Page 3 of The Marriage Debt

That’s been more frequent lately thanks to my younger brother's stupidity.

"Sir," Rafe says, sighing. He sits across from me sipping wine from his glass while he watches me agonize over the filings. "We'll just fix it the way we always do." He speaks in gestures, hand bobbing, wine sloshing. Rafe is a wise man, good heart, good aim. But he knows so little about the Varos and their means.

"It won’t work this time." Scowling at the court documents, I breathe in a deep lungful of air, sitting back in my desk chair to let the cold realization sink in. "And we are not giving up the boy."

"Then what?" His glass empty, he sets it on the corner of the desk as I turn and stand, walking to the windows.

Rain is the perfect weather for a funeral, and Anton's service was more emotional and touching than it should have been. He was a moron—half-baked ideas schemed up too haphazardly and executed in horrible fashion. It's no wonder they emptied his bank accounts in the Caymans two days before they offed him. He was reckless, hasty.

Not me.

"Then we bring her and the boy here." I slide my hands into my pockets and stand by the window looking through the drapes, parted down the center so I can see the blur of lights over the back garden through the droplets pattering on the windowpane. Cleaning up my brother's mess is the last thing I want to be doing.

"Mateo, I hardly think she's just going to climb into your car and go along for the ride. That boy is everything to her. You've seen it with your own eyes." I don’t have to look at Rafe to know he's scowling. There aren't many times that he challenges me, not many of my plans he questions. But he's right to question this.

Lila isn't a fool. She's lived with the plague of organized crime long enough to know how this family works. I'll be shocked if she hasn't gotten a ride out of Rome by now. That tiny dump in Trastevere can't keep her here. She will yearn for freedom from this life. A freedom she'll never have.

"Then you'll convince her," I say, turning to look him in the eye. "The Bianchis won't stop to consider that she has nothing to do with Anton's mistakes."

"So, you want to protect her?" Rafe shifts in his seat and sits forward. The gleam in his eye, menacing, almost mocking, tries my patience.

"The boy is my concern." I stalk back over to the desk and open the top drawer. I assumed three days ago after making the plans for my brother’s funeral and subsequent cremation that his widow would try to run. I have a contingency in place if that happens, but I don't want to have to use it. Reaching into the drawer, I pull out the certificate I've had made, and I slide it across the desk at him.

"What's this?" Rafe asks, plucking the slip of paper from the desk.

"A marriage certificate, signed by myself and Ms. Varo." His eyes rise to meet mine. "And you're going to see to it that she is here in this home by day's end so that by first thing in the morning when the judge arrives to cement this arrangement, we'll have a bride."

Rafe breathes heavily and tosses the paper to the desk. "But why her? Why not take the boy and be done with it?"

Rafe understands the urgency of things, why it's important for me to have Lev Rossi, to have him under my roof. He alone will carry on our name, and without him my father's legacy will die. Lila truly is of little concern to me, but to Lev she is everything, and a soldier who is any good at anything has had a good upbringing.

"I don't want to raise him. I just want him here." Taking the paper, I slide it back into my drawer and eye the court documents again. "If he isn't under our control, the Varos will steal him away from her. She can't fight them, Rafe. She hasn't the means or the resources. And if the boy is with her, they will take him."

"So you are going to force her to marry you so when they come after her, you can defend them both?" He shakes his head. "Seems like a lot of fuss over a boy. Just take him."

"And risk his turning against us when he's older? Thinking his own family is the enemy? No," I say bluntly. "He is my blood. He belongs to me. My brother has left this life and all that was his is mine, including his son." I press a finger into the top of the court documents and lean over my desk. "Bring me the boy and his mother."

"Yeah, okay…" Rafe stands, glancing at the bottle of wine, and nods at me as he smooths his tie down his chest. "And if she fights me?"

"Just get her here. I'll deal with her then." I straighten and return my hands to my pockets. "And move quickly. Something tells me if Anton really was fucking with the Bianchi Family, they won't be pressing pause. They'll be at her door tonight, coming after the money they think she has."

Her family cut her off a long time ago, which is why it's shocking for them to want her son, but I'll beat them to the chase. Lev is the only real family I have left. I have brothers in arms and men who swore a blood oath, but my DNA is crisp in his veins, speaking to the ends of the Earth that he is a Rossi, and no one will have the privilege of raising that boy but me.

Only over my dead body.

3

LILA

Lev is sleeping, tucked into bed only a few minutes ago, and I curl up on the couch with my novel and a cup of tea. I suppose if I were a real wife I'd be in bed sobbing, letting the nanny tend to my child while I self-isolate and loathe the life I've been given.

But I'm not a normal wife.

I'm a Mafia wife—or widow.

And I don't miss him. Not the stench of his alcohol or the sound of his boots clomping on the hallway floor. Not even the way he'd pin me down and fuck me, trying to knock me up. He doesn't know I got on birth control a long time ago, though that stopped a few months back when he got more interested in his latest slut than me. No point taking injections when sex is a thing of the past, right?

My hand shakes a little as I set the teacup on the end table and pull the white throw off the back of the couch across my legs. Anton hated when I'd sit around and read, so I think it's appropriate to indulge myself on the day of his funeral by diving into a new crime thriller, though guilt does needle at my conscience.

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