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She was my everything.
But I couldn’t ignore my business altogether, so I’d forced myself to come out tonight. I was standing on the balcony and watching all the men gathered at the tables. The cameras caught the details better than my naked eye, but when I stood over all the members, it added a note of tension all the men could feel—that they were always being watched.
Ronan came to my side, wearing a suit with his hands in his pockets. “Business has increased.”
“We’ve had a hundred new members this week.”
Instead of watching the men beneath us, Ronan leaned against the railing and looked at me instead.
“Yes?” I turned to him, unsure what he wanted.
“Two more days?”
I was surprised he was keeping track. “Yes. Two more days until she’s mine forever.”
Instead of smiling, he narrowed his eyes in disappointment. “You still think she’s gonna stay?”
“She loves me.” I looked away and stared at the crowd again. “She’s happy. She’s not going anywhere.” We would have a difficult road ahead of us, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Her father and uncle didn’t hate me as much when they left as when they’d arrived. They had to respect me somewhat, considering I treated them so civilly when they stepped onto my property. Griffin nearly broke my skull, but I didn’t break his face, so that had to earn some respect too. At the very least, I held no ill will for any member of the Barsetti clan.
Ronan stood beside me with his arms crossed over his chest. He turned quiet and brooding, his mind still on the conversation but also far away at the same time. With wide shoulders and a powerful chest, he commanded respect in the casino the way I did. He simply took a step back and allowed me to have the spotlight, but he was doing a lot of work behind the scenes.
Maybe I was being too confident about Carmen, but I believed in what we had. I believed in every tear she shed for me, every confession of love she gave me, and everything else beautiful that we shared. I was a man in love, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world. It was the first time I felt complete since my mother died. Carmen filled the gaping hole inside my chest. I used to ignore my feelings and heartache and pretend they didn’t exist, but once Carmen arrived, I began to understand just how depressed I was because I was finally happy for the first time in years.
Ronan must have been holding his breath because he let out a sigh that was loud enough to be audible over the sound system. “Bosco, I need to tell you something, and it’s not easy for me to say. It’ll be even more difficult to hear.”
“Alright.” I straightened and turned to him, unsure what my brother was struggling to spit out. Was it about the casino or was it about Carmen?
He wouldn’t look me in the eye. “When I had lunch with her the other day, we didn’t talk about some woman I’m seeing. I made that up.”
He lied to me? I gripped the handrail as my eyes narrowed on his face, irritated that my own flesh and blood would betray me like that. When I saw him with Carmen, I thought it was unusual, but I trusted every word that came out of my brother’s mouth. Even if his explanation seemed strange, I’d given him the benefit of the doubt. Now I felt like a fool. “Let’s hope you have a good reason for that…”
“I actually talked to her about the two of you.” He finally turned his head my way so our eyes would lock. “I told her how much you loved her, that you would do anything for her, and I told her this is the first time you’ve been happy since Mom passed away.”
“And why would you say all of that to her?”
“I wanted to make sure she was going to stay. Because you need her, and I need you to be happy.”
It was a touching gesture, but I was still pissed.
“So I asked if she was going to stay…” He looked away, like holding my gaze was too painful. “She said no.”
As if someone had stabbed a knife right into my stomach, my guts spilled on the floor, and the air left my lungs. I didn’t change my expression because we were in public, but I squeezed the railing a little tighter, my knuckles turning white.
“She said she loved you, and she doesn’t want to be with anyone else…but it would never work. The two of you want different things.”
Love, commitment, and good sex? No, we wanted the same things.
“She said she wants a family, four kids and a husband.”
