Page 13 of The Merciless King

“Put it away. I’m more concerned about your ugly mug.” He laughs. “Shave, at the very fucking least.”

We both know I’m not ugly, but the banter is keeping me calm.

I chuckle and then turn back to the whiteboard where we’ve laid out a plan. It’s slim on details and, as Nathan pointed out, it’s a long shot.

Basically, I’m going to bump into them at drinks and charm the pants off Gianna. Hopefully, enough that she wants to see me again.

Then again.

And again, until I’m inside the Baldassare mansion.

Like I say, short on details and a damn long shot.

I’ll shave. Decker has a point.

Connor walks into the room and drops a passport and driver’s license in my lap. “Braxton Rossi.”

My surname is Ashford.

“We all stuck with our first names. Makes it a little easier, but it’s a mind fuck after a few years,” Nathan says. “Hopefully it won’t take that long.”

“She doesn’t have years.” Decker says the one thing we’ve all not yet voiced.

The room goes quiet.

“There are organizations—” Connor starts, but I shake my head.

“I have to do this,” I reply.

How do you explain what someone means to you? How little and vulnerable Amy was, and that it was my job to protect her. That I feel guilty for joining the Marine Corps. For not doing enough to protect her when I found out how bad things were when I saw Tracey that day.

Why hadn’t she told me she was buying drugs for her mom?

I should have known when our phone calls got shorter and shorter, but I thought she was just being a normal twenty-one-year-old. I was not her cool older cousin anymore.

Shit back home is hard to handle when you’re in the desert and trying to stay alive, so I had planned to reconnect when I got home.

“I get it, man,” Mack says, dropping his feet. “There’s little information on Gianna, so if she’s not interested in you, then we’ll have to go back to the drawing board to find a way to get you inside the crime family.”

I’ll make Gianna Baldassare interested in me.

I’ll make her think I’m the man of her fucking dreams.

I lift the envelope containing my new identification and rip it open. Inside is a black credit card.

The hell?

I glance at Connor.

“Prefer if you didn’t buy a private jet but do what you need to get your cousin home.”

Fucking hell.

“I can’t pay this back,” I admit. My family is more than comfortable, and I’ll never be poor, but this is way more debt than I can rack up.

Way more.

Connor crosses his arms and rests his ass on the edge of his desk. “You came to me for help. This is what we do and how we work. I have more money than any human being will ever need. How I choose to use and spend it is my business.”

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