He tilts his head back and exhales a heavy sigh.
“It’s either your family or the Torettas.”
“Why them?”
“Because they’re in a feud with Jorge’s fiancée’s brother-in-law’s family.”
“What?” And this is why I gave up trying to create family trees for these fucking orchards.
“Anneliese’s new brother-in-law is connected to the Camorra branch in Germany.”
“And they’re allied with the’Ndrangheta. The four Mafias are in a proxy war funded by the bratva and mob here in New York.”
“Yup.” His tone’s sarcastic, but his expression’s resigned.
“Couldn’t the Kutsenkos or O’Rourkes have put the hit on you?”
“No. Definitely not. We might wind up killing each other in a fight one of these days, but no one in a leading family is putting a hit on a member of another leading family. It’d be Cold War level MAD. No family would survive that mutually assureddestruction. It’s in no one’s best interest to spill that much blood. It’s messy. It draws too much attention, and the potential power vacuum will invite pretenders to the throne. Death by accident is fine. Death by hire is not. We have lines we won’t cross.”
“Scrupulous syndicates. I doubt anyone would ever believe me.”
“You know our ethics are situational in the outside world. In ours, they’re absolute. The rest of the world believes we’re—at best—morally gray. You know our morals are fucking crystal clear among us. We all take oaths that are basically the same regardless of the language or motherland. It’s how we keep each other in check. The bratva and mob might not stop an outsider from killing me, but they wouldn’t hire someone to do it.”
“Because of all that politics or because they know your mother?”
I jest, but he looks me dead in the eye.
“Mamá. And she doesn’t travel alone.”
He warned me about the women in the Four Families, but his reaction is chilling.
What the fuck will she do to me when she finds out?
“Chica, I can read lips just like I suspect you can. You didn’t keep that thought to yourself. She’d be more pissed than a shaken hive if she met you without me. But once she knows I’ve accepted you and that I won’t give you up, she’ll understand.”
He won’t give me up?
That sounds like a declaration of love from a man like Alejandro. The men in his family might have subs, but they don’t keep mistresses.
He already said I won’t be his sub, and I doubt he’ll become the first to have a mistress.
“Chica.”
“Hmm?”
“The gears are spinning hard enough to put out steam. Do you really think you’re sitting on my dick because we’re just fuck buddies for a few days?”
“Nooo.”
I draw out the syllable because I know that’s the expected answer, but I’m not convinced it’s true.
“Vita, you might already be part of this world, but you aren’t part of my family. Yet I’ve told you things about my family’s past. I let you get close to my cousin rather than just our men. I brought you to a safehouse rather than giving you a plane ticket. Istayedin this safehouse knowing you might still try to kill me. You said it yourself. I’m hot. If all I wanted was pussy, I wouldn’t go after the one belonging to a woman paid to kill me.”
“Maybe you have a God complex. Maybe you’re a narcissist or a megalomaniac. Maybe you believe your size is enough to stop me.”
I don’t believe any of those things.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. You wouldn’t have told me about your past or your family if I was just a guy to fuck and forget. Why do you think the sex is so good? Because we’re both hot? Hardly. You know it, and I know it.”
