Dangerous: Made & Broken (A British Bad Boy Romance)

by Nora Ash

  But my own family would.

  Just the thought of my father’s anger made me clench my hands in the blankets to stop them from shaking. If they found me after I’d cost them money and reputation, they would kill me. End of story.

  When I ran away the first time, I’d been nothing more than a useless daughter, and I was pretty sure no one had spent much time looking for me. I’d like to think that maybe my mother had at least called around to my classmates, but who knew? It was always about the business, and I’d… I’d not been of any help there.

  I bit down on my quivering lip until I tasted blood, reducing those memories to nothing more than a dark space in my consciousness. My gut twisted and I focused on breathing deeply again until the bout of anxiety passed.

  Sure, talking about past trauma is good for the soul—no one knows that better than a psychologist. But I’d always known, with every bone in my body, that once I punctured that abscess, what would come pouring out would be dark and hideous. Right now, I needed to focus on forming and executing a plan to get out of my forced marriage—not digging in painful memories.

  If I wanted to avoid my family, then I’d need to get further away than their network could reach, which would mean getting out of Great Britain. Getting a visa would be hard without Blaine noticing, but with the right to free travel within Europe, that didn’t have to be a problem.

  Which just left me with the issue of getting out of London and away from the Steels.

  Right now, Blaine had zero reason to trust me, which the set of rules on the fridge so clearly displayed. He would undoubtedly have some measures ready to keep me in the house, and I had no way of knowing what or where they were—apart from the two goons who had followed us from the hotel, and who I’d seen take up a stance on each side of our front door. As efficient at keeping enemies out as they were at keeping me in.

  But if Blaine maybe trusted me, at least a little…

  My heart thumped uneasily and I pressed a hand to my chest and frowned. Scary as the thought was, perhaps getting closer to my new husband wasn’t the worst of ideas.

  So far, the way I’d acted around him had been more resemblant of a teenager than a grown woman. A horny teenager.

  Sure, I hadn’t exactly been in the best state of mind, but if I wanted him to trust me enough to afford me some slack on the rules, I’d likely need him to respect me. Yelling at him and blaming him for everything that had gone wrong was not going to get me far.

  So that was it—I had a plan, even if it was still a bit rough around the edges. And the first step was to gain Blaine’s respect. Get closer to him.

  Might have been a lot easier if he wasn’t such a dick.

  * * * *

  Chapter 9

  Blaine

  “I’m hungry.”

  The sound of Mira’s voice ripped me out of my brooding with a start I barely managed to camouflage with a flex of my shoulders and arms. Seemed the bird was pretty stealthy. And clearly not used to knocking.

  I rolled over on my bed to face the door, where my new wife was standing, both arms wrapped around her midsection. I cocked an eyebrow at her. Not that I’d studied the subject in depth at any point, but it seemed like feeding her wouldn’t fall under my husbandly duties.

  “…And there’s nothing in the fridge but beer and hot sauce. I’d order a pizza, but who knows if it’ll come with a complimentary hit man? Or poisonous mushrooms?”

  Oh. Right. Girl had a point, even if her sarcastic tone made her feelings on the rules I’d laid out for her clear. At least she wasn’t shouting. “I’ll order us something. And I’ll get Rob to help you with planning out the household shopping tomorrow.”

  Her hazel eyes narrowed a bit behind her glasses. “Who’s Rob?”

  “My righthand man. He’s in charge of security. You’ll have to go through him when you set up everything you need to run the house. You can order deliveries from the supermarkets, but you’ll have to make sure you only order from places where we have someone working. Rob will be able to tell you more. If you need help with cleaning and all that, he should be able to get you in contact with the woman who cleans for my father. Anything you can’t buy online you’ll need to arrange for one of the guys to go get.” Would you look at that—Blaine Steel discussing household crap like a responsible adult. I briefly wondered if this what what my father had had in mind when he said married life would do me good.

