Until Forever Ends: A Dark Mafia Romance by Adelaide Forrest (free children's ebooks online TXT) 📕

a smile tinting her voice. A male snicker came from the background, the familiar voice of Joaquin as he found Regina's response particularly humorous.

"And how is she plotting revenge?" I asked, knowing very well I wouldn't get an answer. Isa hadn't been with me for long, but she'd already turned Regina against me. Women stuck together, and I wished I could say that Joaquin or Alejandro would take my side over Isa's. But they wouldn't either.

"We both know I wouldn't tell you that even if I knew," Regina said. "But I don't. She's been quiet. Stuck in her own head. Should I expect more bloody cutlery when you come home?"

"I'll try to keep her isolated to the bedroom when she bleeds me from now on," I said dryly. Her concern for my wellbeing was touching, and I found my hand drifting up to touch the wound where Isa had stabbed me.

I hated the scars of my brands on some level, detested the man who had given them to me when I'd been a child. But the marks from Isa were an entirely different story, a compulsion that reminded me that she owned me just as much as I owned her.

If she marked me when we returned home, I would love every second of it. I'd wear her scars with pride just as I wore her name on my skin. "Keep her out of trouble," I reminded Regina.

"Would you like to speak to her?" Regina asked, and I shook my head before I realized she couldn't see me. "Not just yet. I'll talk to her tomorrow."

"Smart choice," Regina agreed. "You should give her a chance to miss you."

"Fat fucking chance!" Isa yelled in the background, making Regina bark out a sharp laugh. I hung up the phone with a groan. My wife would be the death of me.

And I'd love every second of it.

I stood with my back against the wall, kicking up a leg to settle in and wait for the hours to pass. At some point, Leonid would emerge from the bar where he'd chosen to settle for the night to drink his problems away.

Only a foolish man got drunk, particularly in a territory that wasn't his own, but the Kuznetsov family thought themselves above all their rivals. They believed they were the toughest and most powerful family because of their history.

The Russians had been at the front of organized crime alongside the Italians and the Irish for many years. But as crimes modernized and new alliances formed without cultural and familial allegiances, new powers rose.

Old powers would fall. Until all that remained would be one power.

Mine.

28

Isa

I spent most of the night plotting ways to kill him. So much so that my dreams were filled with blood and gore. By the time I woke up the next morning, I hated myself for the violent turn in my sleep.

I didn't want to be like Rafael. I didn't want violence to consume me just because I was dominated by the presence of a devil. I would only be letting him win if I allowed him to change who I was.

But there was something brutal inside me. A part of me that longed to find justice where there was none.

I'd been thrown into a river without consequence. I'd watched time and time again as the crimes against my people went ignored. I'd been lied to. I'd been stripped of all my choices. I'd been drugged and kidnapped.

My entire life was a series of paying for other people's crimes. Just once, it would be nice to be the one committing them.

It would be bliss to earn the punishment myself.

It all simmered within me, feeling like I sat on the edge of a reckoning. As if the part of me that seemed to come to the surface after Rafael's introduction to my life had always been there, and I guessed it had.

The darkness had always been a part of me. I'd always been more at home in it than I had the sunshine.

The bed seemed foreign without Rafael's presence. Without his heat at my back and his hand cupping my breast in his massive grip while he slept, it felt like just another empty bed. A piece of furniture. I should have felt freer with him gone; instead I just felt alone.

I stretched my arms above my head languidly, pushing the button on the nightstand to draw the curtains open. I'd gone to bed with pajamas on for the first time since coming to Rafael's island, since he insisted on me sleeping naked with him.

But at some point in the past couple of weeks with him, I'd gotten more comfortable in my own skin. I couldn't stand the coarseness of even the satins and best cottons against my skin while I slept, especially not against my core that throbbed with need after his bullshit the afternoon before.

My eyes went to the cameras as I debated challenging him and his authority over me by touching myself, but I pursed my lips and got out of bed instead.

I'd wait until the night to torment him. To distract him from the real rebellion.

Hopefully, he'd never see that one coming.

I sat out on the daybed with a book beside me after eating one of Regina's pregnancy-inducing breakfasts. If there was any benefit to Rafe's absence, it was that I wouldn't be getting knocked up while he was gone.

We'd had unprotected sex far too often for my comfort, and I touched a hand to my stomach cautiously before shaking it off. I looked over at Joaquin, pursing my lips as I considered how to ask him for what I wanted from him. "Do you still think girls like me don't need to learn kickboxing?" I asked.

He dragged a hand over his face. "That's really none of my business. I suggest you take it up with your husband, mi reina," he said, clearly uncomfortable with the suggestion. It seemed like maybe Rafe