"You're hot when you're all possessive and worried about me."
I keep my face stern. "I mean it. Remember who that woman is."
She gives me a soft smile. "I promise I'll be careful. I'll share my location."
I tilt my head. "Alright." I tip her chin up. "And Hudson. If he steps one foot out of line, you call me. I'll kill him. Understood?"
I'm serious. After what happened to Lola, I trust no man around my woman. And the men who hurt Lola met the right end. Death.
Harper swallows. "I hear you, Ace. But it'll be fine. I can keep working with Gianna, and that keeps you guys in the loop. Hudson is pretty irrelevant at this point. Everything is covered up well enough."
I exhale. I hope she's right. If she's not, we've got Enzo behind us anyway.
I lean in and claim her lips. "Fly safe, baby," I whisper.
"I'll call you. I've got dinner with Emma tonight, meetings tomorrow, and then hopefully I'll be back by Friday." She grins. "And Saturday, I get to watch my man win his world title back. Yeah?"
I grin. "Yeah, you will."
She yanks me back down. Kisses me again as I push her against the car door. I reach behind her and open it, never taking my lips from hers.
"You really gotta go before I bend you over the hood, baby."
She nips my lip. "Hold that thought for a couple of days."
"Oh, I will." I'm already getting hard just thinking about it.
"I love you," I tell her. And it's the one thing I know for certain in this life. The purest thing I've ever done is love this woman.
"I love you. With everything," she says.
I tap her ass as she gets in the car. Then I lean across and buckle her seatbelt. She watches me do it with that look. The one that says she knows exactly how much it means that I'm the kind of man who buckles her in.
I step back and lean on the fence. Cross my arms. Watch the love of my life drive off to the airport.
But this time, she's not breaking my heart. She's putting it back together.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Harper
I've rewritten my speech for Hudson five times in my notes app. Each draft is worse than the last. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to form a cohesive sentence.
I told Ace I could get out of this. I told him, with confidence, a kiss, and a smile that made him believe me. But every argument I type out, I can feel Hudson's rebuttal. A deal is a deal. The company hasn't been signed over. The engagement is leverage, and leverage doesn't just dissolve because you've fallen back in love with a bull rider in Arizona.
I have a few ideas. I can potentially keep up the lie with his parents without living and working in LA. I can still get Gianna what she needs, even more so from New Falls.
And Gianna might be my card out of here entirely.
That's why I'm sipping espresso at seven in the morning in a near-empty café, waiting for the mafia princess to show. I have a plan. A pretty decent one. Because all I want to do is go home to Ace and have a real shot at my happy ever after.
I can almost taste it.
The bell above the door rings, and I look up.
In walks Gianna. Red heels. Black leather shorts and a black crop top showing abs covered in ink. Her dark hair swings over her shoulder as she pushes her glasses up her nose. She spots me, and the switch from assassin to friend happens so fast you'd miss it if you blinked. One second, she's a woman who could end your life over an espresso. The next, she's smiling like we're old college roommates.
"Harper Jones," she greets me, nodding at the barista as she sits opposite me and crosses her legs.