  “I’m sorry… you seem to be under the illusion that I will be taking care of the household?”

  There was something in Mira’s voice that made me hesitate for just a second. Her tone had shifted from pure sarcasm to holding some sort of warning. Then I frowned and shook it off. If she wasn’t happy, it wasn’t my problem.

  “Yeah. What else would you do? Paint your toenails?”

  She blinked. Twice. “My job. You may recall I have one of those.”

  Was she really that naïve, or was she just baiting me? “You don’t anymore. It’d be too dangerous, and we don’t have the manpower to have someone follow you around all day.”

  From the look on her face, she really had been that naive. A pained look of shock crossed her pretty features, and her hands fisted by her sides as her arms fell from their protective pose crossed over her midsection.

  “You can’t do that.”

  I frowned as the light from my bedside lamp caught the fresh shine in her eyes. Were those… tears? Based on our previous interactions, I’d been unsurprised at anger and shouting, but tears?

  “I’m sorry, it’s not up for negotiation.” The weird thing was that, as I looked at her standing there in my doorway so shocked and upset, I was actually sorry. Sorry that those tears were there because of me. Which was mildly ironic, for a man who spread pain and misery for a living.

  Then her expression darkened and her nostrils flared, the look of pain wiped away.

  “I refuse to let you do that!”

  Ah, there was the anger. I rubbed a hand across my face and pushed off the bed to sit up. “You don’t have a choice, love.”

  Mira closed her eyes for a brief moment, as if to steel herself. “I’ve worked very, very hard to be able to support myself. You can’t just take that away without even consulting me.” She spoke through gritted teeth, as if she was just barely hanging on to her composure. I was mildly surprised that she bothered trying.

  “Well, now you don’t have to work hard anymore. At least you’ll get something good out of this deal.” I swear, it was meant as a silver-lining sort of point, but from the way her eyes flashed with renewed anger, I took it I’d failed to get that across.

  “You arrogant bastard,” she hissed. By her sides, her knuckles were turning white, she was clenching her fists that hard. “You have no idea the lengths I’ve had to go to to be independent. Do you have any idea how impossible it is to get out from a crime family? No, I bet you don’t—I bet the thought that there could be more to life than violence has never even crossed your mind! Do you think I just waltzed into my line of work? That I changed my name just because I felt like it? Just try to imagine how your big mob father would react if you said you wanted nothing to do with his business. Just for one second, picture it. What would he do?”

  I paused as her scathing words dug deep into my skull and anchored down. What my father would do if I’d turned my back on the family business in any way, shape, or form? He’d have me killed, simple as.

  “Everything I’ve wanted, everything I’ve done, has been to be free from it all. So no, you forcing me to quit working is not ‘something good’ to come out of this, Blaine. It was the last thing I had left!” She sent me one final look of anger and resentment, and then she spun around on her heel and left my room, slamming the door behind her.

  I stared at the closed door while her voice echoed in my head. For the first time in as far back as I could remember, my own temper hadn’t flared while someone shouted at me. I felt a lot of things, but anger wasn’t one of them. Frustration, su
re, along with a highly unfamiliar urge to apologize.

  I shook my head in an attempt at clearing it of the odd sensation. It wasn’t like it was my fault—if I allowed her to go to work, she’d likely get killed or kidnapped within two weeks. It wasn’t happening.

  Great. Why did I have to get married to the only woman I’d ever met who wasn’t interested in the lifestyle that came with being by my side? I’d fucked countless girls who would have happily traded in their day job for my MasterCard and playing lady of the house, or whatever the fuck women did at home all day. And I’d damn sure get morning sex to boot.

  Of course, none of those girls had clawed their way out from a family like the Clerys, only to get dragged back in once they thought they were free.

  I grunted at the unwanted pang of empathy for my temperamental wife. It couldn’t be easy, seeing everything she’d worked for disappear practically overnight. It would have taken a lot of guts to give her family the slip, and realizing it’d all been for nothing had got to sting.

