MAVIS

closing her eyes. I do. Her heart was pounding. She leaned forward, untucking the lace of the veil away from her face. Warmth surged in her blood, crackling like static. Like lightning.

The air sizzled with heat. Mavis pressed her lips together.

Anticipation hummed in her veins.

"Mom!" Isla snapped from the other side of the door. "Get out of the bathroom! We are behind on our schedule, and you have a wedding in three hours. Come on, Queen Elizabeth! It's not fashionable to be late!"

Mavis jerked back from the mirror, opening her eyes.

The veil was folded back. Stray pieces of her disheveled hair clung like static to the air. There was a lingering blush in her cheeks, and she . . .

"I can't do this," Mavis groaned. "I can't. This is crazy."

She looked like a disaster.

And Robin was going to kill her when Mavis didn't show up for her shift at Inferno. After seven years, Mavis had never been this late.

"You are coming out of there whether you like it or not! I'm going to sic my Russian assassin on you, and she's going to bust this door down!"

Mavis cracked open the bathroom door. "Your Russian assassin?"

Isla beamed, clearly pleased with herself. "Ace and I are a team, you know. She's an assassin and I'm a ninja."

Mavis rolled her eyes. "Don't get ahead of yourself, baby. You're not a ninja yet."

But Isla didn't even let the comment touch her. She was holding up a white silk slip of a dress and a sheer blue scarf.

"Get dressed, beauty queen."

"Isla, where did you get these things?"

"From the casino," Isla said impatiently. "There's a gift shop."

"You're seven! I told you to stay in the hotel."

"And you know I love listening to you, but here's the thing. If I'm going to be a ninja in the Holy Order of the Secret Society of the Illuminati―"

"That's not a thing."

"―then I have to be prepared to be stealthy, and that means practice. Doesn't practice mean perfect, Mom? That's what you always say."

"Yes, because I want you to do your homework."

"Homework," Isla said, scowling, "is merely but a flea in the grand scheme of the universe, and when you begin to recognize that life is an illusion, you can free yourself from the―"

"I thought I told you to stop reading my philosophy books."

"Yes, but obviously I didn't listen. I already finished The Study of Neurology, The Research of Immunology and The Nanotechnology Doctrine. I was bored."

"You were bored, so you decided to read Classical Literature and Philosophical Foundations?"

"Yes, now put on this dress."

"Where are you going?"

"Don't worry about it," Isla said, darting towards the direction of Ace's hotel room―across the corridor. "I've got it all under control."

"Isla!" Mavis called out, exasperated.

Once her daughter was gone, she sat down on the hotel bed. Cream-coloured sheets. Beige carpets.

A rattling wall. The sound of moaning on the other end.

Only an hour ago, Mavis had packed a bag with everything she needed. Underwear, a toothbrush, a change of clothes. She had lived with nothing, once, and she could do it again. Once she had said goodbye to the home she had raised Isla in, she had locked the door behind her.

"Mom, why are you crying?" Isla had asked. "It's not like we're never going to see it again."

Mavis had only shrugged, shaking her head wordlessly, tears still in her eyes. Tears she couldn't help.

Ace had said, "Come on, Isla. I booked a reservation at the Bellagio."

Mavis was grateful―so grateful, for the distraction.

"Santa mierda!" Isla had said, grinning. "That's the best one in the city."

"But she's a kid . . ." Mavis had protested.

"Kids are allowed in the hotel, just not in the casino. I also reserved the chapel for midnight."

"Mierda," Isla repeated.

Mavis had narrowed her eyes. "Baby, you know I didn't teach you Spanish just so you could use all the swear words."

And now they were in the Bellagio hotel. Ace had reserved two bedrooms, directly across from each other, and Isla was running between back and forth between them, trying to "prepare the wedding of the century."

Mavis didn't have the heart to tell her the wedding of the century was really just an elopement.

So she slipped on the silk dress Isla had picked out. White, with fabric that shone like pearl and a heart-shaped neckline that plunged between her breasts. With thin straps and a hem that stretched down mid-thigh, the dress was both sexy and vintage.

Isla knew her so well.

But the thought of her marriage made her head spin. A spur-of-the-moment decision.

Mavis was getting married to the woman who had been sent to kill her.

She was getting married to a Mafia assassin.

"I'm out of my mind," she breathed, as she wrapped the blue scarf around her wrist. "I'm going to be the wife of a Russian black ops soldier."

When she heard a knock at the door five minutes later, she hollered, "Isla, please tell me this dress isn't borrowed because you stole it!"

It wasn't Isla at the door.

