Page 12 of Vicious Kingdom

I shot my brother a curious look. We didn’t spend much time in one another’s company for good reason.

“Drive around the block,” the don commanded.

Pushing the ignition, I let the sports car roar out of the alley.

“I have a contact on the inside of Voss’s campaign,” Sandro commented as if spying on a politician was a completely normal occurrence. “But I need to know, brother to brother, is there any reason the politician would put you on the list of businesses to come after?”

There it was. The suspicion that I’d somehow misstepped and brought this on myself.

I cranked the wheel hard and sped down the street. “No.”

“You haven’t done anything to go on his radar?” the don insisted.

“Fuck! No, Alessandro, I haven’t even met the man in person.”

My brother was quiet for the next block. When I looped the vehicle around to the same stretch that the bowling joint was on, he turned. “This isn’t good, Leonardo.”

“It’s not,” I agreed.

“Word’s going to get out, and people will wonder why the IRS is looking into you. Don’t give them a reason to suspect anything. You need to keep your head down, your nose clean.” The instructions were laced with a heavy implication.

I wanted to smack him. Grab his thick throat and shove him against the window. What the hell did he think, accusing me? As though I messed up!

I was out there alone, every damn day, running our business with no help from him. And now he felt the need, after one measly threat, to micromanagemyactions?

“Got it,” I ground out. Those words cost me, pulled straight from the recesses of my mind.

Because at the end of the day, my brother was the boss.

“And I want you to start dating someone,” he added as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

I shot into an empty parking spot on the side of the road and braked hard. My hands shook too badly to drive. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Make it serious.” Sandro stared straight ahead. “Create a sensation so wagging tongues focus on that instead of the IRS poking about your offices.”

A muscle jumped in my jaw. “Out of the question.”

“I’m not asking you to get married…yet.”

I was wrong. The silence pulsed louder than the thunder and grind of the bowling alley. Air filled my lungs with little to no relief.

The don couldn’t just order me to marry. I wasn’t in the underworld circles!

Except…he could. The elites in society arranged marriages with the same gusto as the crime families did.

I floored the gas, shooting the car into traffic. A horn blared, but I wove around the oncoming vehicle with plenty of room.

“A wedding to a socialite would draw all the attention from the tabloids. Put the spotlight on something else.” Sandro tapped his fingers against his thigh. “You’re not getting any younger. I’ve been thinking it’s time for you to settle down.”

That second piece was pure bullshit. It made him seem like the caring big brother that he never was. Sandro didn’t care about my personal life so long as it didn’t affect business.

“Not happening.”

“Why?” the don demanded.

The car lurched back down the side street behind the bowling alley, pulling next to the SUV, where Dante loitered. The enforcer carved a piece of fruit like it was flesh.

“I’m not bringing a civilian into this mess, just so I have to lie at home,” I snapped before thinking better of it. “I live a lie in public; I won’t do that in my own home.”