Page 8 of Daddy's Little Spy

4

“You want to do what?”

From her place at the breakfast table across from him, Amara stared at him, her mouth open in disbelief. To his right, at the head of the table, Emilio was watching him with a guarded expression.

“I want to marry her,” Benny repeated, cutting another slice of his bacon and avocado toast as if he hadn’t just dropped a huge bomb on his little family.

“You can’t marry her. She’s a cop,” Amara said, the emphasis in her voice clearly saying she thought he’d lost his mind.

And maybe he had. But he wasn’t going to let a little thing like potential insanity stop him from getting what he wanted. And what he wanted was Detective Diana Clarke, any way he could get her.

“So, what? We just scrap the whole plan because you have the hots for the enemy?” Scowling, Amara stabbed at the bowl of fruit Emilio had insisted she have with her breakfast.

“No,” Benny said evenly, the calm to her storm. “We’ll still box her in, just as we talked about. But instead of leveraging our fabricated evidence to turn her, we’ll use it to convince her to join the family. As a last resort, of course, if I can’t win her on my own.”

“Emilio, talk some sense into your lunatic cousin.”

Benny tensed but continued to methodically eat his breakfast as he waited for Emilio’s verdict. If the head of the family turned him down, there was little he could do about it. He’d have to kidnap the girl and disappear, which would make everything a lot messier than he preferred.

“You are sure about this?” Emilio asked at length.

“Yes.”

“All right then.” A slow grin spread across his cousin’s face. “What’s the plan?”

Amara threw her hands up in the air. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!”

Silence fell over the room, thick and foreboding. Then Emilio was out of his seat and Amara was bent over the table, her cries and protests echoing around the room as her husband peppered her ass with sharp, quick spanks.

“You know better than to speak to us that way, little girl,” Emilio lectured, lifting his voice slightly to be heard over the noise. When he was done, he pulled her up into his arms, rocking her slightly until she settled with a quiet sigh.

Tears glistened in Amara’s eyes when she was returned to her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said, her apology punctuated by a pitiful little sniffle. “I’m just worried.”

“I know, sweetheart.” Reaching across the table, Benny gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “And I appreciate your concern. But I can handle myself.”

“But she’s a cop, Benny. What makes you think you can win her over? She knows who you are, what you are.”

“Which is why we’ll still plant the evidence and make her look as dirty as possible. If she balks at the idea of marrying me, we’ll have boxed her in so she won’t have much choice.”

“And that’s really how you want to get a wife?” Scowling again, Amara speared another chunk of fruit.

“What can I say? Our family never does things the conventional way.” His wink was met with an exaggerated eye roll.

“You absolutely cannot kidnap her and hold her prisoner. That only worked for Emilio because I was already in love with the idiot.”

Emilio sighed heavily, but a faint smile played at his lips. “Sometimes I think you enjoy having a sore bottom all the time, piccolina.”

Recognizing the tone in Emilio’s voice, Benny pushed away from the table. “I’ll leave you two to enjoy the rest of your breakfast. I have a trap to set.”

* * *

Frowning at the numbers on her computer screen, Diana tried to make sense of what she was seeing. She’d pulled up her credit card statement with the intention of figuring out how much of her meager savings she needed to dish out in order to pay it off. But according to the figures staring back at her, the balance had been paid.

The mysterious payment nagged at her while she went through her pre-work ritual. There were, to her way of thinking, two possible options.

Option one seemed the least likely: Some kind of computer glitch which had managed to post a payment for exactly the amount due on her account. Just a weird coincidence.

She didn’t trust coincidences.

---