“Too bad you’d break a deal with me if you went for my father.”
“Sure you’re not willing to change your mind?”
“Sure you won’t let me go?”
I want to laugh because she always answers like that, like she thinks her words can put distance between us and the situation.
But this isn’t a joke. This isn’t one of the stupid fights we have and then come together after I make her come.
This is blood on the asphalt and a blacked-out SUV that disappeared like smoke.
This is my brother getting cocky.
This is my father not being what he should be.
I press my thumbs into the muscle at the base of her neck again, feeling the heat of her flesh underneath my touch.
“Fine,” I concede. “You won’t change your mind. I won’t tell you."
Her jaw tightens. “If you have to do something, don’t tell me. Don’t hint toward it, either. And if it’s my father, I’ll do worse than what I did before.”
She meets my eyes, and for a brutal second, she’s not the woman who can spit back a clever line. She’s small, and real, and scared. No armor or deflections.
And she just threatened me.
“Alright, princess.”
She nods as if that settles it, but her eyes ask questions she won’t voice. Questions about what I’ll become if I let myself go. Questions about whether I’ll still be the Ben she knows when the dust settles.
I don’t have answers right now; I only have the certainty that I won’t lose her to anyone.
Not Nikolai, not my father, and not fate.
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
I shift because my inner turmoil won’t mix with hers tonight. “Because, contrary to what you might believe, I could’ve lost you tonight. You can’t imagine the shit that has gone through my head in the past several hours. My brother just tried to gun me down outside a club the other night. Now, he’s trying to kill my future wife.”
She hits me with a look about that subtle reminder, but still asks, “How do you know it was him?”
“Who else would it be? You told police that a black SUV forced you off the road. Another few yards, princess, and it would’ve almost thrown you off that bridge.”
Sienna averts her gaze. “So, now what? Am I a prisoner now? I can’t leave the house?”
“I never said that. Maybe you can’t drive.” Her neck snaps over to me, and she hits me with a cold glare. “I mean, not without several cars behind you.”
“Nice save.”
“Or I can take care of it.”
She shakes her head. “You’re going to make it worse.”
“Worse for who?” I ask. “For me? For them?”
“Both. I can’t be with someone who murders instead of negotiating. Who murders, period, Benedikt.”
I stare at her, wanting to argue and tell her that sometimes negotiation ends with a broken body, but the argument tastes hollow.
Also, we’ve passed that. I’m a mob boss, not the head of the Boy Scouts.
