Beautiful Beast (Perfectly Imperfect: Mafia Legacy #1)

“Give me your hand,” I order.

“Boss, I . . .”

I shove the gun to the bridge of his nose. “Now.”

Slowly, he extends his left hand toward me—palm up—his fingers shaking. Before he has a chance to start pleading his case, I’ve got the barrel butted up to his middle finger and I’m squeezing the trigger. An agonized howl explodes into the night.

“Touch her again, and it’ll be your skull next,” I bark and head back inside, still fuming. I don’t understand why, but I can’t get the sight of the girl’s wounded wrists out of my mind.

Guido’s apartment is on the ground floor, in the east wing of the estate. I find my brother sprawled on his couch, watching TV.

“Had a look at your hacker?” he asks, still focused on his movie. “Did you kill her already?”

I round the couch, grab the front of his shirt, and yank him up. Then, I punch him in the face with my free hand.

“Fuck, Raff!” He presses his hands over his bloody schnoz. “What the hell was that for?”

“Next time you see a woman being mistreated and do nothing, I’ll do much more than break your nose.”

“I didn’t think you’d care. You wanted the hacker dead.”

“I didn’t know that he, is in fact, a she!”

“It never mattered before.”

He’s right. It never did. Man, woman, a damn unicorn sprouting rainbows and sparkles out of its ass—it never mattered. You mess with my business, I destroy you. So why the fuck am I standing here, after knocking my brother’s mug, thinking about the woman in my room upstairs, and wondering if I should head up and toss another blanket over her to ward off the chill?

“If you want, I’ll off her,” he adds.

“You will not touch her,” I growl and hit him again.

Guido stumbles backward, falling onto the couch. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he mumbles into the cushion he’s pressing to his face. “And you’re bleeding on my rug. What the hell happened?”

Yes. What the fuck is wrong with me? I grab a discarded T-shirt from the back of the recliner, then take a seat and start wrapping the garment around my forearm. “The girl cut me with a broken wine bottle.”

Guido blinks at me, confusion written all over his face. “Is she a trained agent or something?”

“I don’t think so. She just caught me off guard.”

“Rafael De Santi. Caught off guard.”

“Yes.” I nod as I secure the makeshift bandage on my arm. “Do we know her name? She fainted, so I didn’t get the chance to ask.”

“No. But I took a picture of her. I’m running it through facial recognition and cross-referencing Illinois DMV records and some local government databases in Chicago. I’ll see if we have a match.”

Guido rises off the couch and heads toward his desk that’s shoved to the side and overflowing with crap. “And it looks like we have a match. She’s— oh, shit.”

“What is it?”

He glances at me over the screen of his laptop, a slightly frantic look in his eyes. “Vasilisa Romanovna Petrova. She’s Roman Petrov’s daughter.” He swallows, hard. “We kidnapped the Russian Bratva’s princess.”

“You don’t say.” I lean back and throw my arm over the back of the recliner. “Small world.”

“We have to take her back. Right the fuck now! I’m calling the pilot to get the plane prepped.”

Yes, sending her home would be the wisest course of action. It’s been close to twenty-four hours since Hank and Vinny grabbed her off the street. Knowing Petrov, he’s already gathered his men and is ready to annihilate whoever is responsible for his daughter’s disappearance.

My mind drifts to the woman I left sleeping in my bed. “Put down your phone.”