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“No. I’m not, Elena. I can’t be given the line of work I’m in. But I love you, and I’ll do what I can to protect you.”
I pull back to look up into his handsome face.
“What will Uncle Carlo do?”
He sighs. “I don’t know.”Chapter 19~Archer~I’d consider this apartment beautiful if I weren’t being held in it against my will. Actually, that’s not correct. I’m here willingly because they have the love of my life, and I’ll do whatever needs to be done to keep her safe. Leaving her alone with Carmine was like tearing a limb from my body. Everything in me screamed not to let her out of my sight.
But she was so calm about it, so sure that she was safe with the man. Not to mention, I didn’t exactly have a choice with Rocco holding a gun to my side.
“So, you’re the infamous Archer,” Rocco says after leading me into the master suite from the living room, where Carmine is having words with Elena right now.
“And you three are the cousins.”
This room doesn’t have a bed in it. Instead, it’s set up as an office. A large desk fills the middle of the room with several computers, a printer, and more paperwork than I would expect on the surface. Then again, I have no idea how much paperwork it takes to run a mafia family. There’s a chair behind the desk, two in front of it, and a small couch off to the side.
It looks like the Martinellis have set this place up as some kind of home base so they don’t have to use their private homes or offices for the dirtier jobs.
If I wasn’t so fucking pissed, I’d be impressed.
“We should probably tie him up,” Rocco says to Shane, but I scoff and shake my head, getting their attention.
“Why?” I hold my hands out at my sides. “We’re here willingly. I’m not going anywhere unless it’s with Elena. I won’t run.”
Shane watches me with calm, cool, blue eyes. All three men have an air of danger around them. On a normal day, I would avoid fucking with them.
This isn’t a typical day.
“What’s he doing to her in there?” I ask, pacing to the door to try to hear anything, and then turning back to them. “No offense, but I don’t trust any of you.”
“He won’t hurt her,” Shane says. He stands by the windows, his arms crossed over his chest. All three were wearing suits, but they’ve since shed their jackets and rolled the sleeves of their white shirts up to their elbows. All of the brothers are tall and broad with dark hair. Carmine’s and Rocco’s eyes are dark, while Shane’s are blue.
“You, on the other hand,” Rocco adds, “might want to worry about your own skin.”
“What are you going to do to me?” I lean my shoulder against the wall, facing them. “Skin me alive? Shoot me in the knees? Cut off my fingers at the knuckles? Will I be swimming with the fishes?”
“None of that today,” Shane says. “But Pop will want to meet you sooner or later, and then it’ll get interesting.”
My phone, which they confiscated right away and set on the desk in the middle of the room, lights up.
“Your phone’s been blowing up all day,” Shane says, peering down at the screen. “Who’s Lindsey? Are you two-timing my cousin?”
I laugh. “No. That’s Elena’s best friend. She has my number because Elena doesn’t have a cell phone. They were supposed to have drinks today. She’s probably wondering where Elena is, and why she’s been stood up.”
The screen lights up again. If they plan to monitor my phone all day, it’ll be a full-time job. It never stops.
“And Matt?”
“My cousin.” I see Shane’s eyes shift to Rocco. “But you already know that. Your family dug up everything there is to know about mine years ago. So, you know who they are. When they can’t reach me, they’ll start a search, and it won’t be a tiny neighborhood watch.”
“Oh, look at that,” Shane says, his voice as dry as the desert as he throws my phone on the floor and smashes it with the heel of his boot. “I’ve just run out of fucks. It doesn’t matter to me who your family is. You’re dealing with my family now, Montgomery.”
“You should have just stayed away from her,” Rocco says, joining the conversation. “If you’d minded your own business, life would be so much easier for you.”
“She is my business.”
“How long have you been shacked up together? Since she left eight years ago?”
I frown. They obviously don’t know as much as they want me to think they do.
“I found her a month ago,” I reply. “I was done being without her.”
“Maybe it wasn’t explained to you the way it should have been,” Shane says as he walks away from the window. “It’s not just about Elena. It’s about the family. Her father forbade your relationship because you don’t come from the right pedigree. She was supposed to marry someone in another mafia family, to tie the two together and strengthen us as a whole.”
