by Sam Mariano
But regardless of the state of her heart, Mia isn’t going anywhere, because she already has her next protector lined up. What if she focuses her rage and sense of betrayal on me and seduces Rafe into killing me anyway?
No, Mia won’t think of that. Right?
A ruckus with the men drags my gaze from the softcore porn scene unfolding on the bed. It’s hard to keep track of how many people might want me dead, but since Mateo is the one being wrestled to the floor, that’s the one I focus on now.
“Any last words, brother?” Dante asks, his tone droll.
Mateo laughs. It looks dark (and okay, a little sexy) with that bloody, split lip. “Fuck you.”
Alec flicks a glance at Rafe and Mia on the bed, then nods at Dante to prompt him. “Come on, do it.”
“You know what?” Dante says, suddenly inspired. “Let’s let Meg do it.”
“Huh?” I ask, dumbly, as Dante suddenly holds his gun in the air for me to take it. “Oh, no, I’m good.”
“Don’t be a pussy,” he challenges. “Take the goddamn gun. Shoot the fucker who wasted your time.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that’s… I’m okay, you can do it.”
Flicking a glance at Alec, Dante says, “Remind me why I want to keep her again?”
“Hey now.” I take a nervous step forward. He holds the gun up again.
Fuck.
Mateo glares at me. Of course he fucking glares. He can’t even turn a little apologetic when I have a gun within reach and I’m literally being directed to shoot him in the face.
“Well, I guess he has been a dick,” I state.
“There you go.” Dante doesn’t sound like he cares one way or the other, but he moves the gun toward me and this time I take it. My hands are unsteady. Flashes of memories run through my mind of the last time I held a gun—it was pointed at Mateo then, too. In his dungeon. I was there wrongfully that time. He aimed it at his heart and handed it to me.
“If you still want to kill me, do it now.”
I didn’t then, and I don’t now.
My stomach twists. I take a couple of steps forward and lift the gun. Its weight is so light, for all the destruction it is capable of.
“Meg!”
Mia screams at me, her eyes wild. She twists like she’s going to move to come after me, but she can’t since Rafe still has her trapped beneath his weight.
“Don’t you dare!” Her voice shakes, but there’s force behind it. Fire. Her voice doesn’t hold up under the weight of her emotions, but that utterance comes from somewhere deep within her. Hatred I’ve never seen before gleams in those blue orbs, and my stomach sinks.
I look away.
She cries out again, warning me one last time.
I ignore her. I steady the gun. I look at Mateo and my legs threaten to give out on me. He jerks and snarls at me, but Alec keeps his shoulders down.
“Hurry the fuck up,” Alec barks.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Mateo, my own voice wavering. “I’m sorry for everything. I never wanted it to be like this.”
He watches wordlessly as I fit my finger against the trigger.
“I’m Meg.”
“I heard. And you’re my surprise?”
“And here I thought you were mine.”
Tears sting behind my eyes. I feel betrayed when they well up, when I know he can see the telling glint.
“I’m gonna buy this place. Watch. I’ll name it after you.”
“Meg’s Place?”
A tear slips over the rim of my eyelid and tracks down my right cheek.
This is humiliating.
Before I have time to change my mind, I swing the gun and fire at Dante’s head.
The whole room goes silent.
Nothing happened.
Alec’s jaw drops open and Dante turns his head, still with all his brains on the inside, and says, “Huh.”
My hand shakes again. I squeeze the trigger again, more desperately this time.
Why isn’t it…?
Alec eases off Mateo’s shoulders, sits back on his heels, and does the strangest thing. He pulls out his wallet. Yanks out a fifty dollar bill. I’m still standing here with shaky hands and a useless gun, Dante is still sitting on Mateo’s hips.
Alec gets up, walks over, and tosses a fifty dollar bill at Rafe. “I think you interfered.”
My gaze jumps to Mia, who is as openly confused as I am.
Now Dante rises. I take a step back, since I just tried to shoot him. Twice.
