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“You could always try something novel like, I don’t know, restraining yourself,” I sigh.
“There are several things Icoulddo that I have absolute zero interest in doing, dumbass,” he tosses back to me in a goofy-ass voice, parroting what I just said to him.
“It’s just business, Dante,” Nico shrugs, giving me his best attempt at a sympathetic look. “You know The Commission is old-school. So, you play their game. Marry this chick, get them off your fucking back, and then live your life. Hell, set her up with a place in the city, let her do what she wants…withdiscretion, duhh…and you do the same. This doesn’t have to change a damn thing in your life.”
Yeah. It’s a nice thought. But I know myself too well.
The difference between my two friends and I is our upbringings. Of course Carmy and Nico have next to zero regard for the gravitas of marriage; their parents, Vito and Giada, were at their happiest when they weren’t anywhere near each other. But they were also old-school Catholic, which meant that even as miserable as they made each other, divorce was off the table. Instead, they spent probably ninety percent of their marriage sleeping in separate, and often timesother people’s, beds.
But I was raised in a different kind of home. My parents were crazy in love with each other until they day they were taken from us. Marriagemeantsomething to them, and it’s—unfortunately, given my present circumstances—a value they instilled in my sisters and me.
I mean, of course I’m going to do what I have to do, because I’m a big boy and I understand how the world in which I operate works.
Doesn’t mean I have to fucking like it.
“You’ll have to excuse my brother,” Carmy sighs. “He has no respect for the sanctity of marriage.”
Nico frowns. “That’s not what I fucking said.”
“I didn’t say you said shit. I was talking about your preference for married women. As in, ones married to dudes who aren’tyou.”
Nico lifts his shoulders helplessly. “Hey, the heart wants what the heart wants.”
“That’s heart spelled D-I-C-K?—”
They both shut up when I clear my throat and glance significantly at my Rolex.
“’Bout that time, huh?”
I nod at Carmine. Yup, Maeve and her father should be here soon to sign that fucking blood marker.
“Well, we’d love to stick around for emotional support, as in getting you drunk as fuck after it’s over, but we have a meeting we need to get to back in the city.”
I frown. “Drazen?”
“Yessir,” Nico nods.
Drazen Krylov is the Serbian-Russian head of the Krylov Bratva family and a newly minted New Yorker. A few months ago, he managed to make friends with Carmine, and through him, weaseled his way into a guest pass to Venom in a thinly veiled maneuver to meet me and pitch me on him becoming an investor in Club Venom.
Thinly veiled, but as much of a fucking lunatic as Drazen is, he’s grown on me. So much so that heisan investor in Venom now, too.
I also know he, Carmine and Nico have their own dealings going on together. But whatever they are, I’m smart enough to know I probably want fuck-all to do with them. I know where my line is. My game is Venom and the information trade. Whatever clandestine criminal shit these two and that psycho are up to, I’m sure I don’t want to know the details.
After the Barone brothers take off, I pour myself a heavy splash of scotch and sink into my favorite chair by the window of my study, overlooking the ocean. The afternoon is getting late, and I glance at my watch again.
Fuck. It’s almost time.
I exhale and turn to look through the window at the waves lapping lazily at the shore. This whole situation is a shit show. And that wasbeforethe hurricane herself slammed into me. Literally.
Tempest.
Tempest, with the jet black hair and thick, heavy eyeliner. Tempest with the poisonous tongue and defiant energy radiating off her pale skin that makes you not sure if you want to throttle her or fuck her into next Tuesday.
Or both, at the same time. It mighttakeboth to wipe that smug smirk off her pretty lips. Though I suppose stretching those lips around my cock…for the sake of argument…might have the same effect.
I growl to myself again as I slug back half my glass.
I’ve crossed paths with plenty of people who make it clear they don’t like me.
