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No wonder he was so rich. No wonder his penthouse was so expensive. No wonder he had scared off those guys who had tried to start shit with me. All of it was falling into place now—in the most horrible way I could imagine.
"Mafia?" I repeated.
"It’s really not as bad as it seems," he tried to assure me. "I know how it sounds, but—"
"Yeah, you know how it sounds!” I exclaimed. "You’re working with some of the most dangerous people in the city! Laundering money for them! What happens if something goes wrong? Your head’s going to be on the chopping block—mine, too, maybe!”
"They would never come near you," he replied, and his voice was so sure and so determined I didn’t want to tell him the truth—that they had come after me just a few days before, looking for money he owed them. He would never have been able to forgive himself if he knew I was put in harm’s way, and this confrontation was hard enough as it was.
"That’s not the point," I replied, quickly changing the subject. "You can’t do this—you have to be able to see how dangerous it is, right?"
"I didn’t see what other choice I had," he replied, and his voice cracked as he spoke. "It was go into business with these people or watch this hotel fall apart—and I couldn’t let that happen, not after we just lost Mom and Dad. It didn’t seem fair. We’d already been through enough as it was."
I looked at my brother and felt a wave of sadness hit me. He’d been so strong. So strong for me because he knew I couldn’t handle the enormity of looking down the barrel of a life without my parents. Our parents.
"But you can’t let these people into our lives," I told him.
"It’s done now," he shrugged. "We have no choice. They’ll make more trouble for us if we stop now than if we go forward."
I felt my shoulders sag. I knew he was right. If we tried to pull out of this now, the people he was working with would cause more problems than if we just pushed on with it.
But the thought of being tied to the Mafia in any respect scared me shitless—especially since I had just made things a whole hell of a lot more complicated by having sex with one of them.
"I’m sorry, Thea," Mark told me, and I reached over the table and squeezed his hand.
"I know you were just trying to do the right thing," I assured him. "I just...please let me know before you accept any more deals, okay? And let me help out with the casino. I can make sure you’re not getting fucked over."
Any more than you already have.
The words hung unspoken in the air between us, but I was sure he knew what was on my mind. I didn’t want to be too harsh with him, especially not given what I had done, but at the same time—I was horrified. My father had worked to build this little hotel from the ground up, and now Mark had joined forces with the kind of people he would have done anything to avoid. I didn’t even want to think what he would have had to say about it.
But that wasn’t relevant right now—there was nothing he could say about it, because he wasn’t around anymore. It was just the two of us now, the two of us out here doing everything we could to keep the family business alive, and we had to be prepared to do some stuff we might never have imagined before.
I rose to my feet and bid farewell to my brother, heading out of his office and closing the door behind me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to take in everything he had just said.
I couldn’t believe I had slept with someone in the mafia. Someone so dangerous. The only guys I had been with before were college students like me, about as dangerous as a room full of cotton wool, but Scott? Scott was something else entirely.
Something far, far more threatening.
And yet, despite everything I had discovered about him, I still found my mind drifting back to our time together—how hot it had been—his kiss, his hands all over my body. The way he had caressed me and held me like I was dropped from heaven right into his living room.
I needed to forget about him. Right now. I can’t let my mind wander back to him. Whatever had happened between us, it was in the past now. He was working with my brother, just in case I needed any other reason to keep my hands off of him, and I was sure he had already moved on anyway. A guy like that, he could have anyone in the city he wanted, and I was sure he made the very most of that power every chance he got.
I felt a twinge of jealousy in my chest as I thought about it. Yeah, he really could have just called up any girl, and no doubt they would have run to him. That was probably why he had been so damn confident in making a move on me, inviting me back to his place—maybe he thought I already knew who he was, and I would fall at his feet the first chance I got.
And, shit, I hadn’t exactly disproved it, had I? I had fallen into bed with him the first night we’d met. Even now, I felt a little flushed about it, thinking that I had given him exactly what he wanted. But there would have been no way I could deny myself his touch—the chemistry between us had burned way too bright to deny.
Maybe it was the same with every girl he was with. He seemed like the type to get them wrapped around his finger in no time. Hell, I’d been wrapped around that finger, the memory nearly making me purr. I shake my head to toss the thought aside. If he had made it that easy for me to fall for him, fall for his charms, there were probably a hundred other girls in this area code who had done the same thing.
I was probably nothing special to him. And I just had to keep telling myself that until I believed he was nothing special to me, either.
Chapter Six Scott
"Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?" Mark asked as he fussed around me in his office. He had been the same way every time we met like he was trying to come across as though he had everything under control, even when I could tell it was anything but.
"I’m fine, thank you," I replied, and he nodded, running a hand through his hair.
"Right—uh, great," he said, sitting opposite me. He always looked nervous when I first entered his office, but he soon chilled out as we got talking.
