Page 34 of The Marriage Negotiation

"You're the same age as me, you idiot," Lucas replied.

Miles grinned. "Which is why I know you're old."

My jaw dropped when the powerful man in the business suit flipped Miles off. Not something I thought I'd ever see, but it gave me an idea of how close these men were, especially when Miles just laughed it off.

Little by little, the others found spots to sit around the living room. The mood was light, some music playing softly in the background, and a cool breeze blowing in from the open balcony doors.

I curled closer to Patrick, sending him a small smile. "This is nice."

"These are my frat brothers," Patrick replied. "I trust all of them with my life. We forged an unbreakable bond when we were at the university. If the call goes out that one of us is in trouble, we're there. No questions asked."

Must be nice.

I'd never had anything like that in college. I was too busy working and studying because my father refused to pay the tuition for me to attend nursing school.

"Many of us here tonight have had to call for help," Jake stated. "I know in my case, Miles was instrumental in helping us put Jai's adopted parents away for what they did to him."

"Your Patty there helped us rescue my father," another man stated. "My stepmother was the living embodiment of the evil stepmother. She'd been poisoning my father for years, making him practically a vegetable. Patty arranged for an ambulance for us and then life-flighted my father to a safe hospital until we could get him to New York. Now, my father is up and around walking and talking."

I glanced at Patrick through my eyelashes, smirking at the flush I could see in his cheeks. "You did that?"

"I didn't do that much," Patrick replied. "I just made a few arrangements for them. They did all the hard work."

Joe walked up with the man he had introduced to us a couple of days after moved in as his husband Jayce. The lab guy. Patrick had been right, he had a lot of questions, all of which I had been happy to answer.

"I told Patrick that we'd tell him a bit more about our unusual friends when we all got together," Joe said. "He was curious about Spencer and why we'd hang out with mobsters."

There was a light round of chuckles from just about every man there.

"They are actually not bad men in the grand scheme of things. I don't think they are doing anything a lot of other people aren't doing," Jake said. "They just do it on a bigger scale."

"They've cleaned up a lot of the drug scene in the city," Lucas added. "I know they are into other things, but I've not asked and they haven't volunteered, but—"

"I know Vinnie isn't involved in sex trafficking and neither is Alejandro," Jake stated. "Vinnie is disgusted by the very idea and Alejandro's husband would skin him alive if he even thought about doing something like that."

"I doubt Dmitri or King are involved in human trafficking either," Lucas said.

"They're not," Kyue stated. "After what happened to Eiji, Dmitri would never get involved in something like that and King is too busy setting up his other stuff to get involved."

I wanted to ask what had happened to this Eiji guy, but thought better of it considering I didn't know these men and I wasn't sure I wanted to. I preferred my shoes not to be made of cement.

"One way or another," Jake continued, "we've all been involved with them or needed their help when we had to straddle the line between good and evil. If there's information we need and we can't get it through regular channels, we go to them, same as they come to us. It evens out eventually."

"You should have seen the dust up we were involved with just a couple of months ago," Kyue explained. "The husband of one heads of the families in Italy got kidnapped here in New York. He was a really sweet guy that had been held a virtual prisoner by his mother for ten years before he escaped and married his husband. Once we learned he had been kidnapped, we all went to help rescue him."

"That's the first time I've ever met Hu," Lucas said. "Interesting guy."

"Hu?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"There are five families in New York, each one of them runs a different borough. Hu runs Staten Island."

"The husbands of all these guys have started hanging out at the Illumination Club once a month. It's owned and operated by Dmitri, who runs the Bronx."

"It's like a social club," Lucas said before tilting his head toward Kyue, frowning at him. "And my husband is a card carrying member."

Jake snorted as he glanced at Jai. "Mine, too."

"Is Hu married, too?" Patrick asked.

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