The real estate portfolio that had started small had grown over the past few years until we could barely conceal it all.
Amante had no idea about any of it. Though that was now most definitely in question after the events of the day.
“At this point, do we really? We’re all going to be kissing her soon enough anyway,” I muttered under my breath as we stepped off of the elevator into what Dante had jokingly nicknamed the bat cave a few years back when we retrofitted the space to be a sort-of command station for us to operate under.
“Don’t think that gets you out of any of it,” Elio shot back as he led the way across the hall and punched his code into a panel next to the door. “We had an agreement.”
“Actually,” Ranieri, who had been surprisingly quiet since we left the Amante estate, “Youhad an agreement. We all just went along with it like we do everything else you ask of us.”
Elio shot him a withering look as he pushed the door open.
“Must you four always argue whenever you come here?” a weak voice asked from the darkness of the room.
“We aren’t always arguing,” I said as I flipped the light on to reveal a figure lying in a hospital bed. “And you still look like shit.”
“I was shot in the chest,” Edison Keane shot back with a grumpy glare. “What’s your excuse?”
“Ha, very funny,” I told him drily. “Has Dr. Stedmeyer been here today?”
A week ago we received a phone call from Edison’s estate staff after we’d come to our original agreement to push Amante out. Apparently, he’d pissed off enough people in his own faction that they had staged a coup and he needed a place to lay low for a couple of days and we were the idiots who had agreed to a truce.
Seeing Dr. Stedmeyer again should have surprised me more than it did, but it also made sense why he was so calm when being surrounded by a bunch of angry, alpha mafiosos. Chaos seemed to follow the unassuming man around and I had a feeling we’d be seeing a lot more of him in the coming months.
“He has. Says I’m a freak of nature and that I shouldn’t have lived. Then he called me an asshole for dragging him out of the hospital in order to ‘treat bullet wounds in what amounts to an underground fallout shelter.’ Isn’t he a great friend?”
“You and I have a very different definition of the word friendship,” I said with a solemn shake of my head.
“How long until you’re back on your feet and have control of your people?” Elio asked, cutting straight to the chase.
Edison’s brows rose as he looked at each of us with those gold eyes of his—the ones that always seemed to see right through me. “I take it whatever you were summoned to the estate today for wasn’t good news?”
Elio glanced away from the man in the bed. “It was not.”
“Care to share with the class? We are business partners now, after all.” Most people would have stopped questioning Elio there—our guys knew that the alpha had a short but calculated temper and didn’t like to be pushed. But Edison Keane was his equal in many ways and even better in some.
Even sitting in front of us attached to IVs and monitors, he held himself like the king of a small country rather than a man who had lost control of his life.
“Amante’s cutting us out completely,” Ranieri replied, finally cutting through the bullshit posturing that Elio and Edison seemed to love getting involved in whenever they spoke. It was like a damn game of chess and we were out of time for games. “He’s marrying us off to Luscinia within the week.”
After Cini had agreed to Amante’s little scheme he had informed us of his plans for the nuptials, and much to my irritation, I realized that it was the same exact wedding he’d planned between us and Peregrine Chandler almost down to the flowers.
“And?” Edison asked as if we were stupid. “Is that not one of your goals? I was under the impression that this girl was the object of your obsession and why you’ve decided to depose your leader in a lovely little coup and even asked for my help with—which I must now admit is quite ironic considering my current situation.”
“He wants an heir,” Elio said, his face darkening with rage. “We’re to get her pregnant and then apparently fuck right off.”
His words seemed to surprise the golden-eyed alpha because Edison let out a low whistle. “And here I thought my father was an asshole. Amante is definitely a special breed.”
Edison looked at each of our silent, angry faces before shaking his head softly and huffing out a sigh. “You do realize that, once you give him what he wants, that all four of you are disposable? That more than likely you will all end up meeting some sort of accident once he has an heir in hand? It’s what I would do if I was in his position.”
“We are aware,” Elio said, his words clipped with frustration. “Now what do you propose we do about it?”
Edison shrugged. “Go along with it for now. Get her pregnant, that will at least protect her when the shit hits the fan, and at this point it will hit the fan very soon.”
“Then what?” I asked, frowning.
A strange glint entered Edison’s eyes as he shot me a slow, evil smile. “Then you help me get my house back and I’ll help you build yours.”
Ten
