Page 17 of Bound By Her Mafia Bosses

“He kept the truth from us, honey. I need to decide how I feel about that. If I can’t trust Zan, how can I be in this relationship with you?”

“Are you saying that you’re willing to give up Jules because I didn’t admit that I was a stupid kid? Don’t do it, man,” Zan said. He could tell that this was something more for Lucky, but he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. Being a part of a mafia family was never easy, but Lucky had the same last name as the family, and that made him a target. He had to learn to kill or be killed and that had to be hard to live with—even for a man like Bruno Gallo who seemed to keep his feelings bottled up on the inside.

“I’m saying that I need some time. I’m going to get a room in town to do some thinking. I also need to reach out to Cola. I can’t deal with all this right now,” Lucky grabbed his jacket and shoes and made his way out of the room.

“We can’t let him leave,” Jules breathed. “He can’t leave without talking this out.” She got out of bed and ran after Lucky. Zan knew that she was going to come back empty-handed, and he’d be the one left picking up the pieces. He’d do it too because if he was being honest, this was his fault—all of it.

Zan listened as she ran down the hallway, trying to get Lucky to listen to reason. She begged him to stay; told him that he was making a huge mistake and even told him that he was being unreasonable. No one told Lucky that he was unreasonable usually because it ended up with him becoming completely unreasonable. And when he heard the front door open and slam shut, Zan knew that Jules was going to be returning to him in tears.

When she peaked into the room looking completely defeated, he couldn’t help but get out of bed and go to her. Zan pulled Jules into his arms and told her that everything was going to be all right, even though he might not be able to keep that promise to her. How the hell was he supposed to keep a promise that depended on Lucky coming back to them and talking things through? Lucky was a man of very few words and Zan knew that once Lucky was pissed at someone, he usually stayed that way for a damn long time.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“You should have told us the whole story, Zan,” Jules accused. “We both would have understood. But now, Lucky thinks that you lied intentionally, and he might not ever come back.”

“I’ll get him back,” Zan promised.

“How the hell are you going to do that?” she asked. “You know how stubborn that man is as well as I do.”

“I’m going to marry you and then, he’ll have no choice but to show up,” Zan insisted.

“Marry me? Are you out of your mind?” Jules asked. Maybe he was, but it was the only plan he could come up with.

“About two weeks after we got here, you were sleeping and Lucky and I were sitting in the family room, going over how things were going to work out between the three of us. I told him that if things did work out the way that we wanted, I thought that we should both marry you. And well, he told me that he was already thinking about it. He said that your brother is in a poly relationship and while we can’t both legally marry you, we can have a commitment ceremony and make sure that if anything happens to either of us, you’re taken care of.”

“While that’s very sweet, I don’t see how you marrying me will bring Lucky back to us,” Jules said.

“Because we agreed that he’d be the one to legally marry you. It’s only fair since he knew you first. The piece of paper making everything legal didn’t really matter to me, but it seemed to matter to Lucky. He won’t let me marry you. He’ll be back to stake his claim.”

“So, now I’m a claim to be staked?” she teased. “What if I don’t want to marry either of you?” she asked.

“Is that how you feel, Jules?” Zan asked.

“No, I want to marry you both, Zan,” she breathed. “But I hate that we’re doing this just to get Lucky back. I want to marry you both because that’s what you both want.”

“It is,” Zan promised. He wanted to marry Jules more than he wanted his next breath. “We just need to remind Lucky about what he wants.”

“I’m in,” Jules agreed. “How do we let him know that we’re getting married?” she asked.

“I think you need to call your brother and get him in on our plan. Lucky will take his phone call,” Zan said.

“I’ll call Gabe now and have him talk to Lucky. Once he fills him in on our plan, then what?” Jules asked.

“Then, we sit here and wait for Lucky to show back up. Next time, we won’t let him leave until we can talk some sense into him.”

* * *

One fucking week—that’s how long it had taken Lucky to man up, grow a set of balls and show back up to the cabin. Jules had gotten her brother in on their plan, and he called Lucky the day after he took off, wanting to give him some time to blow off some steam. Even if Jules did hate that expression, she agreed to the plan.

Zan never imagined that Lucky wouldn’t show back up at the cabin immediately after getting the news and demanding that Jules marry him instead. No, Lucky let their phone calls go unanswered and never returned any text messages for a whole week. He must have had a lot of steam to blow off if he was going to just let Zan marry Jules.

She peaked out the front window again and nervously reported back to him. “Lucky’s still sitting in his car. Do you think that he’s going to come in?” He wished he could answer that question, but he had no idea what Lucky was planning to do.

“No clue,” Zan drawled.

“Do you even care anymore?” Jules asked.

“I’m not sure,” Zan said. He was the one who had stayed behind and held Jules every night while she cried herself to sleep, asking how Lucky could just leave her. He thought that they had agreed to be in this relationship together, but Lucky had shown him that he might have had it all wrong this whole time.

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