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“I’m just surprised considering that you are always doodling.”
Ivy shrugged. “I wanted to be a doctor or a scientist when I was younger. I probably would have done that in college if…” She trailed off, but I knew what she was going to say:If Mikey hadn’t gotten sick.
“You could still go to school.” We hadn’t talked about what Ivy wanted to do next.
She couldn’t work at the club. The idea of her taking her clothing off for other men made me want to go and find every man in this town and rip them to pieces. I chalked that up to the fact that she was now my wife. Even the least jealous of men wouldn’t want their wives taking their clothes off in front of other men.
Ivy shrugged slightly. “I’m not sure,” she said. “To be honest, I’ve been focused on this new treatment for Mikey.”
I wanted to tell her that she couldn’t give up her whole life for her little brother, but I knew that it was no use. We were different sides of the same coin. We wanted to keep our families safe, and we’d taken on the responsibility of such work, no matter how much it cost us in the process.
The feel of Ivy’s soft finger on my brow brought my attention back to her. “What’s wrong?” she asked, smoothing my brow with her thumb. I closed my eyes for a moment, enjoying the softness between us.
We never spoke of what came before our marriage, or of what led to it. We were both content to ignore what led us here, but sometimes, a pit in my stomach formed as I recalled the night of the restaurant. Someone out there still wanted Ivy dead, and it was killing me to know who.
I grabbed her hand and pressed a kiss on her palm. “Just thinking about what the hell Dom might want.” My brother allowed me a few weeks to get to know Ivy better, a smirk formed on my face at the thought. We’d done that plenty. But it appears that the reprieve was over.
“Hopefully, everything is alright.” Ivy hadn’t moved away from me. In the beginning weeks, she’d struggled with my physical affection. Unless we were having sex, she’d pull away from a touch or a kiss.
Now, though, she leaned into my touch and gifted me ones of her own.
“Let’s go to dinner somewhere fancy,” Ivy said. She smiled at me, and I knew that she was trying to get me out of the mood that had taken over as I thought about who might be out there hunting my wife down.
“Somewhere fancy?”
Ivy nodded. She slid her body as close to mine as it could go. “I’ll wear that red dress I bought with Sasha. The one I’ve seen you eyeing in the closet.” Her eyes sparkled as she spoke, and I knew that she was thinking the same things that I was.
I groaned internally as I thought about the dress she was talking about. It was a long silk number that I’d fantasized about pulling around her waist as I fucked her from behind. “If you keep this up,” I leaned down and pressed a light kiss to her lips, “I am never going to get back to work.”
Ivy giggled. She was doing that a lot, which made me happy. I didn’t spend too much time wondering why Ivy’s happiness meant so much to me. Whenever I did think about it, it made me uncomfortable. There’d never been a woman who caught me in her snares quite like Ivy had, and the thought of that being taken away…I couldn’t even think about it without wanting to grab my gun.
“I’ll see you later tonight,” I told her, pressing a kiss to her brow.
She was taken aback by the way my mood shifted once more, but she said nothing. She just let me go, accepting that I would share whatever was in my mind with her later. I hoped I never had to. I didn’t want to worry Ivy. My life wasn’t for the faint of heart. I had more enemies than I knew about, and I prayed that I would be able to keep Ivy safe from them. I would burn down the world in order to keep what was mine.
* * *
“Married life must be treating you well,” Dom greeted as I walked through the door. “You’re practically glowing.”
Normally, I would have cracked a joke about good sex, but I wasn’t in the mood today, especially with Alex glowering in the corner. I’d seen the way my cousin had looked at Ivy, the very first day he saw her. At the time, I chalked it up to a bleeding heart, but now, I knew it was something more.
He had feelings for her.
“What is this meeting about?” I asked, ready to get down to business.
From the look on my brother’s face, he was surprised by the fact that I was ready to begin doing work instead of shooting the shit. But something in my gut told me that I needed to figure out who was after me.
“You two are some of the only family I have left and vice versa.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not in the mood for a pow wow brother, so if this is why you called me here, I can assure you that you are wasting your time.”
Alex grunted in agreement. I looked back at him, allowing myself to take a good look at my cousin. He looked like shit. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were gaunt as though he’d been skipping meals.
For a moment, I was worried about him. He hadn’t looked this badly in years, since the death of his family. Something was going on, and I wanted to know what it was.
“This is for the good of the family,” Dom said. His voice changed, so that he was speaking using his Don voice instead of his normal congenial one.
“We both are loyal to the family,” Alex said. “Even if we aren’t loyal to one another.”