Ace was standing on the threshold, her blue eyes piercing. She was wearing a black suit, and the colour contrasted so sharply against her. For the second time since Mavis had seen her, she looked dangerous.

She looked like a killer.

Until she smiled, almost shyly, and Mavis's heart began to pound.

"May I come in?" she asked gruffly, with the heat of that Russian accent sharpening her words.

"It's bad luck," Mavis said, feeling the warmth travel through her whole body. "To―um. To see the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony."

Ace's eyes were so intense Mavis took a step back. Heart racing wildly.

"We will make our own luck," Ace said, in a way that Mavis stopped breathing altogether.

Get yourself together. She's an assassin, she's a part of the Mafia, and that's not even the worst part. She's a blonde.

Mavis was getting married to a blonde.

Marriage of convenience, she told herself.

And she couldn't explain why it had to be Ace. But who would be better to protect her daughter when she was gone―than the most dangerous breed of the Mafia?

Except for the part that she was blonde.

Get yourself together. "Um―where's Isla?"

"In the hallway," Ace said. "She is talking to a boy."

"A boy?" Mavis hissed. "She's talking to a boy? You let my daughter talk to a boy?"

"He gave her a present. A cupcake from the restaurant downstairs. I think he saw her downstairs and thought she was milyy."

Mavis tried to pronounce that. "Milyy? What's that?"

Ace hesitated, as though she hadn't realized she had spoken in Russian. "Cute," she explained. "He thought she was cute."

"Oh," Mavis said. Relaxing slightly.

A boy had thought her daughter was cute.

Well, of course he did. Her daughter was cute.

Conversationally, Ace added, "I also did a background check on his parents and promised him that if he laid a single finger on her, I would cut him open and sell his internal organs on the Chernyy Rynok. Pardon―black market."

Mavis was going to faint. "You threatened a little boy?"

Ace shrugged, but there was something twinkling in those harsh blue eyes. "Internal organs have a starting rate of $162,000."

Mavis's jaw dropped. "I wish I had known that earlier. I would have sold my uterus."

There it was―the shadow of Ace's smile.

And Mavis definitely wasn't prepared for when Ace began to take off the jacket of her suit, loosening the collar and exposing the pale expanse of her throat.

Mavis's breath hitched.

Ace's slender fingers unknotted the tie from her neck.

"No consummation, remember?" Mavis blurted out. Trying to remind herself. "It's just for Isla."

Ace raised an eyebrow and pulled the jacket off her shoulders. Dropping it onto the bed. The sleek power in the movement was unbelievably sexy, and―"May I use the bathroom?"

Mavis refused to be turned on by the fact that Ace had taken off her jacket.

"Oh. The bathroom. Um―of course."

How did this woman have the ability to make Mavis such a mess?

When Ace disappeared into the bathroom, Mavis let out a breath. She had never felt like this before. Each nerve on end, sensitive to a spark. She felt raw and vulnerable and really, ridiculously turned on.

I am not turned on by a blonde.

Blondes were bitches. That was the rule.

Mavis was not going to break her rule.

She leaned back against the wall. It was still rattling, but the moans were steadily tapering off―which probably meant they were tired already. So they definitely weren't lesbians.

And it was then that she noticed something had fallen out of Ace's jacket.

It was peeking out from under the lapel, close to where Mavis knew she kept her gun.

Just a peek, she told herself.

A little peek wouldn't hurt, right?

How much did she really know about Ace?

She heard the sound of water splashing in the sink, the tap running, and Mavis moved fast. She lifted up the jacket, heart slamming against her ribcage.

A wallet.

Ace had a wallet.

Mavis didn't hesitate. The water was still running.

She pried open the black wallet, and there was . . . nothing inside. No change, no bills, no credit card.

What had she been expecting? A driver's license? An ID card that said, Hello, I am Ace Alisa Anastasia Ivanova Morozova, Russian Intelligence Operative and Assassin For The Mafia.

Anything. Anything would have been nice.

Mavis was about to tuck the wallet back beneath the jacket when something slipped out of it.

A piece of paper.

No―a photograph.

It was a little girl. Blonde hair, blue eyes. There was a hawk on her shoulder and a wide, happy grin on her small face. Compared to her tiny stature, the hawk seemed almost as big, with great wings and talons that clung to her.

Mavis squinted. One of its feet had a little shackle.

The picture had been cut off, but Mavis could see the sharp shoulder of someone else. A stern, imposing man, who held the hawk on a leash.

"What are you doing?"

Mavis swiveled around, her blood turning hot. The photograph was still in her hand, the wallet open on the bed.

"Nothing," she said weakly.

Ace strode forward, reaching for her wallet. When she realized there was nothing inside, the intensity of her blue eyes became unbearable.

