AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Security,” Ezra said, not missing a beat.
That word gave me pause. He could have said many things–money, wealth, a well-known name. But instead, he chose security. And he was right. Because even if my family found me, and odds were that they would at some point, if I was tied to Ezra, they’d never be able to get to me.
One thing that I knew about my father was that he was going to choose the Bratva over anything. He wouldn’t put the family in danger just to get me back. By aligning myself to Ezra, I was choosing security. I was ensuring that I could never go back to the life I’d led before.
“I don’t need to read this,” I said. ‘I trust you.” I didn’t trust Ezra. I didn’t trust anyone, but I knew that the benefits of this outweighed the cons.
“Are you sure?” Ezra asked. His dark blue eyes bore into mine, and I felt my stomach flip with my nerves. “I can wait.”
I gripped the expensive silver pen in my hand and pressed the tip of it to the contract. “For better or worse, it looked like we are in this together.” I signed my name with a flourish. Whatever happened next, I’d made this choice, and I’d have no one to blame but myself for the consequences.
CHAPTERTWELVE
“I can’t believe you pulled this shit off,” Marcel said with a laugh as he looked at the contract.
I couldn’t believe it either. “I told you that I would figure this out.” I spoke with more confidence than I felt.
Marcel read through the contract, and I braced myself for his lecture. “I can see how you got her to agree. You basically promise her your whole fucking fortune if she marries you.” There was a note of contempt in his voice as he spoke. “Hell, she gets more than half of everything you make if she gives you a kid.”
I shrugged. “It’s just money.”
When I’d drawn up the contract, I’d done so keeping my father in mind. He hadn’t married my mother for her money, but he’d gotten embroiled in it. It was hard to leave the wealth, especially considering my mother made him sign an iron clad prenup prior to their marriage. He’d been trapped.
And I never wanted to trap anyone that way.
“She’s agreeing to a lot,” I reminded him.
Marcel snorted and placed the contract back on the table. “She’s agreeing to be aligned with one of New York’s richest men. What a hardship.” There was sarcasm in his voice, and it was pissing me off. Marcel was cutthroat. He didn’t care about the fact that I’d ensured that Annie would have no one else to turn to but me when I let HR know about her background issue.
The guilt made my stomach turn. “She’s young and gorgeous. I’m sure that she could find someone who actually loves her to marry her.” That was another thing that made me feel immense guilt.
I was asking Annie to give up part of her future that most women dreamed about. And while she might not care currently, I couldn’t help but wonder if she would regret all of this in the future. I hoped that the money would be enough to ease the sting of that regret when it finally hit.
“I ran those papers you gave me,” Marcel said. “She’s clean as a whistle.”
I nodded. “I wasn’t worried,” I told him. That wasn’t necessarily true. There was something about Annie and the way she reacted when touched that made me wonder if something had happened in her past. She tried to keep me from seeing it, but I’d learned to read people long ago, and I noticed how she flinched whenever I touched her, or how she had been adamant that we weren’t going to be having sex any time soon.
“What is it?” Marcel asked.
I turned my attention to my friend and partner. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve got a look.”
I sighed. “It’s nothing.”
He shook his head. “That’s not an acceptable answer. We are about to launch a campaign coming off of a hit piece that makes you look like a sexual deviant. This girl needs to be squeaky clean. If you’ve got concerns, I need to hear about that.”
For a moment, I wondered if I should tell Marcel my thoughts. He was right after all. My entire image was riding on Annie, and my belief that she was going to make me seem responsible.
“There’s nothing,” I said. “I’m just not really interested in settling down. It’s making my head spin.”
Marcel shrugged. “You shouldn’t be so worried about it. You get through the first couple months of the campaign, and then, we can talk about what comes next. There are ways to get your rocks off that aren’t going to land you in the news.”
His words gave me pause, and that feeling of guilt in my stomach intensified. I’d avoided commitment for a lot of reasons, but one of them was that I never wanted to promise someone something that I couldn’t give them.
My father had loved my mother, despite everything. And even when their marriage was shit, he was faithful to her. I knew that he would expect me to be the same. He’d always told me that marriage was sacred, and not something a person should take lightly. That’s why I’d avoided it all these years.
“I’m not interested in ruining my political career over something so trite as a piece of ass.”
