Page 23 of Caught By the Kingpin
“You look positively murderous,” he teases. “Do I need to dig him up so you can kill him again?”
I slap Marco’s chest lightly, pouting. “Yes. We’ll do it annually.”
His chin tips up and he gives a growling purr. It’s only then I realise what I’ve said. I’ve implied we’ll be together. For years.
A sign for Carlisle flashes past.
That’s close to Scotland, isn’t it?
Oh no. No no no no no.
My tummy goes heavy, like I’ve eaten too much uncooked cake mixture. This is worse than getting salmonella poisoning. I cling to Marco.
“It won’t be like that for our kids,” he murmurs as he strokes my hair. “They’ll have a good dad, I promise.”
My eyes are hot and dry. I should just accept whatever happens. But I can’t. I’m done with letting anyone determine my fate. I dig my nails into my palm as I look into his face.
“What’s going on? What’s the plan when we get to Scotland?” See, I can be brave.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He quirks one eyebrow up, those blue eyes like the reflection of a blue-sky white water.
“No!” I’m brittle, caramelised sugar breaking into pieces as it cools. Stretched and changed by being with this man, I can’t return to my original state of boring white granules of sweetness after being sinuously bent and heated.
These conflicted signals from him. First he says I’m his and makes me come so hard I nearly cracked a tooth, then he’s taking me to Scotland. “What is all this for?”
He smooths his thumb over my lips. “We’re going to Gretna Green.”
I have definitely misheard. I’m losing my mind, because I could swear he just said we’re going to Gretna Green.
“Why?” I croak.
“You want to be married, correct?”
How does he know that? I look away, out of the window. I can’t bear for him to see how much I need this, because this is a cruel joke. I must be. The entirety of what I want does not just appear. That happens to… I dunno. No one. Girls in Regency romances, maybe. Or dogs, because all they want is a squeaky toy and a bowl of dog biscuits.
People like me don’t get handsome men who adore and want to marry them. Green fields blur past and dappled light shines through the trees in their summer finery.
Marco grasps my chin uncompromisingly, hard enough to hurt, and forces it up so I have to meet his eyes.
“I know about what happened between your parents. How she fell for him and he abused that love. How he used her, and never married her, didn’t give her the respect she deserved.”
“How—”
“It’s my business to make you happy, cara. That means I had to know about you. My entire team worked on OperationWife. Paulo nearly gave the game away,” he adds wryly. “Whisky, indeed. I know you didn’t get the recognition a mafia princess should, or the love. And all that ends today. As my wife, you’ll have everything.”
The shock is biting into a plain cupcake and finding delicious lemon curd filling. He knows all this—that I was unwanted and unnamed—and his answer is to give me his surname. Marriage. As clear a commitment as I could ask for.
“I can’t bring back your mother.” He shakes his head regretfully, not saying what we both know. She’s dead. If she wasn’t, she’d have come for me. “Your father was a petty, insecure, cruel man who couldn’t cope with a woman who challenged him as your mother did. I could have stopped Westminster from murdering him, but I think he deserved it.”
“I do too,” I whisper.
My heart throbs. There’s just one question I have to know the answer to before I say anything about marriage. “Was it you?”
11
MARCO
It depends what she means.
