She pushed it behind her, and my breathing slowed.
“I need to ask one last thing of you,” she said softly. “It’ll help the both of us out.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I highly doubt it.”
“It will,” she promised.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Marry me.”
One
We should have a national quiet day. Where everyone just shuts the fuck up for twenty-four hours.
—Sage’s secret thoughts
Sage
Five years later
I wrote another letter that I knew would go unanswered.
I told him about my day—which wasn’t good.
I told him about what was up next for me—a nursing job in the ICU.
I told him about Neo—the Belgian Malinois that he’d brought me the day before he’d gone into prison.
I told him about my plans for next week—nothing with a side of work.
I told him about how I saw this week’s family dinner going—not good.
I poured my heart and soul into the letter, because he was the only one that I could do that to.
Everyone else wouldn’t care.
I was the pariah of the family.
My dad hated me because I’d defied him—apparently getting married to the man who killed your so-called fiancé was a no-no in the mob world.
My mother hated me because it was her duty to hate me if her husband told her to.
And then there was my brother, Devin.
He had a special place for me in his heart.
And it wasn’t a good one.
His heart was evil and black, and there wasn’t a single piece of his heart that wasn’t decaying from the evil that he lived and breathed on a daily basis.
Plus, he still hated me for getting Mario, his best friend in the whole wide world, killed.
In the Irish Mafia world, you did what you were told. You gave when it was expected of you. And you did not fight the man that was to be your husband when he wanted sex from you.
Something that I’d been unwilling to give to him.
Ever.
