Page 8 of Bloody Vows
It will mean more responsibility, yes. More to worry about, more politics, more business, more weight on my shoulders. But it also means that power that I’ve craved. It means carving out a part of this world for myself, making it mine.
And I’m more than fine with marrying this woman, if that’s what I get. If I get all that money, all that territory, all that power, and her.
It’s a pretty fucking good deal.
Simone’s attention snaps back to me. “Why would you want to marry someone who’s being forced into it?” she hisses. “Don’t you want to marry a wife who actually wants you?”
I chuckle. I like her fire. I’ll enjoy finding out how long I can play with her before she lashes out and burns me. “You’ll want me,” I tell her with utter confidence. “I’ve never met a woman who doesn’t.”
“Well now you have,” she snaps back, her gaze turning the slightest bit uncertain, as if she doesn’t know whether to continue attacking me or turn her attention back to Konstantin.
I doubt that, very much. It’s clear that she hates me, and I can’t blame her for that. But I saw the way her gaze slid over me earlier, taking me in. I’ve seen the slight hitch in her breath when she looks at me, the way her throat moves, and her eyes change when I speak to her, when we spar. She doesn’t want to be, but some part of her is aroused by me.
I intend to exploit that part to its fullest.
“Besides,” I continue, a smirk at the corners of my mouth. “It doesn’t matter if I want you, Simone. I want your territory. I intend to claim your father’s territory as mine. You’re simply the necessary key. A little insertion, and—” I wink at her, and she looks like she wants to spit in my face.
“For your allegory to be the euphemism you want it to be, I’d have to be the lock andyouthe key,” she spits out, and I laugh.
“Then you agree, I’ll be inside you before too much longer.”
She lets out a hiss of breath, like a cat that’s been pissed off, and looks back at Konstantin. “There’s got to be something else. You can’t expect me to?—”
Konstantin sighs. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours to decide, Simone. I’ll leave you to it. If you don’t agree to sign the papers to marry Tristan by this time tomorrow evening, I’ll be forced to end your life and claim the territory through other means.” His voice is flat, even, and I wonder if he really means it, or if he’s bluffing. I know Konstantin to be a man who hates bloodshed and would balk at killing a woman, but maybe Giovanni Russo’s machinations changed him. Maybe he’s just tired of all of this and intends to finish it, one way or another.
Regardless, I’m well aware that I need to be careful with my new ally. Konstantin is a dangerous man, and I have no desire to cross him.
“Tristan.” Konstantin looks at me. “Let’s leave Miss Russo to her thoughts, and go talk to your father.”
Truthfully, I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here and talk to Simone, to throw her barbs back at her, feel my blood heat every time she snaps back at me. I want to stalk across the room and back her against that bookshelf, to see the way the look in her eyes changes when I’m that close to her.
I don’t want her to need twenty-four hours to decide. I want her to say that she’s minenow, to hear that word out of that pretty, full mouth.
Instead, I follow Konstantin out of the office. I didn’t get this far by not knowing how to pick my battles. And I’m more interested in the war—the one that I’m sure I’ll be waging with Simone, very soon.
I can’t wait to trade verbal blows with her again.
My father is still waiting in the living room when we return. I see him look at Konstantin, as if calculating how angry Konstantin is at my interruption, and I see his shoulders soften slightly when he realizes that things are fine. “She agreed?” he asks, and Konstantin shakes his head.
“I gave her a twenty-four-hour ultimatum. Marriage or death.”
Finnegan’s eyebrows rise. “You’ll go through with it?”
Konstantin lets out a heavy breath, the only concession I’ve seen, so far, to the fact that I know he doesn’t want to kill Simone. “If I have to, yes. But she’ll cave,” he says flatly. “Marriage isn’t a fate worse than death.”
“She might think differently,” I cut in. “I want her, Konstantin. Shewillsay yes to me.”
Konstantin nods, but I see my father’s gaze cut in my direction.
“The woman isn’t what you should be focusing on, Tristan. Focus on the empire that comes with her. Money. Territory. Power. We should be discussing how to handle all of that?—”
Finnegan O'Malley is a hard man, forged by decades of violence and betrayal in Boston's underworld. He built our family's empire from nothing, clawed his way to the top of the Irish mob through intelligence and brutality in equal measure. He's taught me everything I know about power, about control, about what it takes to survive in our world.
He’d never let desire for a woman take precedence over the lust for money. And I don’t intend to, either.
But I also don’t intend to take the Russo empire without the Russo daughter. Now that I’ve seen her, I’m convinced I need her to be mine.
"She's a means to an end, son," Finnegan says, looking at me sternly. "A beautiful means, I'll give you that, but still just a tool to get what we want."
