“Yes, who?”
She swallows, avoiding my gaze. “Dario.”
Now I can put a picture next to the fucker’s name. Cato’s brother and the underboss of the Moretti-Bertinelli Family. I also remember her saying he was her first kiss. But I had her first everything else. The need to claim her reveals I am truly fucked. There’s no assuaging the turmoil—mad at her for being this irresponsible.
In Boston, they’re keen on tradition, yet she gave herself to me, risking so fucking much. Regardless, a sense of pride like nothing else warms my chest. For me, because of me, she forgot who she was.
I jerk my chin at her, my voice sounding stable, everything I am not. “Who is Dario to you?”
Jealousy breathes a ball of fire through me, incinerating my insides. Fisting my hands at my sides, I picture snapping his neck to subdue the chaos ravaging me.
“None of your business,” she snaps.
She appears so damn docile, but there was more to her from the beginning. Her outburst, emphasizing that, is another example of her passionate nature.
“I think it is, since I had my tongue, fingers, and dick so deep inside of you, I broke your virgin cunt,” I snap back.
She flinches at the truth. “It was a mistake.”
I cock my head, schooling my features into a neutral, calm exterior, a facade. “A mistake? The first time you came, the second, or the third?”
I can’t forget the sounds she made as she came so beautifully for me.
My jaw sets in a hard line. “What exactly was the mistake, Viviana?” My voice turns lower, betraying that I am teetering on the edge.
Her eyes shine with vulnerability so raw it propels me to move toward her. “You’re Evie’s brother.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I offer a noncommittal nod.
I’ve kept my sister a secret for so many years, and yet I confide in this woman who has a direct link to the world I’ve kept Evie away from. From the monsters lurking in the shadows, me included. From a traumatic past where she saw our mother being murdered. She would have been next if I hadn’t shown up at the right moment.
My life has been a string of surviving the cruelty of my father and overcoming the loss of my mother. I had to become the king of monsters—unfeeling, uncaring. A cunning strategist, a merciless killer who always follows his next conquest, a plan no one is privy to.
Viviana has been the only surprise—a positive one. I doubt she would still gaze at me and not run if she knew who I really am, besides Evie’s brother.
Pushed by a force that is beyond my capacity to understand, I graze my knuckles along her cheekbones, gentleness threading through the hardness of my soul.
I thought my capacity to feel something had been snubbed a long time ago. I believed my softness extended only to my sister, yet with Viviana, it’s more of a compulsion.
She sucks in a breath, retreating as I back her into the library, caught, trapped with no way to escape.
A groan vibrates low in my throat, not liking the distance she tries to erect between us. One I will eradicate time and time again.
“You should stay away from me,” she says meekly, her face panic-stricken.
I cock my head. “Why? Would it make it easier for you?”
She shakes her head, gulping. “You don’t know who I am.”
I purse my lips to hide my amusement and not reveal that I know exactly who she is.
Disregarding fate, I take this pleasant coincidence as a chance. I’ve been searching for a way to bridge the conflict between the Syndicate and the BRACON for years now. I am stuck in the middle, and the Syndicate has become warier of me.
The four fuckers are the unofficial rulers of the underworld, having amassed incredible power. While I have always been a lone wolf, I’ve associated myself with both groups. A marriage would cement my union with the Syndicate. Money doesn’t differentiate allegiances, so I do business with both organizations.
Plus, it’s bad for business not knowing when one is going to thrust us into a bloody war. They have been busy with their babies and taking care of their respective families. But in our world, grudges never end, and I can’t afford to get too comfortable.
I won’t face losses or become a casualty in their pissing contest.
