“Not because of that.”
For the first time since I’d met the Russian bastard, his lifeless eyes glinted with fire and ice.Alive.
I believed him, but if Jeremie was half as good a liar as he was a hacker, that made him a world-class bluffer.
Fuck.Fuck. If this baby wasn’t Luca’s, we were going to have a lot of fucking problems. I wasn’t going to let anything compromise the Camorra’s already less-than-ideal position in the Northeast. Even if I had to take care of the damn fetus myself.
“He’ll kill you if something happens between you two,” I warned. “Her, too.”
Jeremie looked unimpressed. “You’re overplaying your hand. Make a decision, Scarface.”
The only reason he didn’t have a bullet-shaped hole in his forehead was that, strangely, I believed he cared for Sofia. And as a man driven by obsession and deeply fucked-up love, I recognized the same flame of insanity in myself.
If Tierney had a husband…well, let’s just say he wouldn’t die of old age.
Still, I couldn’t let Jeremie think it was okay to saunter into our territory and fuck our women. Ourmarriedwomen, at that. It sent a message that we’d gone soft, weak, and worst of all, prideless.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen.” I opened the drawer and retrieved my father’s old pistol, feeding bullets into it. “You’regoing to use the next sentence to convince me not to put three bullets in your fucking head for disrespecting a Ferrante and the Camorra, and I’m going to pretend to give it some thought, because apparently, I’m maturing into the kind of man my fiancée wants to marry.” I raised the gun and pointed it at his forehead.
Bastard didn’t even flinch. “If you convince Luca to assign me as his wife’s bodyguard and extend my contract for six more months, the Bratva will give the Camorra everything east of Texas.”
“Six months? That’s all you need in New York?”
He nodded.
I arched an eyebrow. This was interesting.
Right now, we ruled the East Coast, which was the criminal powerhouse of America, but that left a lot of dead areas for the taking.
“You don’t have the authority to give me shit,” I drawled.
“Cleared it with the pakhan.” Not a muscle in his goddamn body moved. “Don’t believe me? Ask him.”
Now I didn’t know whether to punch his teeth in or take the bait. Wecoulduse more territory. If for no other reason than to put a buffer between us and the Bratva. We were still the largest crime organization in America, but Tiernan and Alex were gaining on us, fast.
What did Jeremie give to Alex in exchange for this solid? I had no idea, but it had to be big. The pakhan wanted his genius brother nearby.
“Luca doesn’t care,” Jeremie hedged, voice cold and flat. “See for yourself during the meeting. If he cares—if he so much as budges—let me know.”
“And you’ll back off?”
He gave me an incredulous look. “You and I, Achilles, we are not so different.”
Asking what he meant would go against my religious belief of not giving a fuck. But Jeremie being Jeremie, he still volunteered the information.
“When we want something, even God himself cannot stop us from getting it.”
I smirked. Life trying to win back Tierney was no picnic, but I had to hand it to Luca—he’d managed to put himself in an infinitely more screwed-up situation.
“I want weapons, too,” I said.
“That could be arranged.”
I snorted, shaking my head. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasu?—”
Jeremie shot up from his seat, balling my shirt in his fist, his nose flat against mine. And there it was again. The adorable fuckingblush. “Don’t finish that sentence if you want to see your so-called fiancée in a wedding dress.”
I laughed, pushing him off.
