Page 34 of Bad Little Bride

He’s not looking for an answer and he doesn’t get one.

I pull my phone out, sending a quick message, and not two minutes later, the second person I trust with my life walks in.

“Mr. Fikile.” She bows her head, bringing her eyes to mine.

“Boston isn’t to leave the grounds if I’m not with her.”

Her lips tighten, concern for my bride hidden in her aged eyes, but she only asks, “For how long this time, sir?”

“As long as it takes him to find someone he’s willing to allow to babysit her without him watching their every move.”

I shoot Mino a look as he chuckles.

“I see.” The woman who raised my sister when she didn’t have to fights a smile. “So…indefinitely then.”

Mino throws his head back with a laugh and I don’t miss hers as she spins on her heel and walks out.

This time around with Boston here is different than the last. When she had first arrived so many months ago, I was in the middle of a small war, one I couldn’t allow the rest of the West Coast underground to find out about. That meant I had to hide from my then bride-to-be, keep her concealed. It was the only way she’d be safe. Of course, that turned her against me, and locking her away now won’t help my case any, but she will come to understand. I’ll make her. And if I’m but one thing, it’s convincing.

Sighing, I drop down into the seat behind my desk with a glare.

If I’m honest, these two are not wrong.

I’m not sure there’s a man on this planet I’d trust with her. Even if I found one, I don’t think I’d assign him to her.

The fact of the matter is I don’t want a man who isn’t me spending time with my bride, and yes, being her driver counts. I realize this is a problem, but I don’t care.

She’s mine, and if there’s one man she’s going to spend her time with, it’s going to be me.

Chapter

Nine

Boston

The dayI found my mother dead in her bed is one I’ll never forget.

I’ll forever carry with me the way her cold, pale-blue body looked when I tore the covers back.

The first thing I did was look for blood; my mind already trained to seek out a weeping wound at the small age of eight. God knows, I’d witnessed my father returning home covered in it enough times to be able to determine if it was by injury…or infliction. Ninety-nine percent of the time it was the latter.

My father isverygood at his job.

Enzo might be better.

The thought irritates me, probably because it’s true. He wouldn’t be the youngest, and only man to take his businesses into multiple districts on his own, creating a brand-new empire like no other can claim to have—a man employed by not just those from one, but multiple districts at once, and in record time too—if he weren’t.

He wouldn’t have been able to show up in Revenaw territory, kidnap and take me back to his, if he weren’t. And he sure as hell wouldn’t have been able to hide the fact that he already had a wife from the tech team my father put on him after I confessed what I’d done—became the fiancée of Enzo Fikile without his permission.

My father would have put him in the ground for the insult alone. He would have been considered the threat we’d already seen him as, only this time with a giant, treacherous target pointed across every inch of his skull at a 360-degree angle.

He married someone and then tossed her aside for someone else.

Me.

The truth is as clear as the crystals lining the living room.

I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, promise be damned.

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