He pulls his wallet out, too. “Didn’t see that one coming.” He walks over and also tosses Rafe a fifty.
“What the fuck is going on?” Mia demands, since fifty dollar bills are raining down on her.
The closet door opens and Adrian steps out. I expect him to grab his wallet too, since that seems to be the thing to do, but he looks surly. He approaches Rafe, but not to give him money—to glare at him until he gathers his winnings and gets off Mia.
“What the hell were you doing in the closet?” Alec asks, apparently unprepared to see him.
Adrian rolls his eyes. “Picking out shoes. Why the fuck do you think I’m here?”
Dante nearly smiles, looking down in private amusement. “Aw, you mean my big brother doesn’t trust me? How hurtful.”
Now Mateo stands, miraculously recovered from the beatdown. I back myself up against the wall and stare at him, eyes wide. His gaze remains trained on me as he reaches out an open hand for the gun. I give it to him, but I’m so fucking confused. My mind puts together the pieces, but I can’t quite believe it.
There’s no way he’s been playing me, right?
No way.
“I’m going to bed,” Alec states. “Sorry about all this, Mia.”
With that, Alec abandons us all to our dysfunction.
Mia’s gaze jumps to Dante, still mind-boggled.
“I’m not sorry,” he tells her. “I wasn’t even lying. I would’ve definitely sold you.” Turning to Mateo, he adds, “I’ll be by tomorrow for my bonus envelope.”
Dante heads for the door, but I call out, “Wait… Why?”
Dante shrugs. “What do you mean, why? My brother takes the long way when the short way works just fine, but he’s the boss, isn’t he?”
“I just… tried to kill you,” I say, a bit numbly.
“You thought I was a disloyal fuck who turned on the head of the family. I’d have done the same thing.” With that, Dante departs, as well.
“Oh, my God.” Mia buries her face in her hands. “It was all fake. You did it again.”
Mateo sits on the bed beside her and pulls her into his arms. He kisses the top of her head and she turns, wrapping her body around him and sobbing into his shoulder.
After watching for a minute, Rafe shoves his hands in his pockets and asks Adrian, “So… is now a good time to collect that $50?”
Adrian cuts Rafe a hard glare, but nonetheless extracts his wallet. “I’m with Alec; I think you interfered.”
I throw my hands up in the air. “Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on? This was all some kind of bet?”
“Nah, the wager was an add-on,” Rafe states. “Beside the point, really. Just making things interesting.”
Mateo’s voice is the one who finally answers. “It was a loyalty test. Not the kind I’ve ever put you through before, but Mia’s been there. They’re not much fun, but the information I glean from them is pretty much incomparable.”
“A loyalty test?” I echo, in disbelief. “So, if I would’ve shot you…?”
Mateo merely raises his eyebrows, like that question is too stupid to dignify with an answer.
Holy shit.
“You’re insane,” I tell him, eyes wide, head shaking. I try to collect my wits, but the reality I’ve been living has just been ripped out from under me and I’m having a hard time finding my footing. “Insane.”
He shrugs. His tone lacks any trace of remorse. “I had to see what you’d do.”
&nb
sp; I didn’t even know what I would do until I did it! If not for my fear of Mia’s brain-eating, man-controlling siren powers, I may have actually….
My gaze drifts to Mia. The intimidating, potentially vengeful, brimming with rage Mia is gone now, replaced with Mateo’s soft Mia. She obviously wasn’t in on any of this either, so she should be spitting mad at him. She should want to kill him for real, for putting at least her through all of this. Me, okay, he was planning to kill me anyway, but why do it to her?
A horrible wariness passes through me. I feel like I’m walking across the crooked floor of a funhouse and I can’t trust anything.
Meanwhile, Mia sucks in a shaky breath, then grabs Mateo’s face and pulls him in for a kiss.
She’s so fucking crazy.
Rafe and Adrian watch Mia wrap herself around the man who just tormented her—again—and have different expressions of awe. Adrian has seen it before, so he just shakes his head. “He’s sure lucky he found her.”
