Page 63 of Desperate Desires

Marriage was something I hadn’t thought a lot about until I met this woman, and the second I got the idea in my head to give her my name, well, it just turned into a done deal.

There was nothing else to do but make her mine in every way, and that included offering the protection of my name, my money, my influence, my body.

Fuck, I would do anything to keep her safe.

The puppet master behind Freddy and the D’Amato boys was still unknown, but the threats I mentioned were real.

One of the trucking companies I owned had been hit last night.

The retirement home where my Uncle Al lived also had some unusual activity, a fire in the kitchens that caused all the elderly residents to be shuffled outside in the cold for hours late last night.

And there was one more threat.

One more thing I hadn’t yet told the beautiful doctor.

After I left her apartment, but before the men I’d assigned to watch it arrived, someone had broken in and trashed the place.

Then the parking lot where she kept her Land Rover had been vandalized. Several cars were hit, including hers.

Mostly hers.

I fisted my hands at the filthy fucking slander they’d painted across her car’s doors before slashing the tires and busting the windows. Using words like whore and bitch to describe my perfect Michelle was just the kind of thing to make a monster of a man like me.

My team was on it, and just because I figured they’d want to know, I called Sammy and Jr. and told them what was happening.

The problem was, I’d never been serious about a woman before, so I didn’t know how she would react to all this.

I was serious about Michelle, though. And this threat to her, well, it had my blood boiling.

Sure, I wanted to woo her, to take my time, but that was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

If anything were to happen to her—no, I couldn’t even allow myself to entertain the thought.

I’d done bad things in my life, but if a single hair on her pretty head was hurt, I would do worse, far worse than anything I’d ever done.

I would do terrible fucking things to avenge her.

Dark things.

I tried to distance myself from the mob before I even knew her, but it was proving more difficult than I thought.

The fact was, despite my name and my family’s history, the criminal underworld held no interest for me.

But there were some who couldn’t understand that.

They thought I was a traitor. Figured I was singing to some government agency, giving them up. Even worse, those motherfuckers thought I owed them.

Like they were entitled to one single fucking cent that came from Bottarelli World Imports.

They didn’t realize it was their own sloppiness and lack of foresight that stunted their financial growth and got them caught up with the feds.

It wasn’t me.

I had no beef with any of them.

At least, not until they attacked me. But now they had my full attention.

They dared to threaten what was mine, and Michelle was inarguably mine.

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