Page 46 of With This Ring

“Easy.”

Shortly after Kai gives Percy instructions, we head to the grocery store—after we both call for more men to watch out for us. Neither of us are idiots. We know there’s trouble lurking and we don’t want to put ourselves into unnecessary danger. Kai already has extra guards patrolling his work site and seated in his lobby.

But shopping goes off without a hitch, Kai grabbing everything we need for dinner. I watch and catalog the ingredients he grabs, not wanting to forget a thing.

Once home, Kai takes off his suit jacket, rolls up his sleeves, washes his hands and gets started. Every step of the way, he tells me what he’s doing. He makes the sauce from scratch, something I didn’t think anyone but chef’s knew how to do.

“After you have everything layered,” he says, adding the mixture of sauce, ground beef and cheese to the pan of lasagna noodles, “you pop it in the oven and let it bake for forty-five minutes.”

He turns to me with a free and open smile and he shifts from pretty to fucking beautiful. This is Kai, happy and in his element. If I thought he loved drawing plans for the casino, it’s nothing compared to how he looks now. Fucking dazzling.

“You’re good at so much shit. How did I not know?” I ask, cleaning up the mess we made.

“I’m not. Not really.” I don’t miss the hint of dismissal in his tone, like he’s used to downplaying his achievements.

I stop cleaning the counter and turn to him. I grab his wrist before he can walk away. He comes easily, leaning against me. I push his hair back, kissing his hair when he ducks his head.

Placing my fingers under his chin, I lift his head until he’s looking at me. “You’re good at a lot of shit, Kai. You may not know everything about me, but you know I don’t lie. All that shitCharlie put in your head? Forget it. None of it is true. You’re brilliant, baby.”

I can tell he doesn’t believe me, but I’ll spend as long as necessary hyping him up until he does.

When the lasagna is ready, we dig in. I can’t stop the groan that escapes my throat. “Fucking fuck, Kai. This is amazing.”

His shy, but smug smile is everything I need.

CHAPTER 16

CARTER

The past week with Kai showed me new sides of him. He smiled more freely, laughed louder, and spoke as if we never hated each other. I’ve learned a lot about him, besides his love of knifing people and how good a cook he is.

Kai likes to read. Not like romance or fantasy books. But a lot of nonfiction. Books of war and the military, training his mind to think differently than any other mafia member I’ve ever met. He also likes dogs. It caught me by surprise that he liked animals at all.

“French bulldog,” he told me when I asked what his favorite breed was.

I wrinkled my nose as I tried to scoop some filling into the ravioli that was our project for the day. “Why?”

“They’re cute,” he said with a shrug as he helped me out.

We talked like we were a normal married couple, not two men forced together to keep our families alive. He’s nothing I expected but everything I wanted.

I always wanted what my mom and dad had, their easy love and acceptance, as well as someone that knew the game and how dangerous it was to be with someone like me.

With Kai, I have that. Not the love bit since he’s just getting past his dislike for me outside of when my dick is in him. But the other stuff. The acceptable understanding of what my life is like.

I have no illusions that we’re safe, that no danger exists for us right now. But we’re in the bubble where all is calm, and I want to relax before shit hits the fan.

My theater room is mostly unused, since I’m either at work, with Dad and Declan, or in my home office working on casino and family business. I had it built because I thought I’d have some downtime, but there’s hardly been a time that I could use it. With so many of our guys on security, walking around my house like I’m fucking Jon Gotti or something—I had more men patrol since Kai’s attack just in case the guys who put him in the hospital were affiliated—I figured I had some time to catch a movie.

I click through the channels, trying to find something that will take my mind off all the shit that’s going on around me. Something that will silence my reality and pull me into something that’s so far-fetched that I wouldn’t have a hope of it being real.

A movie adaptation from a book that was released a few years ago catches my attention. It has just enough action to keep my attention. I settle in with my feet on the table and popcorn in a bowl beside me.

A presence at my back makes my scalp prickle and my nerves dance with awareness. Only one person pulls that reaction from me.

When he makes no move to enter the room, I turn my head slightly, still watching the movie—the female lead is standing in front of a target and the male lead is throwing knives at her for fucks sake—and say, “You can join me, but don’t eat all my popcorn.”

“Mighty rich, you telling someone not to eat your food,” Kai says as he steps into the room.

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