Too long.
The anger built up again. Against her, against myself, against the situation that I tried to control, tried to make better, only to end up losing myself so completely that I’d become obsessed.
I didn’t want to apologize.
I wanted to fight.
I wanted to yell, shoot.
Instead, I replied.
Me: Nixon, you’re well within your right to end me, alcohol or no alcohol.
Sergio: Guys, CNN just said Hell froze over. Think Chase had anything to do with that?
Me: MIDDLE FINGER EMOJI, YOU ASS HAT!
Tex: There’s an actual emoji for that, you dumb fuck.
Me: Not a big enough finger… Not a big enough anything, if you get my meaning.
Hell, was I joking? Seriously? Maybe I should sleep more often…
Dante: Funny because last time I heard you say…
Nixon: Shhh, Dante, let the grown-ups talk.
Dante sent an actual middle finger emoji, making me smile at my phone for just a second .
Me: Why are we all on a group text?
Nixon started typing.
I waited, my nerves already overtaxed from having a woman spread across me not five minutes ago. If I was being honest, I’d admit that my body still felt hot to the touch, that the hair on my arms stood on end, still, at the sight of her in my clothes.
I shut that shit down immediately.
She might as well be Delilah to my Samson.
All women were.
Nixon: The commission is set for a week from tomorrow. The Families are flying in from Sicily. They will also be performing the bloodletting ceremony in order to strip Phoenix from the De Lange line.
Stunned, I just stared down at my phone.
Nobody said anything.
So I typed with shaking fingers, just seeing the name made me see murder and blood.
Me: Why?
Phoenix was quick to answer.
Phoenix: Because you’re my brother. And my sister is dead to me.
I closed my eyes as anxiety slammed into my chest.
He started typing again.
Phoenix: Because when I was the worst of them all — when I hurt Trace — when I hurt my brothers, myself, countless women, people — when I was covered in so much shit I didn’t even want to live, someone gave me a purpose, a reason to drop the knife I held next to my own throat. A reason. Don’t prove me wrong.
I tried to swallow the ball of emotion in my throat, but it refused to go down. None of the guys said anything.
I very slowly typed out my response.
Me: Thank you.
Frank typed next.
Frank: This only changes Phoenix’s bloodline. What you do with that, with the rest of the De Langes, will still be voted on.
Me: Understood.
Nixon: Think you can stop killing people for a bit?
Me: No promises.
Dante: Good thing he doesn’t have a hamster.
Me: Jackass.
But I was smiling.
Down at my phone.
As if I was looking at a naked picture.
I quickly frowned.
Mil had loved to tease me like that.
At first, I’d adored it.
And then it just felt — fake. As if I was being used because of how much I wanted her, how much I wanted to please her.
Men were fools.
All of us.
Driven by desire while getting slowly bled dry.
I tossed my phone onto the bed and managed to stand without wanting to take a jackhammer to my head to remove the pain.
I stared down at the three empty bottles of Jack littering my floor and shook my head. One thing was for certain; the alcohol was hindering my sleep.
Which left only one more option if I had any hope of resting and being at my best before I took every single one of those bastards down.
I peeked my head out the door.
My angel.
And a fucking truce.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Patience, patience, burn from within. I watched them without them knowing and found great pleasure in moving my first piece.”
— Ex-FBI Agent P
Luciana
“Thank you.” Chase’s voice jolted me out of my intense stare-down with the Final Will and Testament of Emiliana De Lange.
I immediately tensed and slid the folder underneath the pile and turned.
“For what?” I asked, trying to sound casual when my heart was thudding so fast against my chest I was sure he could both see and hear it.
Our eyes met.
He looked… different.
Dangerous still.
Naturally too sexy for words.
And clean.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Do I pass inspection?” He was smiling.
Why was he smiling?
Was this a trick?
I grabbed the closet thing I could find, which just so happened to be a pen, and held it out in front of me, pointed at him.
His eyebrows arched. “Either you’re a better fighter than I am, or you really think a pen’s going to keep me away.”
“Don’t.” I held it between us. “Just, say what you need to say, and then…” I gulped. “…go away.”
He crossed his arms and stopped walking. “I just came to say thank you, that’s all.”
I lowered my arm. “For what?”
His eyes drank me in. “The first sleep I’ve had in six months.”
My chest tightened as I looked away. “I’m sure that was the alcohol.”
“Nah, that was the singing.”
Heat flooded my face, and I knew I was blushing, embarrassed that I’d literally sung a murderer to sleep for a solid six hours while trying not to fall asleep on his hard chest. It was both the best and worst night of my life.
The best because I genuinely felt like I was singing the demons away.
The worst because I figured he wouldn’t remember, and he’d just wake up as haunted as before, never changed, never free, and for some reason, it mattered.
It really mattered to me.
