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“It’s very simple. I need a wife—”
“And you don’t have one already?”
I’m not sure if I sound relieved to hear that, or irrationally pleased. I shouldn’t have any reaction at all, but so surprised by the direction this conversation has taken, I give myself away.
Link shakes his head. “That’s the problem. As the head of the syndicate, I’m expected to have one. To turn the Sinners into a family, right? Can’t do that without a wife, and I’ve been too busy to find one. And here you are. No husband. No boyfriend,” he adds, and I can’t help but wonder how he knowsthat, “and no way out of this unless you say yes.”
“Link… you can’t be serious.”
“Dead fucking serious,” he agrees.
“Marry you… that’s your price. You want me tomarryyou?”
He nods.
Lifting my mug to my lips, I swallow a mouthful of tea. It’s still hot and I’m probably scalding the roof of my mouth and the length of my esophagus, but I forced it down. Right now, I need the calm it provides.
“Careful, pet,” he says softly. “Easy.”
Easy?Easy? I’ve got a dead man—that Ikilled—in my living room, a cop pulled up at my curb, and my former lover-turned-gangster freakingproposingto me… and he wants me to take it easy?
That’s not what he’s doing. Not really. The proposing part, I mean. Link didn’t suddenly realize after all these years that he made a mistake and he still loves me.
Oh, no.
I’m just a single woman who is desperate enough to even entertain this insanity.
And Iam.
“So… if I say yes, it would be a fake marriage. Like a marriage of convenience, one of those in name only. Just so people stop wondering when you’ll find a wife… right?”
Link shakes his head. “It’ll be real from the moment you say ‘I do’, pet.”
Okay. He must’ve taken one too many punches to the face when he was younger because I’m beginning to think Link’s the crazy one now.
And yet, I can’t stop myself from asking, “What would I have to do?”
“I’ll need an heir one day.” There’s no small smile twitching his lips any longer. Link is really freaking serious. “Someone to take over the syndicate for me, with hellfire in their veins and the devil in their blood. With you as their mother, they’ll have some good in them, too.”
My heart is thumping, and I’m back to being too stunned to decipher why. “Children,” I sputter. “You want children?”
“Eventually. Why? Is that a problem?”
I don’t even know how to answerthat. Acting the part of his wife in front of his gang is one thing, but sleeping with him? Having children with him?
Spending the rest of my life with the man who broke my heart when I was a silly little girl who still believed in fairy tale endings? A man who is blackmailing me into marriage in exchange for helping me get through the second worst night in my life?
As if he knows exactly what I’m thinking, he crouches down so that we’re on the same level.
“You’ll be my wife in all ways, and this whole night… all of it… it can just go away.”
If only it was that simple.
“Link, I—”
A shadow passes across his face. “They call me Devil.”
‘They’ might. To me, he’s always been Link.
