Page 10 of Syndicate of Sin Bundle

My breathing hitched. “I’m marrying Ben,” I gritted out.

But I couldn’t help but feel the ache between my legs, driving me higher and higher, wild even. This isn’t okay. This isn’t okay. This definitely isn’t okay.

Cristian chuckled and trailed his fingers across my waist like he owned me. “A man who has no money to his name. A man who continues to pile up gambling debt. A man who has taken money from your joint account and will force you to pay up.”

I pressed my lips together, chest tightening. “You’re lying.”

“You’re in debt,” Cristian said, making sure the words hit hard.

“Not anymore,” I said.

I had been working my ass off to get us out of the thousands of dollars of Ben’s debt. When we had started dating, he had been nothing but a nobody with debt he told me his family had put him through. Sure, he went out a couple of nights a week to play poker with some of his friends, but …

He was lying. Cristian had to be lying.

Ben had been helping me, told me he stopped going out with the guys a year ago. He couldn’t fucking be back to doing it. I didn’t believe it.

“Why don’t you check?” he asked me.

After giving him my best stink eye, I opened my bank app on my phone. It was the joint bank account we had opened up the first night we started talking about marriage. Ben dealt with the bills coming in and out of it, as he had more time and made more money than I did—or at least, that was what he had told me.

When I saw it, my heart dropped.

Nothing. There was nothing inside, except hundreds of messages popping up in a blaring red font about overdraft fees and a negative number—$103,761—due to the bank. To the fucking bank. I didn’t know how the hell he had overdrafted that much without the bank closing the account or when it had happened … but it was there, and it had my name on it too.

“No,” I whispered, my fingers trembling.

I placed my phone on his desk and shook my head. No, this couldn’t be true. We couldn’t be in this much debt. I had worked so hard—so fucking hard—to pull ourselves back out.

We were trapped.

Cristian stepped toward me, his breath on the back of my neck. “Say it, Roxie,” Cristian whispered into my ear, voice low and husky. “Tell me why you’re in my office this early if it isn’t because of last night.”

“I want you to let him out,” I pleaded with New York City’s cruelest man, most devious devil, and most seductive Mafia boss. I turned around and stared up into his hard and dead eyes. “Please, forgive his debt to you.”

It was our only way.

Cristian gazed at me, then grasped my chin in his hand, pushing me so hard against his desk that I was nearly sitting on it. This … this was the Mafia boss everyone was terrified of. This was the man who snapped at a moment’s notice.

“Why are you asking for forgiveness for him?” he asked through gritted teeth, drawing his thumb down my lips.

“Please, Cristian.”

That ache … that damn ache had reappeared.

“There’s one thing and one thing only I’d take to forgive his debt,” Cristian said, pressing me against the desk, one leg between my thighs, inching it higher and higher until it reached my core. He loomed over me, all that hard muscle brushing against my abdomen. “Ask me what it is.”

My heart raced in my chest, beads of sweat rolling down my back. “What is it?” I whispered, my voice on the verge of cracking and making me sound weak and tired and so fucking scared.

He chuckled in my ear, sending shivers down my back. “You, Roxie. It’s you.”

7

cristian

“Me?” Roxie whispered, her big brown eyes widening, as if she didn’t quite believe it. She crossed her arms over her chest and scratched the black tattoo on her collarbone. “You want me?”

My lips curved into a smirk, and I ground my knee against her core, watching how her eyes flickered down to it and feeling her thighs press together around mine. I brushed my thumb across her jaw.

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