Page 47 of All Jacked Up

I settled into the seat while he backed up, and we left the funeral home. Sure, I wanted to strip him naked and lick his body, but this was special. What we had. I didn’t want to lose it. If that meant I never got to experience him sexually, then I’dsurvive.

“Call the hotel and cancel your reservation.”

I swung my gaze over to him. “Why?”

“Because I can’t let you go stay at a fucking hotel while you deal with this shit. She might have been a terrible mother, but she was still your mother. You have to shut down and clean up the life she left behind, and you’re not going to go back to an empty hotel room at night after doing that all day. We’ve got an extra bedroom at the house you can stay in. Than moved out, and Halo turned it into a guest bedroom.”

Halo was married to Bane. He’d told me their story back when it unfolded. Although I’d never met her, I felt like I knew her already.

The death of Crosby had been so hard on all of them, but Halo came into their lives with a piece of Crosby left behind in the form of his unborn son. Then his older brother, who hated her and blamed her for his death, fell in love with her. Actually, Ransom had said Bane was so obsessed with her that he’d become a psycho. Which made me laugh. Ransom didn’t understand love. But then, did I? Sure, I’d written about it, and I enjoyed reading romance, but I’d never experienced it.

At least I didn’t think I had. If love was what I’d had with Arden, then it was sorely disappointing.

“I, uh … will they mind if I stay there? I don’t want to impose or anything.”

The idea of staying in a house with guys who had been gods when I was a teen was intimidating still. Even though we were older now and the popularity thing was no longer an issue in my head, they were still those boys, and I was still that girl.

“They won’t mind. Halo will love it. She always likes having other females in the house. Most of the time, it’s just a bunch of testosterone.”

Getting to see Ransom’s life, watch it up close, was tempting.But then the thought of escaping to a hotel, alone at night, and not having to be around other people also appealed to me. I wasn’t sure what to do.

“You can get that perplexed look off your face. I’m taking you to the house now. I’ll go get your rental car later.”

Sighing, I stared over at him. “This will change our dynamic, you know. We are texting pen-pals, and spending so much time together will make us more … more like real-world friends.”

He chuckled. “We’re already real-world friends, Shakespeare. Relax. It’ll be fine. Plus, we’ve got better food than the carry-out shit or room service you’d have had to eat there.”

“Won’t they all wonder how you know me? None of them will remember Noa Raines. Than was the only one I tutored other than you. And I doubt he knows my name. He wasn’t very focused on the assignments. Or were you planning on introducing me as my pen name and leaving out who I was?”

“I’ll tell them the truth. That you tutored me inRomeo and Julietand we’ve stayed in touch over the years.”

Okay. I could do this. They weren’t going to snicker at me or make fun of my glasses or braces. We were all adults. This would be fine.

“I also need to tell you a truth. One you might already know and just never asked me,” he said, glancing at me, then back at the road.

That had my complete attention.

“What?”

His shoulders lifted and fell as he took a deep breath and let it out. “Our families aren’t just in business together, and we aren’t just friends who live together.” He cut his eyes at me again. “We’re the Southern Mafia.”

Wait, what?Had I heard that correctly?

“Did you say Mafia?” I asked, almost feeling silly.

He nodded. “Yep, I did. Started in the early 1900s. Myfamily got involved in 1928 when my great-grandfather, Awbrey Carver, began running illegal gambling rings and handling the bootlegging side of the business. Every Carver male since has remained in the family, which is what we refer to it as.”

Holy freaking shit. He was serious.

“Uh, okay,” I replied, needing to say something. “What do you do now?”

Because I was under the impression that the Mafia was organized crime. The Carvers, along with the other families they were connected to, were wealthy, powerful families—

Ohhh … damn. That made sense.

He shrugged. “We all play a part. Ours is the distillery. It’s a legit business, but there are some things that aren’t legal running through it.” He came to a stop at a traffic light. “We don’t tell just anyone this. Close friends. That’s it. You’re as close as a friend as I have outside the family. And there are things about the house that would alert you to the fact we aren’t your normal bunch of guys living in a house with a married couple and a toddler. I also know I can trust you.”

They had a toddler living in a house with the Mafia. But his dad was one. Both his dads. The one alive and the one dead. Was that why Crosby had been shot? Had that been Mafia-related? Could Ransom be in danger like that?

---