He took my hand and pressed a kiss to my inner wrist. “Trust is earned.”

“You expect me to trust you? You haven’t earned it.”

“Yes, I have.”

“How?”

“I never once hurt you. Sex does not count. I could have hurt you, but I didn’t.”

“You took me to your boss in order to torture me at the attack on the benefit,” I said.

“You were there to be questioned, not tortured.”

“I have to earn everything with you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“This isn’t fair.”

He shrugged.

Silence rang between us.

The orgasm he’d given me, the sex, it all seemed empty, hollow. “You want to have a crap marriage?”

“No,” he said. “You didn’t marry a fool, Aurora. I don’t give an inch for anyone. You want my trust, you earn it. You want me to believe a single word you say, don’t lie to me. I’m willing to work to make this marriage between us bearable, but don’t for a second think you will get a submissive man. It will never happen.”

With that, he pulled out of me.

I felt his release leak out of me as I watched him walk away.

Tears spilled from my eyes and I hated myself for caring. Cara had been wrong.

Slavik and I couldn’t make this work. Neither of us had anything in common. He’d gotten what he wanted, and now, I was back to being the irritating wife.

****

Slavik

I stared around at the carnage before me, pissed off. While I’d been fucking my wife, one of my most prestigious nightclubs, Shiver, had been attacked. There were three dead bodies, several injured, and now I was enraged.

Shiver was a civilian club to the outside world. No link to us, dealt with through a company of a company until you got to me, the owner.

This was where we handled some of the coke we distributed, but it was never within the walls of the club. We kept out illegal businesses running side by side and within the restrictions of the law.

No one thought to attack this place. This was private business. Only those closest to me knew about this, unless someone had talked and gotten sloppy.

With my hands on my hips, I knew the cop on my payroll wanted to talk to me. I nodded my head toward the back of my office. Daniel was a good guy. His kid got diagnosed with cancer five years ago. I saw an opportunity and took it. His salary didn’t pay for the extensive treatment his son needed, and well, we came to an arrangement.

Arms folded, I waited as he closed the door.

“What do we have?”

“All the witness reports are unclear. Several men enter the establishment at approximately ten o’clock, and they start firing. Your barman is the first victim.”

I made a mental note to deal with the family.

Ricky was a good guy. A family man and loyal. He’d been manning this bar ever since it opened ten years ago. He’d always been the first one to call when anything fishy was happening, which told me this attack was designed to look random but with the missing coke, it wasn’t.