Taken By the Bratva Boss by Sarina Hart

Chapter Twelve

Olivia

Ican’t believe I’m here. Del Amico is an art icon. His use of color to make light and shadows is more than a skill or talent. It’s a gift.

He’s a total genius. And I’m standing in front of him.

Standing.

In.

His.

World.

He’s blonde with a man-bun and hands probably permanently colored by paint. His body is as lithe as a runner’s, but in an interview once, he said he owed his physique to starving artist syndrome, and explained it as working through dinner one too many nights to maintain a pants size. Maybe someday, someone will explain to him what the phrase actually means, but I’m not the someone, and this isn’t the someday. Today, it’s enough for me to just be in the same city as Del.

I want to memorize everything about this place. The white walls. White-washed wood floor. LED lights shining on the paintings which provide the only color in the room besides the clothes worn by the guests.

And Del Amico. Larger than life, ten feet away. My heart is pounding, and I want to go over and say hello. I want to buy him a drink. I want to offer him all the money I have and will ever have for just one lesson, one chance just to watch him paint, even would be enough.

My hero-worship is showing, and I try to pull it back, but he’s been an idol since I was old enough to appreciate art and I saw my first Amico original.

He’s walking toward me, slowly, smiling, and I can’t breathe. I focus instead on a painting of a cemetery faded over the face of a woman. “I painted this one after my mom died.” His voice is softer than I thought, but much deeper in pitch, almost gravelly.

“It’s amazing.” I know a lot of words. I teach them to others. But amazing is all I can come up with because I’m one breath from hyperventilating.

“I’m Del.”

“Olivia. Olivia Hudson.” Beside me, Anna tugs the fabric of my dress where it falls looser at my hip. “And you know this up-and-coming young artist, Anna Krilov.” She hides behind my leg and waves at him. He laughs, and she runs around me to hug him, almost knocking him off his feet when he crouches.

“Uncle Del!”

He scoops her up and stands beside me. “Do you paint, Miss Hudson?”

It seems silly to talk to him about my water paints and my pen sketches, so I shake my head. “Not really.” What I do can’t even be considered art compared to what he does.

“She’s draws landspaces.”

“Landscapes.” I smile because Anna is trying to make me look good. “I started with portraits in pen, moved on to some charcoals. I tried oils but… I smeared. I couldn’t get the hang, and it looked like my brush vomited on the canvas.” And now I’m babbling about my faux pas to one of the greats.

He smiled. “My first attempt with oils looked like a clot of blood faded into a bruise.” He lays his hand at the small of my back and guides me and Anna to one of his paintings. “This was the seventeenth oil painting I ever painted.”

I look at the plate underneath a beautiful city scape overlaid with a woman’s face. “It says it’s your first.”

He shrugs. “It would be bad for my image if it said seventeenth. How can I be a savant if I’ve failed sixteen times before producing something that won’t embarrass my good family name?” His smile isn’t deprecating or cocky. It’s just a smile. It’s a hero smile, and I imagine it’s gotten him laid plenty of times.

He’s good-looking. Much more so than the slumped shoulders and way he waits for recognition before he speaks, waits for the adoration before he smiles would indicate. If I’d met him a year ago, I would be swooning because he has something—a charm, maybe—I wouldn’t have minded getting to know.

He’s the kind of charming I always imagined would appeal to me, but I have this… thing going on with Leon. It’s powerful and potent and delicious. I fully intend to hang in long enough to see where it goes.

Plus, I want the answers he promised me about Denice’s rapist. Nothing’s going to get in the way of that.

But it’s probably all in my head anyway because Del doesn’t ask me out, doesn’t hint that he might want to see me again, just smiles, lays a hand on my shoulder. “I appreciate you coming tonight, and I would love to show you every painting here, but I have to mingle with the masses.”

“Your adoring public awaits.”

He nods. “I don’t know about adoring. I just hope they’re in the mood to spend money.” He grins and holds out his hand. My time with him is over, and I wasted it on ridiculous small talk. “It’s been a pleasure, and I hope we can chat again someday.” But he’s a few feet away when he turns and smiles, waggles his fingers.

Anna smiles. “I think he likes you.”

My skin burns red hot. She’s waiting for an answer, and I don’t have one. She thinks I’m Leon’s girlfriend. I’m not. Absolutely not. And I would love to spend hours talking art with Del. Not as much as I currently love “being” with Leon. But as soon as I have the thought, I glance down at Anna.

What are we doing?

Leon and I are lying to an impressionable child who is looking at me like I’m… filling a void for her. Wide-eyed and trusting. She’s too trusting to belong to Leon Krilov. And this kind of lie is probably some form of endangerment. To her heart at least.

It’s something Leon and I are going to have to discuss. Later.

