Page 49 of Of Desire And Deception

He sighed again and looked out the window contemplatively. “I’m not going to forbid you from marrying her. But I have to think about the family, and I can’t have a stranger getting close without looking into her first. You understand.”

“I do.” That had been easier than I’d expected. It wasn’t exactly a resounding blessing from my brother and the Don of the Neretti Family, but it was better than nothing. “I can look into her.”

He held up a hand. “No, I’ll assign somebody the task. You’re already too close to her. Do you think you could remain completely objective?”

I considered that. “Likely not.”

“Then you’ll stay out of it. I’ll put one of the tech guys on it.” Dante tapped out a message on his phone and turned back to me with the shadow of a smile. “So when’s the wedding?”

“I don’t know yet. Soon, I guess.” I shifted in my seat. “I’ll have to discuss it with Wynn.”

Dante’s jaw dropped again, and I held back a smile. “You haven’t asked her to marry you yet?”

“I’m working on it.” By that, I meant I’d decided to make her my wife. I hadn’t thought past that, but I would get around to it. “I figure I’ll give her a couple of weeks. Do all the wooing shit Niccolò talked about.”

“Niccolò knows about this?” He frowned.

I’d upset him, but I wasn’t sure why. “I told him about the date because I needed to know what to do with her.”

“And you didn’t feel you could come to me?”

Oh, that was it. He felt left out. “It wasn’t that. I needed to call him, anyway.”

It wasn’t a lie. I would have called my twin regardless of the date. My other brothers wouldn’t understand the connection I had with Niccolò.

“Right.” Dante shrugged it off. “In the future, maybe run major life decisions that could impact the family by me before taking the leap.”

“I thought that’s what I was doing right now,” I answered flatly. Dante rarely questioned me, other than expressing concern about the level of carnage I occasionally created.

He stood abruptly and paced behind his desk before turning to face me again. “Yeah, you are. I’m just a bit in shock.”

“Understandable.” I rose from my chair and straightened my jacket.

“You. Married.”

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t have to say it like that. Is it so unbelievable?”

“Yes,” Dante answered without hesitation. “Given you’ve never shown any interest in a long-term relationship, let alone matrimony.”

“I’d never met anyone like Wynn.”

His face turned somber. “Do you have the urge to… hurt her?”

I couldn’t blame him for asking, given my past. “It’s different from the men I’ve tortured and killed, if that’s what you’re getting at. I want to bend, not break her. She’s strong, and there’s something about her… something deep inside that calls to me.”

“Are you turning into a philosopher?” he teased with a grin.

“Just what we all needed—a mafia Don who thinks he’s a comedian.” I flipped him the bird and turned to leave, regretting that I ever thought it would be a good idea to share about my personal life.

“Cosimo.” Dante’s bark stopped me in my tracks, and I looked over my shoulder, where he leaned against the windowsill. “You deserve the same happiness the rest of us have found.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. His expression made me uncomfortable, and I booked it out of there, ready to see Wynn again. She was about to face the full force of my wooing skills.

Wynn had been running back and forth behind the bar for the two hours I sat in the shadowed booth on the opposite side of Deception. I’d watched as she smiled and poured drinks, my knuckles turning white as I resisted the urge to gut every man who spoke to her. It wasn’t a reasonable response, but it was like second nature. I’d have to work on that response because Dante wouldn’t be happy if I started torturing and dismembering my own patrons.

Was it unreasonable to want her every smile to belong to me alone? The need wasn’t only physical. Sure, thinking about her—seeing her—made my dick hard. But more than that, Wynn’s presence in my mind made me feel like I’d shocked myself with a taser or had been punched in the gut, only in a more pleasant way. People said you had butterflies in your stomach if you were in love, but I always thought that was asinine, given that stomach acid would kill them almost instantly.

Heartburn was a more apt descriptor. That burning in your chest that wouldn’t go away, and the only solution was to be close to the person causing that pain because they held the antidote. And right then, I needed Wynn to ease the restlessness inside me. She’d skipped her normal break time, and I was ready to take Zach to task for his oversight.

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