"I don't know anything about you," Mavis confessed. "I was . . . curious. Honest. Is this you?"

When Ace saw the photograph, she softened just slightly. "Yes. I was thirteen."

"Is that your bird?"

Ace sat down on the bed. With her dress shirt partially unbuttoned, the edge of her collarbone visible, Mavis suddenly had a hard time swallowing.

"Flynn was not my hawk," Ace said. "He belonged to my father. But he was my favourite companion as a child."

That made her sound so―human.

"Where is he now?"

"I broke both his wings and tortured him until he drowned in his own blood."

Mavis flinched―and almost as though Ace noticed it, her stare darkened. Her face hardening.

"When I was thirteen," she began, "my father took a special interest in me. Perhaps he saw ruthlessness in Aleksi, something that could not be controlled. Perhaps I was his backup. My father was not stupid, despite what his enemies thought."

Ace leaned back on her hands, the bed sinking slightly.

Mavis slowly, tentatively sat down next to her.

"For five years, until I was eighteen, he trained me in secret. He taught me not to fear blood. He taught me how to break a man in two-hundred and forty-two different ways. He trained me with no limits, no restrictions. I let myself be molded. I became the lethal weapon he wanted me to be."

Mavis didn't speak. Didn't break the trance Ace seemed to be in.

"My father was the Russian king―not a real one. But he was the leader of the Mafia, and that was . . . he was powerful. He sent me to do his dirty work. I have been a killer since I was thirteen. I was good―I was good at it. Then he died. Aleksi's doing. I do not know how, but my brother discovered my training―and he assigned me to the interrogation unit. Torture. Because I had experience. In Russia, we use methods that would probably make the CIA run for their mothers. I was in charge of it."

There was something cold and deliberately blank in Ace's eyes now.

"What happened to the hawk?" Mavis whispered. "Why did you . . ."

"A gift," Ace said coldly. "A gift from my father, for my eighteenth birthday. Torture him until he breaks, he told me. And I will know you are successful. I will give you anything you want. I wanted to know who my mother was, and I . . . I loved him. I wanted to love my father so much I let myself become that person. That was one of the moments."

"One of the five moments?"

"Yes," Ace said. "When I cut that bird's throat, I knew I was going to hell."

She was dangerous. Dangerous and murderous and vicious.

She was a trained weapon, a honed knife.

"Did he tell you?" Mavis finally asked. "Who your mother was?"

"He told me she was in Alaska," Ace said. "He sent me on a two-month journey to find her, and I did. Buried in an unmarked plot of land. A pauper's grave. When I got back, the king and queen were dead, and I . . ."

She trailed off, and Mavis felt the silence coil between them like thunder.

After a long moment, Mavis said, "You still have one more."

"What?"

"One more moment," Mavis continued. "You're not going to hell. You've had five moments, but you said it yourself―you still have one more."

Ace's eyes were bright, unreadable. There was something dark, something blazing in the way she was looking at Mavis now. And Mavis remembered one time, when Isla had told her, The blue flame burns the hottest.

Maybe Mavis had it wrong.

Maybe Ace wasn't ice―maybe she was blue fire.

And before Mavis could open her mouth, could stammer something out, Ace leaned forward and kissed her.

It was surprisingly gentle. Ace's lips were soft, and she tasted like―like vanilla. It was as beautiful to her as the first touch of snow, and when she pulled back, breathing hard, she wanted more.

Ace didn't speak. In her eyes, there was a question.

This marriage is just on paper, Mavis had said.

But before she could help it, before she could even hope to stop herself, Mavis was the one who closed the distance between them a second time.

She tilted her head slightly, waiting for the brush of that heat, that softness.

And when Ace's mouth collided with hers, it was no longer gentle.

The first touch of snow―that was beautiful and achingly soft. But this was hungry, and desperate, and full of hot, vicious need.

Ace's hand slid into Mavis's hair, curling against the back of her neck. And Mavis moaned at that sensation, letting the sound slip between them.

Mavis traced the feel of Ace's smooth chest, her fingertips outlining the feel of her sharp shoulders, her defined stomach. The buttons were snapping off Ace's dress shirt before she could help it, and Ace growled into her mouth. Pushing Mavis back onto the bed, dragging her palm between Mavis's breasts, down to the swell of her stomach and the apex between her thighs.

There was a knock on the door.

"Lisus Khristos," Ace swore.

Mavis was pretty sure that meant Jesus Christ.

She scrambled up from beneath Ace. "Hijo de puta," she hissed.

And she was pretty positive that meant motherfucker.

"Do you guys want to be late to your own wedding?"