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“Not a shock to me,” Maximo says with a shake of his head.
“Really?” I ask with a frown.
“The way he treated you both and tried to turn you against each other. After what he did to Nicci. He was planning to marry off his own daughter to a sick fuck just to appease the men who were making him a fuckload of money, even though he knew the depraved, twisted shit they were into. His own little girl?” Maximo snarls. His hatred for my father is profound, but I’ve never seen him talk so openly or with such vitriol.
Joey is a sore point for him. For all of us. I suppose she’s like a little sister to him too. It was my father’s plans to marry her off to Dominik Pushkin’s eldest son, which forced Lorenzo and I to send her away to school in Italy — a crime for which I think she’ll never forgive us.
“Well, he’s gone. No more arranged marriages for anyone,” Lorenzo says gruffly.
“What? Really? I can’t imagine anyone actually wanting to put up with Joey for more than a few days, so it looks like we’re all stuck with her forever then.”
Maximo scowls at me, but Lorenzo snorts.
“If that’s all, I’m going back to bed to do unspeakable things to my wife before the shit hits the fan,” Lorenzo says as he stands.
“Sounds like a good plan,” I agree. I’ve barely slept in the last two days and the thought of spending the next few hours curled up next to the softest, most beautiful body I have ever known feels like heaven. I’ll tell her the truth about my father too once it’s safe for her to know everything.
“I guess I’ll just go chat to Sophia then,” Maximo says with a sigh. “See if she’s willing to knock me up some pancakes while we wait for the bomb to drop.”
Lorenzo pats him on the back. “We can arrange a marriage for you if you want, Max?”
“Fuck you, Loz!” he snaps. “I have no intention of ever getting married and ending up pussy-whipped like you pair of disappointments.”
“Says the man who’s about to go eat pancakes while we’ll be eating some of that pussy we’re supposedly whipped by,” I say with a grin.
“Fuck both of you.” With that, he storms out of the room.
Lorenzo laughs again and turns to look at me as I stand from the worn leather wingback chair. He looks at the chair and then at me with a sadness on his face that looks like regret.
“It’s yours if you want it, Lorenzo. It always has been.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “It’s yours, little brother. That’s always the way it was meant to be. I’m honored to stand by your side.”
I walk around the desk and wrap my arm around his shoulder. “By my side. Not beneath or above. Now that truly is the way it was meant to be.”
“There are hard times coming,” he says quietly.
“I know,” I agree, aware that he isn’t just talking about the fact that our father is about to be found murdered in his bed and we’re going to pin it on the Russians, but also because of his own Russian princess and the fact that the cancer has returned. “But we’re in this together, right?”
“Always.”
When I crawl backinto bed a few minutes later, Kat’s eyelids flutter open. “You were up early.”
“I had to talk to Lorenzo,” I say as I slide my hand over her hip and onto her ass, pulling her toward me.
“About Leo?” she whispers.
“Yeah, and some other stuff.”
“What stuff?”
I kiss her forehead. “Nothing for you to be concerned about right now, kitten. Go back to sleep.”
“I don’t want to go back to sleep,” she purrs, trailing her fingertips over my chest and down to the waistband of my boxers. “Unless you’re too tired?”
I’m fucking exhausted, but I am never too tired for what she’s offering. “Not tired at all.”
“I thought maybe we could lay that one last demon to rest?” she says softly.
