Page 27 of Convenient Mafia Vows

And what do I do about Kyle? Ruthless mafia boss—I’ll take on the likes of Don Dragonetti and his nutjob daughter any day of the week. But when it comes to my family, I will literally do whatever it takes to protect them.

Kyle might be my big brother, but I’ve always been his protector. His mentor. His wing man and buddy. He had asthma as a little kid, and it used to melt my heart seeing him reach for his inhalers whenever our father started kicking off at our mom for his dinner not being ready when he came home, or for leaving toys lying around the house, or giving one of his own sons the last cookie in the jar.

Our dad’s anger issues affected Kyle more than it affected the rest of us. Cash and Bash were too young to understand. Mom would bundle them into their bedroom and close the door, telling them it was a game of sleeping lions and the first oneto make a sound was the loser. I was too busy shielding Kyle to let anxiety take hold. But when he hurt Mom real bad, I stood guard over Kyle, a bread knife in my hand, and waited for the paramedics to arrive, muttering the entire time, “Touch my brother and I’ll kill you.”

It was an easy role to step into. It’s almost like it’s what I was born to do.

Kyle withdrew into a shell. For a while there, when Mom was out of the hospital and struggling to keep a roof over our heads, his asthma got worse. I’d sit up at night watching him breathe, waiting for his chest to go concave with the effort of filling his lungs, knowing that was the time to get him medical help. At school, the other kids would pick on him because he didn’t fight back, and that made me see red. Literally.

The teachers told Mom I had anger management issues, and I know now that she was scared I had too much of my dad in me. I got into fights every day, until the bigger kids realized that they always came off worse. I got a rep in middle school for being a scrapper. But kids started treating me with respect, keeping their distance, trying to be my friend, and backing off when they understood that it was me and my brothers, and no one else was welcome.

Then, when Mom met Terry, he recognized in me the same qualities his own parents had seen in him. Terry, despite being a mafia mobster, took me under his wing. He nurtured me, gave the anger an outlet, something to focus on, a direction, and it became the unspoken legacy that someday, I would take over from him.

Which is why it still grips my heart and squeezes until I can hardly breathe, that the one time Kyle needed me, I wasn’t there for him.

After, he was obsessed with finding out what had happened to the girl in the car with him. Almost as obsessed as I was about finding Sandy. I scoured the media for the story of the dead woman pulled from a burning car wreck, and when I found nothing, I assumed it had been a cover up. That was the world we lived in—that kind of shit happened all the time.

But what if Sienna was that woman, and I just happened to have fake-married her best friend? How would Kyle feel about it? Should I tell him now or get all the information about Sienna first?

Kyle’s mental health is stable now. Two years of therapy has taught him to deal with his obsessive survivor guilt—do I really want to undo all that hard work and plunge him straight back into all those scary emotions? Kyle with asthma is one thing, but Kyle locked inside his own head is quite another.

I’ve answered my own question.

And then there’s Victoria.Vicky. She believes that the guy Sienna was with that night was an asshole who saved his own skin and left her to die. She has lived with that belief for five years; I’m not going to change her mind overnight. Probably best to let her meet Kyle, find out for herself that he’s one of life’s nice guys without any external influence before trying to convince her that he’s not the asshole she thinks he is.

Besides, this is only temporary. We pretend to be in love until we get Don Dragonetti and his psycho daughter off our backs, and then life goes back to normal. With or without Sandy.

So why can I still feel Victoria’s body pressed up against mine? The swell of her breasts squashed up against my chest. Her hair in my fist. Her breath on my cheek.

I go to my desk and buzz through to Lauren. “Any update on Mason Callahan?”

Pause. I can almost hear her counting to three rapidly in her head and pasting a small smile onto her face before she responds. “Nothing yet.”

“Double the resources. Triple them if you have to. I want him found.”

Cash, Bash—short for Bastien—and Terry join me and Kyle in my brother’s boardroom on the floor below my office in the Wraith.

Cash and Bash are identical twins—they have the same sandy hair, same gray-blue eyes, same features, but stand them next to one another in identical black suits, and the differences are immediately obvious. Cash’s aura is dark where Bash’s is light. Cash is the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley in the Bronx at night. His eyes are constantly seeking danger, a creature of the night, a feral animal on the prowl. While Bash’s eyes are bright and honest, his smile is just casually there for everyone he meets.

Demon and angel.

Two halves of one whole.

Many people have made the mistake of underestimating Bash’s ruthlessness when it comes to business, while others have steered clear of Cash, assuming incorrectly, that he’s the last person they should get involved with.

“This contract needs to be watertight,” Kyle says. “If the don gets a hint of this being anything less than all-singing, all-dancing, prince charming and fucking Cinderella happy-ever-after, you know what will happen.”

“Why don’t we just set Olivia up with someone who’ll keep her in her place?” Cash downs a shot of whisky and refills his glass. My brother has liquor in his veins instead of blood.

“Got any suggestions?” Kyle sips his own iced water.

“Sure.” Cash shrugs. “Ivan Petrov. He was dating the model whose ex tried to set fire to her. He’s been lying low since he obliterated the slimeball ex from the face of the earth. There were tenuous links to the fucking president, and the family turned him into a shadow to prevent world war fucking three, but he’s back now. No way Olivia Dragonetti would mess with him.”

“I can arrange an introduction,” Bash offers.

“Sounds good to me.” Cash downs a second drink and goes to stand up.

“Okay, boys.” Terry waves a hand in a downward motion to settle them down. “You’ve had your fun. Don Dragonetti links this back to us when it all goes horribly wrong and we might as well pack up now, last one to leave the building, switch off the lights.”

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