With my arms folded across my chest and my back to the room, I stared out the window of Marcos Rosetti’s office. The sun had set long before, and I’d spent the last hour after dinner waiting for Molinaro to show up. I’d promised Sage I wouldn’t end him on the property, but my cock had leaked what felt like a bathtub worth of precum against my briefs and my trigger finger was feeling itchy.
The door to the office opened and closed, and I knew Sage was in the room. The energy shifted, the tension, the thickness of the air. Even though his footsteps made no sound as he approached me, I just knew. When he was close, I turned around, taking a breath and resting my forehead against his shoulder.
There was a small part of me that loved he was shorter than I was. Like, this subconscious part of my brain that always underestimated him, only to find him turning around and doing the most perverse and intense things to my body. His hands skated down my sides, settling on my hips with an unforgiving weight of possessiveness.
“So you’re in charge now?” I trailed my fingers down his arm, over the top of his hand and down his fingers. The ring he wore was cool against the pad of my finger, the filigree design raised and proud.
“This isn’t the life I wanted,” he said.
“So, yes.”
“Yes,” Sage agreed.
“You should change the varietal for the Chianti,” I suggested.
Sage snorted a laugh, the puff of air brushing against the side of my face.
“I’m going to discontinue it.”
“What about everything else?” I asked.
He tapped a beat out against my waist with his fingers. “I’ll need to spend some time here with my dad to get up to speed on all of it.”
“You really don’t know what he does?” I found it hard to believe that Sage had lived his entire life blatantly unaware of the dealings his dad got up to behind the veil of the Rosetti name.
“He’s always been…” Sage frowned. “He’s always been mean. That’s not a good word for it, but I’ve been scared of him for as long as I can remember.”
I wrapped my arms around him and held him against me, my fingers splayed out against the small of his back. His heart hammered so hard in his chest I could feel it in my skin.
“It was all misguided and both of us could have died because of it.” Sage made a noise in the back of his throat. “Hell, he still might.”
“If I can’t deal with Molinaro, you don’t get to deal with your dad.”
“Well…”
I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Not here at least.”
“That’s a big thing,” I told him. “Bigger than you think.”
I’d spent a good portion of my life making people disappear, ending their lives. It wasn’t hard, although it never got easier, but I didn’t think I could put a family member into the ground. Then again, I didn’t have family. I thought about Ronan and Rich, Sam and Kevin…I didn’t think I could take one of them out, no matter how horribly they’d betrayed me.
My eyes flickered to Sage. I’d been offered a rich sum to take him out of the equation, but even before I’d admitted to myself that I loved him, I hadn’t been able to do it.
“Maybe,” he agreed. “I’m not making any moves tonight. And neither are you.”
I didn’t want to promise him that. I wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in Molinaro’s head if he came in here with the wrong attitude. I fell into a quiet daydream about splattering that little twat’s blood all over Rosetti’s carpet when Sage spoke again, his voice softer and close.
“Do you remember our first weekend together?” he whispered against the side of my head.
“Every day,” I admitted.
“When this gets sorted,”—Sage’s fingers flexed against me—“I’m taking you back to the cabin.”
I shivered from my toes to the top of my head, a full body tremor that threatened to shake my bones out of their joints for how badly I wanted him.
“Please let me come,” I begged. “I can’t do my job. Can’t keep you safe if I’m thinking about my dick.”
