“You slept with an agent assigned to capture you?”
I opened and closed my mouth, hating how I felt like a child, being reprimanded like this.
“If this woman knows about any of our operations, she is a risk we can’t allow.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“But more so, if she’s carrying your child, these Rivara and Viper fuckers are going to use her as their next attempt to get one of our own.”
There was no point denying that I was with Sadie and that we’d formed a relationship of some sort. “I’m aware of these complications.”
“Complications?” he barked. “This isn’t a complication. This is a concern. A grave and serious concern of mine that my son is falling in bed with the enemy.”
“She’s not.”
He huffed a mean laugh. “She’s not the enemy? Why? Just because they fired her so she’s now up for dibs to be with you?”
“No. Because she’s not like that. She’s not?—”
“Emil! Listen to yourself.”
“I am.” I stood up, feeling too vulnerable sitting down. “And I won’t change my stance on this. Sadie isn’t my enemy.”
She couldn’t be, not when I was half-convinced I could love her.
“She isn’t an enemy of the family,” I added.
“Oh, really? Why? Because she’s too fun to fuck, she can’t be a problem for us?”
“No!” I paced. “No. I know it sounds bad. It looks bad. But I swear on all my life, she is not the enemy. Not in this.”
“Then bring her in.”
I stopped short, wincing.
“Bring her back to this house she dared to fucking trespass at, Son.”
Shaking my head slowly, I tried to summon the courage to defy him for the first time. My father, my boss.
“Bring her in if she can be trusted.”
“I can’t.”
He cursed under his breath again.
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“Why?” he roared.
“We need to talk first. We need to discuss how to handle our future, and I am committed to making this work.”
“Making it work,” he repeated, taunting me. “Sure. You want to play house and daydream about keeping this agent as your woman.”
“We will make this work. I’m not leaving her again.”
“Bring her to me.”
“Not yet,” I repeated, taking extreme care not to raise my voice at him. I had to stay cool. I had to convince him that I was thinking with my head and being logical, not impassioned and thinking with my dick.