I didn’t know what to say so I stared down at the ground. Best not to look into his crystal blue eyes; they made me feel things, nice things, not angry things, and with how hot and cold he was, I knew I needed to keep my walls up.
“I wanted to thank you with something else.” He moved again.
Oh no. Hell no.
I lifted the pen and shook my head slowly. “All done and thanked! You can go now, I should, should, um…” Could I be any less eloquent? “…get back to the grind.” Oh, God, what was next? Punching his shoulder and calling him slugger?
His grin only widened.
He. Was. Epically beautiful.
Men weren’t supposed to look like him in real life, with light eyes, dark, perfect olive skin, strong jawlines, hair I wanted to dig my hands into, and a body just made for magazine covers.
“Grind, huh?” He pressed his lips together. “Alright, well, I guess I’ll just eat by myself then…” He started backing away just as my treacherous stomach grumbled. He grinned back at me. “Hiding a T-Rex in here, or are you hungry?”
I covered my face with my hands. “I didn’t eat breakfast.”
“Well then…” He made a motion with his hand. “Follow me.”
“Chase…” I gulped. “…you don’t have to, really. I know you… I know you don’t like me… or people for that matter.”
“Today I’m making an exception,” was all he said before leaving me to decide my own fate.
Ugh. I was starving.
With a little mental slap in the face, I followed him out of the room and down the stairs in silence.
The kitchen smelled like rich pasta and homemade bread.
He must have a personal chef or something.
And then he went over and started stirring sauce on the stove. I frowned so hard my vision blurred. He moved to pull bread out of the ove
n, and I immediately wondered if I was on a hidden camera show, the ones where they ask you what you would do if someone murdered a dozen people in front of you, and then asked if you want to break bread.
Obviously, I was the dumb one in the situation.
I was still living with him!
I slapped my hand against my face and gave myself a hard shake as I walked over to the stove. It smelled like spaghetti with a heavy dose of basil, and I sniffed again.
Chase froze next to me as I dipped my finger into the sauce and licked it.
Completely out of habit.
I winced. “I’m so sorry. I just, I used to do the cooking and I just, I’m so sorry I won’t touch anything else, I swear. Your house, your kitchen, your food, your—”
He slapped a hand over my mouth and then pulled it back and pressed a finger to my lips. “You talk too much when you’re nervous. Talking usually gets you killed.” His lips twitched. “But since this is a thank-you day, I’ll give you a free pass.”
I exhaled.
“Holy shit, I was kidding.” He shook his head. “Go ahead, take another taste.”
Still breathing heavily, I dipped my finger deeper and then sucked it off.
He jerked his head away like the motion offended him.
It needed more salt. I didn’t tell him that though. You don’t tell the man with the gun that his cooking could use more salt. No, you just strategically find it on the counter. Bingo. Grab it, and then tap some out.
He turned on my last shake of the sea salt.
I froze.
He stared at my hand, the one I was probably going to lose after dumping salt into his sauce.
Because that was what they did to kitchen criminals like me who sent steak back when it was overdone or, God forbid, asked for ketchup!
“I, uh…” I had nothing. Absolutely nothing. “…didn’t get much sleep last night…” Even as I said it, I wanted to gag myself and then jump off a cliff. That was my excuse for the salt?
“Ohhhhh…” Chase crossed his arms. “…so this is a thing, you sleepwalking your way to work and then just picking up salt and shaking it all over the place?”
“Sure?” I tried.
“Lie,” he whispered, and then he dipped his finger into the sauce and licked it so slowly my heart fluttered at least a dozen times before he was finished. “Huh, needs more salt.”
My hand was still hovering. He tapped the back of it a few times causing more salt to come out before very gently guiding me away from the stove and toward the table.
What had just happened?
A glass of wine had been poured for me.
One for him.
We sat next to one another as he served me, and when he lifted his glass, I numbly lifted mine and clinked it against his before taking a giant gulp.
“So, you cook?”
“Two years of culinary school,” I said proudly. “Before law school, I never really knew what I wanted to…” My voice trailed off as he stared at me like I was a naked unicorn.
He took another gulp of his wine.
Then another, still staring me down and then finally he got out, “You. Cook?”
“Yeah.” Didn’t we just have this conversation?
He put his glass down; his hands were shaking.
Why were they shaking?
I’d done something wrong again. I just didn’t know what.
“Look, if you could just tell me the rules, then I’ll know better next time.”
A frown furrowed his forehead. “Rules?”
“So you don’t get angry with me,” I said stupidly, feeling like a kid.
“The problem,” he said in a quiet voice, “is not that I have rules, because even if I did, you would have already broken every single one. It’s in your nature. You can’t help it, just like you couldn’t help the salt. Rules won’t save you. They never do. All you have is this…” He tapped my chest with a finger. “…and this.” He cupped my face then caressed my temple. “Two things to get you through life. Fuck the rules.”