  I’d never wanted to be free from it all. Sure, my life was violent and bloody, but I liked it that way. Most of the time.

  If I’d ever wanted something else, though… would I have had the guts to cross the family? Knowing what would likely happen if they found me again? Probably not.

  She was tough as nails, that bird. She didn’t look it, but defying a family like the Clerys took more balls than most grown men would be able to muster. Including me.

  I couldn’t give her the freedom she wanted, but perhaps it didn’t have to be like this, either.

  Maybe we could figure something out, so we weren’t both so goddamn miserable all the time. A truce, of sorts.

  * * *

  “Mira?” I gave the wooden door to the room she’d picked a cursory knock, but didn’t bother waiting for her to answer. She’d walked into my room without so much as a knock, after all.

  She was sitting on the bed in a nest of ruffled sheets and blankets, and the look she gave me was sullen. It softened notably when she spotted the large pizza box in my hand.

  “Hope you like Hawaiian.” I walked over to her bed and sat down without being invited, plopping the box between us.

  “I hate pineapple.” She reached for the box as soon as it touched the blanket, her fingers wedging it open with skilled ease.

  “If you’d stuck around, I’d have asked what toppings you like.” I grabbed a slice of the cheesy goodness and leaned back on one hand to watch her while I ate.

  Mira didn’t look up, but I saw a small grimace pass over her face before she began picking pineapple off a slice of pizza. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  I assumes by “that,” she meant yelling at me and slamming the door. I shrugged. “It’s a shitty situation. I get it.”

  She sighed and nodded, never taking her eyes off the pizza.

  We ate in silence for a good twenty minutes, but I didn’t mind the lack of conversation. I spent the time looking at her, much like I would usually evaluate an opponent before a fight. She looked so soft and fragile, but there was clearly steel underneath it all. And she was smart. I’d seen the fancy university degree hanging on her office wall, and the way she held her own in every argument we’d been in was something new to me. It was also half the reason I couldn’t stop thinking about shagging her. I had no idea what it was about being bitched at that got me rock-hard, but clearly it did something for me, since just the thought of her smart mouth made my cock stir.

  I shifted on the bed, strategically placing a stray pillow across my lap. Somehow, I didn’t think an offer of a quick romp would ease the tension between us.

  “I don’t normally act like this.”

  I arched an eyebrow at her. “No?”

  “No.” She sighed, finally raising her gaze to meet mine. “I know you didn’t want this either. I just… I don’t know what to do.”

  “There’s not much to do.” I reached over and grabbed one of her leftover pieces of pineapple from the cardboard and popped it into my mouth. “It is what it is, and we can’t change that, much as we want to. So the way I see it, we have two options open for us. Either we continue bickering every chance we get, or… we try to get along as best we can. I figure if we pick option two, maybe we’ll be just slightly less miserable.”

  She snorted and a flicker of amusement pulled at the corner of her mouth.

  “What’s funny?”

  The flicker turned into a full, albeit wry, smile. “Just that I’m failing miserably as a psychologist, what with leaving the calm rationalization up to the thug in the room while I’m busy freaking out. The irony is sort of poetic.”

  I raised both eyebrows at her in mock-insult. “The thug?”

  Mira waved a hand dismissively at me. “Thug, crime lord, mobster. Take your pick.”

  I chuckled. “I almost want to see you call my father a ‘thug’ to his face.”

  She sighed again and looked at me, this time with a questioning frown that made her look oddly innocent. My cock gave a spasm in agreement of my assessment.

  “Do you think we can make it work?” she asked.

  “What, the marriage?”

  “The trying-to-get-along-thing,” she said quickly. “I’m under no illusion that it’ll ever be an actual marriage, but… maybe if we can figure out to just get along, that’ll be enough.”

  I gave her a small smile. “Yeah, I think we can try that.”

