Page 45 of In the Dark

She looked away and wrung her hands together.

“She doesn’t need the reminder, Cal.” My brother threaded his fingers through hers immediately. “Darling, you don’t have to be here. You and Fran Bran can go to the country club, and—”

“No. I don’t need to be coddled, Jameson. She’s going to be a part of the family, right?” Mia chewed the side of her lip. Then she whispered as if she didn’t want Jas to hear, “If you’re marrying that girl, Cal, we’ve got to somehow become cordial.”

Yet, it was my little niece we all should have been worried about, because she appeared behind me as quiet as a mouse before loudly asking, “There’s a girl you’re going to marry here? I want to meet her, Uncle Cal.”

“No,” I immediately said, just as Mia hummed and then nodded slowly.

“I think that’s a great idea,” Mia said. “Us girls need to stick together. Shall we go look for her?”

“Mia …” My brother finally had the balls to step in, but all Mia had to do was give him a look. “Be nice and let some of the men go with you?”

“What the f—” I glanced at my niece before continuing. “They’re not going up there.”

“Why not?” Jameson shrugged. “You’re not getting her to do anything. Maybe Mia and Fran will inspire her.”

“Oh, I have no intention of siding with either of you to make her do anything,” Mia said as she waved to Archer and one of our other men to follow her. Mia was a Diamond now, through and through. She and Fran were the reason my brother had finally decided to get rid of Paolo in the first place.

As they walked off, I turned on my brother.

“You’re fucking whipped, you know that? How do you think that ends? Jasmina is a fucking lioness out for blood.”

“Your blood, I’m sure,” Jameson mumbled as he looked at something on his phone.

“Is that a damn bunny as your phone background?”

He clicked it off immediately. “I have it under good authority you have a cat up there.”

“Fuck you. As if you’re not bulldozed by a woman at every turn. She just convinced you to let her and your daughter go talk to a woman who attempted to murder me and has a vendetta against anyone involved in her uncle’s murder.”

He rolled his eyes but did set down his glass and start walking toward the stairs. “I’ve attempted to murder you too. It doesn’t mean she’s a danger to them, just to you. She’s smart, Cal.”

“Smart enough to be a pain in my ass for the past five days.” I wiped a hand down my face and stopped him at the steps because, fuck it, I needed advice. “She might die of starvation.”

“You can charm anyone.” Jameson looked at me like I was an idiot. “Win her over.”

“I can also kill almost anyone, and she tempts me to do that daily.”

“Remind me why you wanted to marry her and not Maribel.” Jameson chuckled like my hardship was all a joke.

“I think she’s hiding something. She burned down that building and tried to kill me. She’s—”

“None of that matters,” my brother cut me off. “We don’t need the Ruizes, Cal. You and I both know it. She makes it just a bit easier to do this deal with Fuerte Firearms. We save a couple billion sure, but—”

“And we should save that couple billion along with showing who we are as Diamonds, Jameson.”

“Sometimes we don’t need to, Cal. Not at the cost of losing our sanity.” My brother was going soft thanks to the love of his life and Fran. I knew it. I just wouldn’t follow in his footsteps.

“Speaking of my sanity, I need someone to run security camera footage around her apartment and her uncle’s house from the past couple weeks. I think she was roughed up.”

“Why?”

“Cut on her lip. Faint bruising on her face she was trying to hide. I want to know what happened.”

He nodded, then smirked at me. Leave it to my brother to give me the out he wanted me to admit I didn’t want. “Sounds like she’s a handful, bro. If she’s too much, you can walk away. I don’t care, is all I’m saying.”

“Nothing’s too much for me. Not even her.”