Page 3 of Marcus

She’d decided that if only because going back to her maiden name felt less painful than having to explain to each new person she met that her last name belonged to her dead husband.

Marcus nodded once. “My apologies. And my sympathies on your loss, as well.”

“Of course.”

Someone called the man’s name, and he was quick to give her an apologetic smile before stepping away. She might have watched him go, but her attention was back on the hole in the ground and her mind strayed to the man resting in his casket.

Here she was … twenty-five. A mother to one. Widowed and broken. Would it ever get better?

Not for a long fucking time.

Four and a half years later

“How old are you?”

That question had Marcus Guzzi raising his brow. He didn’t even bother to answer the man as he sat across the table from him. The room quieted all the way around the board; the men surrounding them turned their attention on the two people at the table like this meeting had just become slightly more interesting.

“Well?” the large man demanded.

The stark contrast between the vice president of the Quebec chapter of the Riders—a one-percenter motorcycle club that had a heavy hand in dealing with illegal pills and prostitution between Quebec and Ontario—and Marcus in his three-piece suit was never more obvious than in those moments. Here they were, dining in a five-star restaurant Marcus had closed down to the public for this goddamn meeting, and the VP came with his men in tow, on bikes, wearing their denim and leather.

The disrespect started there.

And it had yet to end.

“Excusez-moi?” Marcus asked, choosing French to reply to the man because he knew the biker—Glen, he went by—was French-born first. His last name, Cote, a testament to his heritage. “What does my age have to do with this conversation we’re trying to have here? Because I am pretty sure the answer is nothing.”

Glen grinned, but it came off as more like a sneer. His French accent heavily colored his words when he replied in English, “I’m wondering if you should even be here sitting at this table, or if I should have waited for something with a few more years and a bit of … understanding about this business of ours, oui?”

Marcus had every urge to grind his teeth right down to the fucking roots because that right there was a low blow, and he didn’t doubt the other man knew it. In the world of mafioso, where Marcus had been born and bred from the moment he took his first breath, if a man sat at the table … it was because he earned his place there. Questioning it only meant more disrespect, and shit, hadn’t he taken enough of that from this asshole today?

He thought so.

“We’re not here to discuss my age,” Marcus said, leaning back a bit in his chair to get back to his previously unbothered, calm disposition before the asshole across the table tried to change the subject. “We’re here to discuss the fact that your club has decided to take issue with the Guzzi organization taking over the maple syrup farm—”

“In our territory.”

Marcus arched a brow. “Let me ask you a question, yeah? Indulge me, you know, in all my ignorance because of my age and whatnot. Would you?”

Any man Marcus had brought into this meeting would have known right away that statement was nothing more than bait. Only a stupid man would take it because once it was thrown out there, it meant Marcus had come to really play. As the underboss of his father’s Cosa Nostra, he didn’t have time to play very much. Everything was serious. Walk the fucking line, type of deal. Three-piece suits every single day, up before the sun rose and walking the streets to do the kind of business, he’d been doing for most of his life.

He was made.

Mafia.

Guzzi.

So, when he took a minute to play, if a fucker was stupid enough to take the bait, he was going to reel them right in. Until he could snap their goddamn necks. The idiot across the table from him included. As he thought, the man took the bait.

Because of course.

“Sure, why not,” Glen muttered. “As if we all have time today, ask me a question, Marcus.”

His jaw ticked.

It’d been Marcus from the moment he walked in the door. Not sir or Guzzi or even mister. As though they were on a first name basis, despite the fact that Marcus repeatedly and clearly corrected the asshole every time he used his first name. Something else to add to the pile of disrespect. He wished he was shocked.

But nope.