  Getting along would be a massive step up from what I’d envisioned my future with her to be like just this morning, yet when I left her room to get on with my night shortly after, it wasn’t relief that made me draw in a deep breath before I headed for the stairs.

  If “getting along” was much more than what I’d been hoping for this morning, then why was part of me disappointed that she’d made it so clear she had no intentions of making the marriage work?

  * * * *

  Chapter 10

  Mira

  Sharing that pizza was the last time in more than a week that I saw Blaine. Sure, I’d occasionally hear him banging around in the kitchen when I was in my bedroom, or hear his shower going while I trotted down the stairs to the kitchen myself, but we didn’t actually come face-to-face at any point.

  At the beginning, I found it such a relief. Not actually seeing him meant I didn’t have to really deal with him, which made getting along so much easier. I talked to Rob—the goon who was most frequently stationed outside our front door—and got my shopping arrangements sorted out, and was on that occasion handed the platinum AmEx Blaine had apparently told his righthand man to give to me with instructions to use it as I pleased, “within reason.”

  I’m not going to lie, the “within reason” part only lasted until I’d opened up John Lewis’ website.

  My job as a psychologist allowed me to get by just fine, but I’d never before been in a situation where I could get all the furnishings I dreamed of with just a few clicks of a button. It was completely intoxicating.

  I spent a full week in an online shopping frenzy, which I vaguely justified with my plan to befriend Blaine. It was obvious that he expected me to be a good little homemaking mob wife, and as long as that only involved buying pretty things with his money, I was happy to play the part.

  Only, on the ninth day, when most of my purchases arrived at the door, Blaine was nowhere to be found.

  “Where is he?”

  Rob gave me a short glance over the top of the gold-striped sofa he and his partner for the day were in the process of dragging through the hallway and into one of the reception rooms. “Out.”

  “Out where?” I followed the two men, ensuring they put the sofa where I’d specified.

  “Working. Here?”

  I nodded, and the two goons put the sofa down on the new rug in front of the heavy coffee table they’d carried in before.

  “When will he be back?”

  “Dunno.” Rob rubbed his lower back with a sigh before heading back toward the hallwa
y, no doubt eager to get done with dragging furniture for me as soon as possible.

  I plopped down on my new sofa and bit my lip as the flaw in my plan finally dawned on me. While Blaine not being around meant I didn’t have to deal with him, it also meant that I was nowhere near my goal of befriending him. And if he didn’t hang around long enough that I could make him trust me, then there was zero chance he would ever give me enough rein that I could eventually escape.

  I’d thought that getting all domesticated and making our house into a home would perhaps break the ice between us—that if he saw me making an effort to be more like what he wanted from a wife, he would be easier to manage.

  But if the bastard wasn’t even home to notice, then my plan wasn’t going to work.

  I looked up as Rob and Greg came, huffing and puffing, through the open French doors into the reception room with a seven-foot bookshelf made from solid oak, sweat beading on both their foreheads.

  I hadn’t talked much to either of them or the other men who played bodyguards in front of our house, apart from when I needed to have them approve the lists of companies where I’d ordered food and furniture from.

  They scared me. Everything about them, from their tough faces, bulging muscles, and unapproachable demeanors, reminded me of the darkest parts of my childhood. I had learned to fear men like them from an early age, as much as I’d learned to fear their superiors, like Blaine and his family. Yet, when I looked at them now as they dragged all my heavy purchases up and down the stairs, to make sure everything was just as I’d asked, it was easier to see them for more than something to be scared of. They were busting their arses to make me happy, even if they did it with grim expressions and only because Blaine undoubtedly had told them to help me out whenever I asked.

  A wave of gratitude swept over me when I saw Greg wince as they sat down my heavy book case. Babysitting your boss’s wife would have to suck pretty hard, even if your day job was being a criminal, and yet they did it without making me feel like a burden. Granted, they didn’t exactly make me feel warm and welcome, either, but then again, I hadn’t done anything to make them feel welcome.