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“I’m not lying about us.”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing? Or did you think you might actually let me go at some point?” I push.
“Fuck,” he grits, rolling off me to sit up on the side of the bed. I fight a smirk. Yeah, Gilly was never going to let another man have me. I crawl over and kiss his shoulder. He grabs me, pulling me around to straddle him.
“Please?” I say before he can try and push. His phone goes off again.
“You win.” He presses a hard kiss to my mouth. “For now.” He stands, putting me onto my feet before he walks over and grabs his phone. I check mine and let out a breath when I see it’s not my brother.
“I’ll be up in a minute,” I hear Gilly say. “Yeah.” I give him a wave as he glares at me, the phone still pressed to his ear. I know this is my chance to escape, so I do. I sneak back up toward the house.
I message the girls, letting them know I’m okay before I unarm the alarm on my window and slip back into the house. The second my feet hit the floor in my bedroom, I know I’m busted.
“And what do we have here?” Angelica asks. Her sister is standing next to her.
“Is this what they call the walk of shame?” Bianca smiles as she says it. Both of them are giddy to know what or better yet who I’ve been up to.
“No.” Angelica shakes her head at her sister. “Carina is shameless.”
“True.” I smirk in agreement.
“Whose shirt do you have on?” Bianca pries.
“What are you two doing in my room?” I ignore her question and ask my own.
“You missed breakfast,” Bianca answers. Angelica is studying me. Does she know whose shirt I’m wearing? Bianca can be more aloof, but not Angelica. She often pretends as if she doesn’t notice something when really she’s watching everything. She’s very cunning and a perfect match for my brother. He got more than lucky with her.
“I never miss meals, do I?” No, because I know Gilly is normally at them or I’ll pass by him at some point. The more I’m out of my bedroom, the more often I get to run into him.
“Not Falco’s?” Angelica finally speaks again. I shake my head no.
“Thank God,” she huffs out.
“Oh good. I thought you really liked him. He gives me the creeps, but I didn’t want to be mean,” Bianca blurts out.
“Well, it’s not Falco. And for the record, if someone gives you the creeps, I’d like to know.”
“I didn’t want to be rude.” Bianca worries her bottom lip between her teeth. It’s mind-blowing that she and the Butcher are married.
“Be rude. Be rude as fuck, Bianca,” I tease her as I head into my bathroom to shower.
As worried as I am about telling my brother that I might have started a war, I can’t bring myself to have regrets. Carson Falco needs to be taken care of one way or another.
19
GILLY
I stride into Antonio’s office.
“Where were you?” he asks, his gaze straying to my mussed hair.
I didn’t bother to shower before coming over to the main house. Then again, if I’m being honest, I didn’t want to wash Carina’s scent off me. I can catch it even now, soft and feminine, like flowers and citrus.
“Sleeping.” I shrug.
“You never sleep in.” One of his dark eyebrows rises. “And you missed breakfast. You never do that, either.”
I can feel Butcher looking at me from his spot by the fireplace, so I sit on one of the leather sofas and do my best to act natural. Telling Antonio is at the top of my list for the day, but maybe I need to ease him into the information.
“I can skip breakfast now and again. It’s not a big deal.”
Butcher snorts.
“Where’s the fire? You usually don’t call unless it’s something big.”
“It is.” Antonio finally stops scrutinizing me and turns to his computer monitor. “I just got an email from some contacts that we have a flesh trader in town, right under our noses.”
Fuck, if he’s talking about who I think he’s talking about, I’m headed straight for the confrontation about Carina and Falco.
“Give me names.” Butcher cracks his knuckles.
“It’s not that simple.” Antonio shakes his head.
Butcher grunts.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“The Falcos.” Antonio’s eyes narrow. “Well, I don’t think it’s all of them. But I suppose we’ll have to cut the head off the snake and take them all out to make sure. Human trafficking is a scourge, and it’s one I won’t fucking tolerate, not in my city. I thought I’d made that clear when I cut all those holdings from the Larone portfolio. But I guess one family didn’t get the message.”
This is it. I’m at the moment where I have to decide if I’ll stay quiet and hide my relationship with Carina, or if I’m going to come clean. Because when I reveal what I know about Carson Falco, it’s going to domino into what happened last night. And I know the weight of what I’ve done. I’ve taken Antonio’s sister for my own without asking for his permission. It’s a major transgression, one that would lead to a date with a bullet in plenty of other families. But with Antonio, it’s different. We’ve known each other a long time. I only hope that the trust I’ve broken in claiming Carina is one that can be mended. After all, I fully intend on him being my brother-in-law in short order.
