Cruz has Riley in his lap, not able to let her get more than a few feet from him.
Today was hard on all of us, and the evidence of that is going to stick around for a while.
“Are you up to talking about it?” my brother asks carefully, causing Colten’s body beneath mine to tense.
He dragged me into his lap when the doctor was here, knowing needles are not my jam, and he hasn’t let go since.
“It can wait,” Colten says quietly.
I meet Laken’s eyes on the couch across from us. She’s curled up with a pillow in her lap, freshly showered and wearing a pair of my sweatpants and the matching hoodie. Nico sits on the cushion beside her, careful not to let any of his body touch her.
If anyone tells me men can’t control their urges, I’m going to point toward the possessive Mafia boss in front of us, desperately trying to respect her personal space despite his need to be close to her.
She gives me a slight nod, answering the silent question.
She knows more than I do. I was only with them for twelve hours, she was with them for weeks.
“Grant Spellings was the one who kidnapped me.”
Cruz tenses, his body going rigid. “He approached me for your hand in marriage last year.”
“I know, he told me. He couldn’t understand why you weren’t happy to sell me off like cattle to a man associated with human trafficking.” I roll my eyes. “Apparently, he’d had his eye on me for a while before he approached you, but it was when I registered for the matchmaker that it set his plan into motion. He was rejected because his family’s dealings disqualified him from being matched, and he believes that Mafia families should go back to the good old days when they dealt with their own arranged marriages.”
Mom flinches. She and Dad were an instance of one of those arrangements, and she dealt with over two decades of abuse and disrespect.
“He said he tried to hack into the system to make sure I didn’t match with anyone, but Colten had beaten him to it.” I glance atthe man beneath me, who doesn’t even have the good sense to look guilty.
He shrugs. “I did what I had to do.”
I shake my head and turn back to everyone else. “I’m not clear on what their plan was. Laken might have some more information, but from what I could tell, the families who are not eligible for matches are beginning to rebel against the idea of the matchmaker because they’re being shut out of relationship building, et cetera.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t be such shitty humans then,” Riley mutters.
Laken swallows, her body bleeding tension. If I thought they would listen, I would have already asked everyone to leave, but they want to make sure I’m okay, and seeing as both our captors are missing, we need to be prepared for retaliation.
“Jay is from the Taylor family in Baltimore. We’ve known each other for a long time, but I never gave him the time of day, and Dad never thought we could benefit enough from pairing me with him. He’s been holding out for a bigger family to show interest in me.”
My heart aches for her, for the woman in front of me who clearly isn’t going to be given a choice in who she marries. No one deserves that.
Nico stares at her like he’s seeing her for the first time, and I can almost see the gears turning in his head. He’s trying to work out what he can offer for her hand.
“Dad signed me up for the matchmaker recently, but I haven’t been fed into the algorithm yet. He’s been negotiating with them to ensure only men he deems worthy are presented to me as options.” She shakes her head on a sigh. “I don’t think he quite grasps what their mission actually is, but I know better than to argue with him.
“Jay got word of it somehow, and he flipped. Called Dad a hundred times demanding my hand, called me almost hourly, and somehow every time I changed my number, he miraculously got my new one. He was always one step ahead.”
Colten’s phone vibrates across the arm of the chair, and he tenses when he sees the number. He looks up at Laken. “It’s your dad.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
COLTEN
It took me exactly three seconds to conclude Laken’s dad is a piece of shit.
Well, that’s not exactly true. I knew it before I even answered the phone, because only a selfish asshole would treat his daughter the way he clearly has.
“I’ll have a jet come collect her first thing in the morning,” he barks down the line. The Lancasters are a big family with a lot of connections, but for him to speak to me, the underboss of the most powerful family on the West Coast, like I’m beneath him just proves how high his opinion of himself is.
Like I said, asshole.
