Chapter 50: Chapter Fifty

Sergei leaned forward over the table. “Ty zabral to, chto prinadlezhalo mne. —You took what was mine.—”

Frankie didn’t bother leaning forward, he merely smirked and twirled one of Gloria’s curls around his finger before bringing it to his face to inhale the scent of her shampoo. “Vse te razy, kogda ty siloy proveryal yeyo nevinnost', so mnoy zhe ona sama prepodnesla yeyo na blyudechke s goluboy kayomochkoy... Nu, yesli byt' tochneye, to u steny. —All those times you checked her purity by force yet with me she offered it on a silver platter… Well, against a wall if we want to be specific.—”

“Frankie,” Gloria breathed, her cheeks heating.

“Ty dolzhen mne dvadtsat' millionov dollarov za yeyo devstvennost'. —You owe me twenty million dollars for her virginity—,” Sergei growled.

Frankie’s smile widened and he turned to look at Gloria. He tilted his head closer to whisper, “YA zhe govoril, chto eto stoit dorozhe, chem prosto prislonit' eto k stene. —I told you it was worth more than having it taken against a wall.—”

“Frankie, please,” she whispered, meeting his eyes, not sure what she wanted him to do. Stop? Keep going into more detail to see if that throbbing vein in Sergei’s forehead would burst? Strip her down and show everyone here the marks he’d left all over her body? All she did know was that he was somehow even hotter when speaking her native tongue and she wanted so badly to taste it.

“Eto ne odno iz nashikh kodovykh slov. YA tebya smushchayu, Viksen? —That’s not one of our safe words. Am I embarrassing you, Vixen?—” he asked, brushing a hooked finger over her collarbone. She shook her head, their gazes locked, their audience forgotten. His lips were close to her ear now. “Togda ya postarayus' yeshche bol'she. —I’ll try harder then—,” he said, followed by a low chuckle that carried down her spine.

Frankie’s hand dipped into her shirt and extricated the wad of cash he’d placed there earlier. The brush of his fingers left a wake of heat that she would be feeling for the rest of the day. Frankie leaned back and flicked the wad of cash onto the table.

“That’s five hundred. Consider it a down payment. Now if you don’t mind, we can continue the rest of this meeting in English so my friends don’t feel left out.”

“There will be no negotiating from you,” Sergei said, now speaking English as Frankie had suggested. He turned to Accardi. “You signed a contract. You will uphold said contract.”

“That was back in the Dark Ages,” Accardi argued.

“Dark Ages or not, it was sealed in blood. I will get what I’m owed. If not, perhaps everyone should know contracts signed at the Royale can be declared null and void according to your whims? Is that what you want, Accardi? For me to tear apart your family’s tradition and bring back the old ways of settling scores? Dark alleyways and blood?”

“We can find someone new to meet your needs,” Accardi suggested.

Sergei laughed. He laughed so hard a few tears sprung to his eyes and he had to place a hand to his stomach. “Someone new? Tell me Accardi, do you have some factory in this city, I am not aware of, spitting out Russian heirs with vast empires? I tell you what? Why don’t you get your cousin Palladino in here to talk with me. I have a feeling he’d understand where I’m coming from.”

“I know you didn't come here without some kind of backup plan? What are your terms?” Frankie interjected, bringing the focus back to him.

Sergei’s eyes flicked to him and back to Accardi as if he’d hadn’t spoken at all. “Asher.” Asher flung a file onto the desk toward Accardi who then slid it over to Frankie who put it between himself and Gloria, where it should be.

Frankie opened the file and started to scan the contents. “I have to say, Ash, I’m pretty disappointed. I had thought when our debt was cleared you’d be able to get out of the clutches of this psychopath.”

“You don’t speak to him,” Sergei said, his voice filled with jealousy.

Frankie snickered. “It was sixteen years ago, Man. Chill. Unless…” Frankie’s eyes lifted, filled with amusement. “You still think about me when you’re in bed with him, Ash? Don’t tell me you made the mistake of calling out my name again? We both know what happened last time.”