Right now, I want to show Anna all the paintings. I want to hear her unpolished, unfiltered opinions, and I want to see her reactions to each one.

I navigate us through the crowd to a painting of a flower petal. The striations and color variations are exquisite, and when I look closer, the entire flower petal is colored by the word hope written over and over again in various shapes and sizes and shades of yellow.

“Do you like this one?”

Anna tilts her head and stares. “Yes. I would like to look at it every day.” She grinned. “It reminds me of breakfast and when I first wake up.”

A woman moves to stand next to me, and when I move on, she follows. By the time we’re at our third painting, there’s no doubt she’s following me.

She’s tall and brunette. Old money elegance. New money arrogance. Probably her family had their own fortune and she’s married into more. The dress is red and Prada, the shoes black and Louboutin’s, and the bag beaded by Swarovski. Her posture is finishing school perfect, but she’s overdone for this occasion. Too much flaunting the money for it to be of the old variety. I might’ve come from nothing, but I dreamed of having everything, and I can recognize someone who does and doesn’t know what to do with it.

I get a big whiff of Chanel No. 5 when she leans in. “You came here with Leon Krilov?”

“Do I know you?” I would remember her.

“Leon Krilov is a bad man.” Her whispers are sharp and fierce. “Dangerous.”

Yeah. And he doesn’t hide it. Nor does he apologize for it. It shouldn’t be sexy. Shouldn’t be making me want to see him, but I do.

She cocks a brow at me when I don’t answer. Quieter but with more intensity, she hisses, “He is a fucking rapist.” The words are foreign and familiar. I’m watching her from the corner of my eye as she downs her flute of complimentary champagne. “Her name is Sarah.”

I smiled down at Anna and wink then look at the woman. I know he’s capable of murder, mayhem, probably some unadulterated evil, but when he said he doesn’t take things that aren’t freely given, I felt it. When he swore he didn’t hurt Denice, I believed it. “It was Leon? You’re sure?”

Like I’m stupid without the ability to grasp the concept of the effects of rape, she narrows her eyes and her jaw tenses. “You don’t forget a man who almost rapes you.”

“Almost? Did he, or didn’t he?” My stomach clenches with unease. This can’t be true. I’ve already cleared him in my mind for what happened with Denice. Already saw his alibi and believe it. Of course it isn’t true. And I’m almost positive enough to say it aloud. Almost.

“Why don’t you call her and ask her the fucking difference?” She shakes her head. “Leon Krilov is a monster, and you’d do well to stay away from him.” She hands me a card. Sarah Burke Designs. Sarah Burke. CEO.

When I look up from the gold embossed lettering, she’s gone. I can’t even see her in the crowd, and if I wasn’t holding the card, I wouldn’t believe I’d talked to her.

Sarah Burke.

There was a second woman claiming Leon raped, or at least tried to rape her. And I can’t even put the two women in a room together to compare notes.

I don’t know Sarah Burke, but I don’t want what happened to Denice to happen to her. The sadness. The depression. The hopelessness.

Again, I look into the crowd for the woman. But she’s gone and before I can reason it out—I have the card—an explosion shakes the building. The chandelier rocks above Anna, and I pull her against me while dust shakes free from the ceiling and a crack crawls across the window before it implodes, spraying glass into the room. I shield Anna as a pair of strong arms circle us both. When I look down, Anna has a small trickle of blood on her forehead, and Leon is wrapped around her.

Del Amico is on the ground just outside the front door with a license plate lodged in his chest, his eyes blank and empty.

Leon ushers me past the body with an arm around my waist and Anna pressed against him, her face buried in his shoulder. She’s whimpering, and her hair is matted against her forehead where the cut is. I want to ask how she is, but the commotion outside is almost as loud as the explosion was inside.

The acrid smell of smoke and burning rubber along with a black, puffy cloud coats the air as Leon propels me around the corner of the building. We’re shielded from the view of any of the gathering crowd and the emergency vehicles arriving.

“What happened?” My voice sounds far away, like I’m hearing myself through a tunnel.

He shakes his head as he runs his hand over my arms, and then turns me so he can see my back, Anna still clinging to his shoulder. When he spins me back, he nods. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah.” Shaky. Confused. But I’m fine except for the smell. And the rumbling in my stomach.

He closes his eyes and nods. “Okay.”

I don’t know why we aren’t walking to his car, but we’re hiding in an alley between the buildings. And we stay there until his brother pulls a car up and we all climb in. My body is trembling, and I don’t want Leon to let me go, but he doesn’t get in behind me, doesn’t climb in behind Adrian who’s in the front.

“Take them home. Stay with them.”

And he closes the door.

I hold Anna, who’s also shaking, while Adrian weaves in and out of traffic like he’s Nascar’s newest it-boy.

“It’s okay.” I murmur the words over and over while hoping, by the time we get back home, one of us will be convinced.