Page 25 of Married into the Mob
Mafia bonding with blood was movie magic, but mating one another would put a ring of safety around Odell.
I nodded and told my mate to close his eyes. Making sure his aunt couldn’t see my wolf’s claw, I gently scarred the surface of his hand. His eyes snapped open, and he examined the mark. Gouging my palm with his nail, we pressed our bloodied flesh together.
We were mated.
“Get me out of here.”
TEN
ODELL
“What about that apartment you stayed in, Matt?” Ranger spoke to his husband.
“I’ll see if the guy’s away.” Matt sent a message, and moments later when it dinged, he said he was.
“The one you stayed in when you were pretending to be someone else,” Flint chipped in.
Tony piped up. “And going undercover with one of the most vicious mafia organizations in the country whose Alpha died a watery death.”
Aunt Louisa squeaked and shuffled to my side. Uncle Stan was either asleep or too ashamed to show his face.
I put my head in my hands. This family. They were too much, especially when we were breathing in the same air. I put a hand in front of my mouth and smelled my breath. I read somewhere once that every time we breathed in, we took in air that Julius Caesar had breathed. So in this confined space, the air that I’d just taken inside me was what these people had had inside them.
They loved one another and they were kind to me—the omegas, anyway—but they were so different to anyone I’d ever met. Maybe in another place, another time, we might meet upand share a meal and a glass of wine. We could swap stories of everyday life, not ones about them all killing one another. And the worst part about it? None of them appeared bothered by it all.
“How about we take this conversation elsewhere?” Hunter jerked his head to a closed door, the room with the monitors.
The two older brothers agreed, and I scuttled in after them. Rudy took a protesting Aunt Louisa to a sofa, and Arnie offered her a juice.
“That might be a good place to stash Odell. That apartment,” Hunter said.
The tiny knot of anger that had been giving me a bellyache since Uncle’s bombshell last night ballooned. But I wasn’t going to collapse and play the victim. They’d made me one of them, and no way was I going to be killed and rolled up in a carpet until they found somewhere to dump my body.
“Look, I’m part of this family now whether you like it or not.” I held up the piece of paper we’d signed and Stefan had stamped. The marriage probably wasn’t legal until he returned to the office and filed it, but I had something this family considered more powerful.
I showed them my hand. “Just like yours.” I waited, expecting them to hold up their scars, but they shared glances at one another, and Flint spoke up.
“Some of us have their marks on our chest or shoulders.”
Did they get naked to perform the ritual? I should be thankful that it wasn't required of me.
Ranger added, “Tony doesn’t have one, but Matt does.” He showed me his palm. “Just like me and you and Hunter.”
These guys were making my head spin. “No matter. I have the mark now, so I’m one of you, and no one is going to stash my body in some apartment.” I wagged my bloodied hand. “No stashing.”
Hunter approached me, holding up his scarred hand too. “I used that word to describe keeping you safe. You know, like stashing a pirate’s treasure in a cave.” His eyes glazed over, and I was convinced he was envisioning himself in a three-corner hat and an eyepatch.
“Maybe not the best comparison, Bro.” Ranger was making a face while we moved into the main room.
“Are you sure you won’t stay, Odell dear?” Rudy was a sweetheart, though he’d given birth to these three. They were agents of chaos to say the least.
But there was something about my now husband that had two conflicting emotions rearing up. One, I wanted to throttle him so his brains rattled around his head and his teeth fell out. The other… I couldn’t explain, but him making my hand bleed had me yearning to know his every thought, to claw at his clothes, to see what was in his heart.
It was silly, and maybe the reduced oxygen to my brain was causing me to lose it, not that the air in this underground bunker wasn’t crispy clean.
“No.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “We need to leave now.”
“Stefan, if Draven is threatening you, I think you should stay,” Hunter said.
