Page 20 of While You Sleep

But I’d had her first. No matter what happened during my meeting tonight, I’d touched her before Adam. I’d claimed her as was my right. She was mine, and she always would be, no matter what happened tomorrow.

Declan and Conor were waiting near the restaurant when I arrived.

“Ready?” Dec asked.

I nodded. Until the deal was made, this meeting, what I was about to do, needed to stay between the three of us. If things went the way I hoped, I was sure the rest of our men would follow me. If not? Well, we’d deal with it if it came to that.

This could be a suicide mission, but I liked my odds. We had something Alto wanted. His nephew. I’d gone straight to the warehouse after leaving Brennan’s place several hours ago, and questioned Paolo. I’d been right, Alto had been toying with the idea of an alliance with Brennan, the Italian never had liked Seamus, but hadn’t been ready to make a move. Paolo decided to take that upon himself to impress his uncle, to play with the big boys. But then Sophia rejected him, so the little fuck decided to take her. The men I took out tonight at Sophia’s apartment were Paolo’s not his uncle’s. Alto had no idea the position he’d been put in and neither Seamus nor Brennan were any the wiser, which meant this meeting between me and Alto needed to happen now, before shit got back to either of them. The more desperate Brennan was, the better.

Chances were good that Alto wouldn’t want to go to war over Paolo’s fuckup, but his nephew had made it impossible for him to walk away without looking weak. Despite what I told Sophia, the Italians didn’t kill children and, like me, were more interested in making money than wasting time and resources fighting among ourselves.

I was going to give him a way out that benefited us both and kept his pride intact. Unless, of course, he refused to listen.

Marco, one of Alto’s enforcers, stood at the door to the restaurant and aimed his gun at me as I strode toward him.

I held my hands out at my sides. “We’re not here to fight. I want a sit-down with Alto.”

Marco scowled but pulled out his phone and muttered something into it in Italian.

I felt my brother brace on my right, Conor doing the same on my left, ready for whatever came next.

Still holding his gun on us, Marco shoved his phone in his pocket. “I’ll take your weapons.”

“We’re not armed.”

Two more men stepped forward and quickly patted us down, then Marco waved us inside.

We were either about to have a meeting with Alto Leone—or we had a night of torture and a slow brutal death ahead of us.

Only one way to find out.

Chapter Seven

Sophia

Celeste stood back, studying me from head to foot.

“I’m not wearing this. Why the hell would I wear a wedding dress—”

“Arranged marriages happen all the time, Sophia. Stop being dramatic. One day you’ll want to look back on your big day, and won’t want to be wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Your father loved my dress when we married. Don’t you want to look nice for your new husband? Adam’s a handsome man. If you don’t grab his interest immediately, he’ll start looking elsewhere.”

“I hope he does. I hope after this sham of a ceremony is over, he forgets I exist. The kind of man who would marry someone against their will is deranged.” I grabbed the zipper on the side of the wedding dress Celeste had stuffed me into. There’d been several here this morning for me to choose from. Celeste and my father had thought of everything it seemed, except of course, telling me that they were planning on destroying my life, at least until they were certain there was no escape.

If I had to marry this creep to protect my brother, I would, but I wouldn’t pretend this was something it wasn’t.

Celeste grabbed my hand, stopping me. Her eyes turned pleading. “Please, Soph, keep the dress on.”

She never called me Soph. She hated me. “I’m not wearing a wedding dress. I’m not some blushing bride. This is the worst day of my life—”

“You go down there in anything other than a wedding dress, you’ll offend Seamus and Adam O’Rourke. We don’t want to do that, Sophia, we really don’t. That wouldn’t be good for you or your father.”

The fear that filled her eyes was genuine. God, I wanted to scream. What kind of a father sold his daughter to the devil to save his own hide? Not much of one. If it wasn’t for Tommy, I’d run the hell out of here and never look back. But Tommy was here, and he was the only person who mattered in this whole mess. I’d do anything to keep him safe, and they all knew it.

She patted the chair in front of her. “Now come sit so I can do your hair and makeup.”

I wanted to argue, to run the hell out of there, but there was no point. Fighting was pointless.

Celeste fussed with my hair for far too long. I was restless and angry and terrified. I could hear voices downstairs. Had the O’Rourkes arrived? I wanted to fucking puke.

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