into the foyer and slowly took the cart carrying the supplies he’d called down for half an hour ago. He leaned over the cart, making the girl’s breathing reach an unnatural level. He winked. “Good girl.”

The woman’s eyes widened further and a blush crept over her face but she was smart. She didn’t linger. Instead she turned on her heel and swiped her security card across the elevator keypad over and over until the elevator dinged. He chuckled as he pulled the cart into the hotel room. He fixed the security bar, turned inside and stalled when he noticed Gloria watching him from her bedroom doorway. His eyes traveled down the t-shirt he’d given her that barely covered the junction of her legs he so very much wanted to stick his face into. He licked his lips as he thought of what she would taste like.

“Hungry? I sure as fuck am.”

“I could eat… I could use some clothes too. Did they drop any off?” she asked.

Frankie popped a green grape in his mouth as his eyes moved over the t-shirt she was wearing, down to her exposed thighs. She stood on her toes to reach over the counter and he swallowed hard. He took the bag from the second shelf on the cart and hid it behind his back.

“Nope.”

Her eyes narrowed, having caught exactly what he had done. “Frank.”

“Hm?”

She started toward him, he took a few steps back. “I want clothes.”

“I want a lamborghini and a good fuck but…” He shrugged.

“Give me the bag.”

He stopped when his back hit the fridge. She stood up to him… and by stood up, she lifted her chin so that her head came to his collarbone.

“Earn it, Vixen.”

Gloria glared up at him until a change shifted her expression. She pursed her lips to the side and looked down. Her hands smoothed along her t-shirt, brushing against his skin as they moved to the hem. She glanced up once, the look so tantalizing and sexy he stopped breathing. She crossed her arms, grabbed hold of the hem of the shirt and lifted. She was too close. He couldn’t admire every inch of skin revealed by her action… but he could feel it. Her bare stomach brushed against his belt, the backs of her hands smoothed over the sensitive skin of his nipples and her hair tickled his arms as she pulled the t-shirt all the way off. She threw the t-shirt to the side, ran her hand through her waist-length chestnut hair and met his eyes with unflinching victory. Then she held her hand out.

Frankie audibly gulped as he looked down at her naked breasts, perky, pale pink and his. He handed the bag over without a word.

“Thank you,” she said, turning around after flashing him a wicked grin and a wink.

“Vixen,” he breathed as if it were a curse.