Rafe is more baffled. “Why isn’t she…?”
“This isn’t her first rodeo,” Adrian explains. “We should probably clear out of here and give them some privacy. They will proceed whether we stay or go.”
“But he just…”
“Don’t try to rationalize it,” Adrian advises. “Just leave them be.”
Mateo pulls away from Mia’s mouth, so she trails kisses down his neck. “I want to see you both in the study. Just give me…a half hour.” Mia climbs in his lap and wraps her legs around him. “Forty-five minutes. Somewhere around there.”
We all head for the door, leaving behind Mia’s sighs of pleasure as we step into the hall.
Rafe pauses, looks at Adrian, and indicates the now-closed bedroom door with his thumb. “Is that gratitude sex? He gets thank you sex after what he made us all do?”
Adrian sighs. “Let’s go have a drink.”
“Wait, what about me?” I ask, since they’re just treating this like business as usual.
Adrian turns to look back at me. “What about you?”
“Where do I go? What do I do?”
“I’d go to your old room,” Adrian suggests. “You can see if Ju’s awake—she has Roman for the night. Didn’t want to wake him up with all this shit. He does not sleep at night, so she might be happy to see you.”
I’m torn between amusement and sympathy at the mental image of Adrian coming to help Mia with the baby since Mateo probably stayed in bed. He wasn’t much of a helper with Rosalie. It didn’t matter so much since we had a nanny and a housekeeper, but he certainly wasn’t the, “You sleep, I’ll get this one” type of dad.
Adrian adds, “I’m sure he’ll come to talk to you, so I wouldn’t get too comfortable.”
“So… I don’t need a guard anymore?”
Adrian raises an eyebrow. “Do you think you need a guard?”
“No,” I answer quickly, shaking my head. “Nope, I don’t. No interest in misbehaving. None whatsoever.”
“Good.”
“So… killing me is definitely off? That’s not happening, just so we’re clear?”
“Seems that way. Unless you pull a Meg, jump the gun, and fuck something else up.”
I grimace. “Must we refer to doing a dumb thing prematurely as pulling a Meg?”
“I like it,” Rafe states. “Has a nice ring to it.”
Something just occurred to me. When I didn’t fire at Mateo but tried to shoot Dante instead, everyone gave their money to Rafe.
“Hey.” I narrow my eyes suspiciously. “You bet on me.”
“Don’t read too much into it,” he advises me. “No one else would, so I took one for the team. I figured it was going to lose me fifty bucks, but… well, I can afford to lose fifty bucks. Couldn’t make the bet at all if someone didn’t take the long shot.”
“Yeah, seems like you’re developing a real knack for drawing that short straw,” I say, lightly.
Rafe shrugs his shoulders, then follows after Adrian as they head for the study to wait for Mateo.
Rafe’s words that first night after family dinner suddenly return to me. At the time, I took it as him being an asshole, but if he’s been playing a part, acting out a role in one of Mateo’s productions, maybe he wasn’t being an asshole when he said certain asshole things to me. Maybe he was trying to warn me.
Maybe Alec and Adrian are right about Rafe.
Maybe he interfered.
Chapter Twenty
Mateo
“No, not yet. Don’t go yet.”
I smile faintly, peppering Mia’s face with kisses. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
She pouts adorably as I lift my hips, pulling out of her sweet little pussy. I have to kiss her again. It’s a physical compulsion. It’s an accomplishment in self-control every time I manage to leave my bed when the alternative is staying here with Mia.
I barely make it onto my back and she rolls over, pulling herself snugly against my body and resting her head on my chest. She’s needier than usual tonight. That’s understandable. It’s a pleasant aftereffect of fucking with her head.
“Stay,” she murmurs, pressing her lips to my right pectoral.
“I have to go take care of some business first. Then I’ll come back.”
“It’s the middle of the night. Can’t business wait?”
“Everyone is waiting for me.”