Okaaay.
“And I’m only angry ninety percent of the time.”
“And the other ten?” I just had to poke him.
He grabbed his fork and started digging in. “I’m sunshine and rainbows.” He sighed. “Would you believe me if I told you I used to be the funny one?”
“No,” I said, probably too quickly.
He looked bitterly down at his plate. “Yeah, that makes two of us.”
I didn’t move.
“Eat, Luc. It’s not poisoned, just a truce.”
“A truce?”
“An ‘I’m sorry for being such a dick to you.’ And when you’re done eating, I have a mutually benefiting proposition…”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Eat first.”
“I’m too nervous now.”
He leaned back and crossed his arms. “Sing the devil to sleep… and I’ll help you with your work so you can get your ass out of here and onto the next Family.”
“Tame the beast, and I get extra help?” I toyed with the idea. “And you promise not to… threaten me anymore?”
“I promise…” He gulped. “…that I’ll try. It maybe habitual at this point in my life.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re in your twenties. Nothing’s habitual yet.”
“When you start killing at twelve, it sure as hell is.”
It was my turn to start choking.
“So, what do you say?” He leaned in, his forearms bracing against the marble table. “I help you. You help me?”
I was quiet.
“And maybe the more I sleep the nicer I’ll be… you never know. We could become… friends.”
I stared over at his clear blue eyes and said the first honest thing that came to mind. “You and I will never be friends. Don’t insult confession time with a lie.”
He looked stunned, and then his face completely transformed, as if he respected my truth more than the terrified lie.
“Cooks and calls my bluff…” He lifted his wine glass. “Happy Friday.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“And so it begins.”
— Ex-FBI Agent P
Chase
I’d worked alongside her for a full week, answering more questions than I’d ever answered in my entire life, and still, she never asked what we did.
It was Monday. My body ached from being on my hands and knees going through old family records like it was actual fun, but she needed to see everything, to know everything, to freaking file everything.
“What’s this?” She pulled out my black folder.
I jerked it out of her hands. “Nothing you want to read, trust me.”
“But it has your name on it?”
“Right.” She was wearing red lipstick. Why was she wearing red lipstick? I shook my head. “Which means I know everything inside it. It’s not relevant.”
She finally relented when she found my birth certificate.
Seriously? How much shit was in these old filing cabinets that Phoenix had dropped off? It was like he wanted my suffering to know no end.
I jerked the paper away from her. “Also irrelevant since it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Your father?”
Ha! I made a mental note to shoot Phoenix in the toe later. “Not much of a father, trust me.”
“Was he cruel?”
“Cruel?” I repeated incredulously. “He wasn’t even my real father. He groomed me as second-in-command to a dynasty I was supposed to fucking lead, and when it came time to lead it, I said no, I stepped down, and I wonder, every day, if she’d still be here if I’d had taken my position as her equal.”
I stopped talking.
What the hell kind of air was I breathing?
Truth serum?
I quickly jumped to my feet, needing an escape. “I’m going to go into town. Did you want to take a break and go with me?”
Luc stood and straightened her white blouse; I lo
oked away when a part of her bra showed through, and she retouched the front and pulled on her long cardigan. Everything about her was the opposite of Mil.
Every. Damn. Thing.
Mil wouldn’t have been caught dead in a sweater.
It was leather.
Gucci.
Prada.
Everything that told people she had power, and she’d wield it however she wanted.
And then there was Luc in a cream sweater and a Burberry headband.
I almost laughed.
Almost.
She was the type of woman who went to PTA meetings and wanted seven children. The kind I could see wanting to start a family right away so she could get started on all those fun art projects with fingerpaints.
A familiar ache filled me.
I shut it the hell down.
“So?” I asked in a gruff voice, needing to leave more than my next breath.
“Sure, let me just get my purse.”
“No need.” I was already leading her out of the room. “Whenever you’re with me, your money’s no good anyway.”
“But—”
“It’s in your job description. Trust me.”
She was silent as we got into the car and drove into town, past the marketplace we’d visited earlier, and toward the Whole Foods close by.
It used to be rare for me to be out without security.
And now it just felt normal.
I’d like to see someone try to attack me. On my worst day, I could end them with a simple snap of my fingers.
I shook off the uneasy feeling creeping along my skin as I touched the small of her back and led her into the store.
She grabbed a grocery cart as if it was normal to go shopping with me, and then, very strategically, wiped it down with an anti-bacterial wipe.
I watched in complete shock and amusement as she even cleaned the buckle for the invisible child that would be sitting there.
“It clean now?” I mused at least three minutes later.
She made a face, her tawny brown eyes focused in on the cart as she lifted her chin in a challenging look. “It’s always good to be safe.”