Gloria watched Asher’s face turn red and his head bend at Sergei’s glare. She knew what Frankie was doing. A ploy, a tactic to put Sergei on edge. While Sergei was possessive of what a marriage to Gloria could bring financially and politically, Sergei had never hidden his real feelings for his lover. Knowing Frankie had come between both of those relationships was probably making Sergei’s trigger finger twitch. Frankie finished the new contract and slid it closer to Gloria who read at a much slower pace.

“No.”

“No?” Sergei repeated with a smile. “Is there a problem?”

“You want me to loan you my girl?”

“Your girl?”

“Echo.”

“Echo,” Louis added helpfully.

“What’s the problem, Donati? I thought you liked to share?” Sergei said, now pushing his own agenda.

Gloria read feverishly, trying to catch up with their conversation. Then she gasped. “What the fuck is this?!” she yelled, getting to her feet.

“It’s okay, Vixen.”

“No!” she said, ripping her arm away from Frankie. “You want to use me like some breeding heifer? Sign over my father’s entire estate and then come to you until I give you a male heir?!”

“I don’t see what the problem is. You get to keep your plaything, live your little pathetic life outside of the business and I get to show you what a real man feels like. What’s the issue?” Sergei asked, smiling now that he’d taken back control.

“I already know what a real man feels like,” Gloria hissed. She could hear Louis snicker and Asher grumble.

Accardi sighed, ready to be done with the drama. “We recently negotiated a peace in which we signed over a family member’s inheritance: the business, real estate, men. We can give you that if you’ll…”

“No,” Gloria stated firmly, absolutely fed up. Being compared to a breeding cow was the final straw in her composure. She felt Frankie’s hand settle against the back of her thigh in encouragement, almost nudging her forward. “We will not be signing anything over to this scum. You violated me. For years.” Her eyes turned on the Italian Don. “With your help, I might add.”

“Get ‘em, Vixen.”

“My mother died trying to help me get away from you. I won’t let her sacrifice be in vain,” she said, recalling how Frankie had spoken about Stephen’s death. She added another chink to her armor. “You killed my protector. My first friend.” Tears were spilling now. Not of sadness but anger. “I’ve been running from you my entire life. I’ve run from my demons and cowered in the corner waiting for my fate to fall on my head but no, not anymore. I will void this contract in the only way I know how.”

Sergei chuckled. “The contract is impenetrable, Gloria. Your life was signed over to me by your father. You’re mine.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Sergei. The contract isn’t airtight. There is one foolproof way to turn this contract to dust.”

“And that is?” he asked, raising an amused eyebrow.

“I’m going to kill you,” she hissed.

It all happened quickly. Gloria reached down for the gun Frankie had on his hip and raised it to Sergei’s head. She watched Sergei’s eyes widen in shock a moment before he reached for his own weapon. Chairs were knocked sideways as everyone got to their feet, weapons drawn, targets locked, fingers poised. But Gloria didn’t fire. She’d felt it the  moment she’d lifted the gun: the weight was off. Frankie had seen this coming. He’d positioned her on his right, and kept the gun on that side empty.

“You have a week to get your affairs in order, Sergei,” Gloria promised, giving an excuse for why she didn’t end his life here and now. “Figure out a way to get yourself out of this contract or I’ll end your life myself.”

Gloria lowered her weapon, knowing the men around her would hold their positions as she walked out of the diner. She shoved past the men at the entrance, holding a hand to her mouth. She jogged to the opposite side of the SUV, her footsteps hurried. Once out of view of the diner, she bent over and spewed her guts onto the asphalt. She felt firm hands along her back, holding her hair out of the way as she emptied the contents of her stomach. She stood up and fell back against the SUV. Frankie took the hem of his shirt and wiped her mouth with it. His eyes were burning hot, the black set beneath the white singed edge of a chunk of coal. His hand cupped her throat, pressing her more firmly against the hot metal of the SUV.

“Here I was thinking I’d be the one to kill the fucker, Vixen. But I have to admit, I’ve never been more excited to be a simple observer in my life.”

Then his mouth claimed hers, seemingly not caring that she’d just evacuated her stomach onto the ground beside them. Nor did she let that fact affect her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and fell into the man who gave her the power to rise to who she was always meant to become.