Page 118 of In the Dark

“Let’s go, Daddy.”

He nodded once and then twice before he asked me, “She’ll say yes, right?”

Was he sweating? “Of course she will, you dumbass. You live together.”

“Doesn’t mean I haven’t fucked up more than once.”

I sort of felt for him. I was already married. I didn’t have to worry.

Then again, I had to worry if she’d stay, and that thought twisted my gut more than it should.

“I’m going to do it,” he said then and gulped. As he walked away, he turned and told Archer, “Give him the update on the men.”

“Right.” Archer sighed as I turned to him, but he shook his head. “Enjoy your honeymoon and we can figure it out when you’re back.” I would have stuck around to berate him for it, but Rafe Black had shown with his brother, Bane, and Bane’s wife, Pink. I didn’t worry about Bane anymore, as his eyes were only on Pink, but Rafe pulling my wife in for a dance was enough for me to stop listening to Archer altogether.

“You’ve lost all sanity,” Archer said. “I mean, look at you. He’s not going to steal her away that fast.”

“Fuck off,” I ground out as Jasmina laughed up at Rafe. “Who invited them, anyway?”

“Probably you. He’s good for business.”

“Yeah, well, this isn’t about business. This is about our vows. Our marriage. Our life together.”

Till death do us part.

And instead of playing it cool, I stomped over to break up their dance because, damn, I didn’t give a single fuck about keeping ties with the Black family or anyone else if they were looking at my wife in a way they shouldn’t.

I’d wreck the whole syndicate, the whole coast, all of Paradise Grove, and, quite frankly, a whole nation trying to keep her, I already knew it. And that started with ruining a dance.

36

Jasmina

CALLAHAN DIDN’T SEEM TO want to be at the wedding reception at all, and he made it clear after about an hour of dancing that he was done.

He cut in while I was dancing with Rafe and whispered to me that a car was waiting out front, then he was pulling me through the crowd and hustling me into it.

I didn’t really fight him on it. Not even to stop and say bye to Monte and Perla. I hadn’t talked to them after Perla had given me her lecture, and I knew I had to patch things over with them eventually, but tonight didn’t seem like the best time to do it.

“We’re leaving our own wedding?” I asked him. “I didn’t say bye to anyone.”

“We’ve got a flight to catch,” he told me.

“Don’t you own the jet?”

“I do, but I’m using it as an excuse to leave anyway, because I’m ready for our honeymoon to start. Aren’t you?” He gave me a look, and then that man kissed me over and over again in the back of the SUV, and I didn’t complain.

I wanted to be with him always rather than with others.

It was a problem when I wasn’t sure where this marriage was headed. But I let him take the reins for the night.

We flew through the stars, and when he took me to the back of the jet to lie down, I told him it was the perfect time to join the Mile High Club. But he told me no, that he had better plans for the first time with his wife.

So I slept next to my husband, curled against him as he whispered nonsense to me about all the people we’d seen dancing at our estate. I didn’t think about what our lives would look like later, and I didn’t consider what I was hiding in my suitcase or my stomach.

It could all wait.

We landed in the early morning, and he took me to a beach—a beautiful beach of white sand and a dock that had a yacht the size of a whole house. I saw painted along its side was a breathtaking blue snake, coiling beneath the title: Viper’s Lair. “Shall we see if the Viper’s Lair is suitable?”