“Let them wait,” she says, trailing a finger down my chest. “I need my husband.”
“Mm, that’s hard to say no to.”
She climbs on top of me, grinding her pussy against me. “Then don’t say no.”
I grip her hips and roll her back over before the little minx gets me going again. She wrinkles her nose up in disapproval, but it fades as I move to hover over her. Now she smiles pleasantly, looping her arms around my neck and pulling me in for a kiss.
“I promise I’ll wear you out when I come back,” I offer.
“Mm hmm. You also promised you weren’t going to put me through an emotional hurricane again and that clearly wasn’t true.”
“Hey, I tried.”
“A for effort,” she tells me.
I lean down and drop a kiss on her lips to take the sting out of the reprimand that’s about to follow. “I need you to understand, tonight could have been real. Every bit of it.”
Her gaze drops to my chest and she nods. “I know. I get it. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize… I don’t think that way.”
“I know. But I do, so when I say things have to be a certain way, I’m not being an asshole. I’m looking out for you. I’m looking out for the people I love. I’m doing what’s best for us. You can’t save everyone. You give people the rules they need to survive, and if they can’t abide them, that’s their problem. People can’t be pardoned for every fuck-up. Then people start fucking up a lot more.”
“I’ll only protect you from now on,” she swears. “And Adrian. And the kids. Everyone else can go suck an egg.”
I grin at the list that’s already growing. “That’s an acceptable list. I can manage that one.” I wish she’d add herself to it, but she’s already at the top of mine. As long as one of us looks out for her—and it helps that it’s me. I don’t have to navigate murky channels of emotional connections to make a move; I have no problem plowing through whatever or whomever stands in my way.
She sighs, bogged down by this conversation. “I wish people would just stay in line.”
“They will,” I assure her. “But only if they believe there are consequences if they don’t. You stay out of my way and I’ll keep everything running smoothly.”
“I’ll do my best. If I can’t help myself and I forget down the road, you don’t have to put on a whole production—just shove me out of the way and do your thing. You know my heart is yours, wholly and completely. You know I’ll never stop loving you.”
The production served many purposes, not just teaching my lovely wife a lesson in staying out of my way; there’s no reason to tell her that, though.
Instead I give her one more kiss, then roll off the bed. “You go take a nice, relaxing shower, then wait naked in bed for me to come back.”
The sparkle comes back to her eyes and she smiles. “I will.”
I can’t bring myself to leave the room in sweat pants, so I make a quick stop in the closet to pull on some pants, a shirt, and a jacket. I don’t bother with a tie, but I feel more myself when I slip out. Mia’s already in the shower, so there’s nothing to further distract me. I retrieve a small item from the drawer of my night stand, grab my phone, and text Adrian for Meg’s whereabouts.
As I head for Mia’s old room, I find myself unhappy with the arrangement. I’m so used to finding Mia in that room that just walking toward it gives me a surge of pleasure. Not that I visit Meg often, or anticipate doing so in the future, but I don’t like setting myself up for disappointment. I’m going to have to move her to a different room.
I crack open the door and hear the familiar sound of Roman’s complaints. Meg paces in front of the couch, jostling him slightly and trying to convince him life isn’t all that bad. His incessant crying would seem to indicate he is unconvinced.
I smile faintly just as she looks up.
“He’s crabby,” she tells me.
“He doesn’t like to sleep,” I inform her.
“Yeah, Adrian told me. He wasn’t joking. Ju happily handed him over.”
“Hopefully he becomes less difficult once he adjusts to existing.”
Meg snorts. “At least he’s cute.”
I nod, my gaze dropping to the baby. “He is. He’ll be much cuter when he accepts that nighttime is for sleeping.”
She paces for another minute, but Roman is inconsolable. It’s hell on the nerves. Mia’s baby whisperer comments resurface. She might not be wrong; she always manages to calm him down. Since she’s not here though, it’s just me or Meg right now. I walk around the couch and decide to take a whack at it myself, taking him and settling him against my chest.