Page 31 of His Deadly Lies

Seated across from me in the back, he widens his legs and drops his head between them, breathing in deeply His hands ruffle his hair, and when he straightens, the black strands are on end.

“I swear,” he adds, “the man could keel over with a heart attack just thinking about his daughters. He lives for them.” Ricardo shakes his head. “He’s even got pictures of them in his office, like when they were little and riding bikes and shit. One of them was on a pony with pink ribbons in her hair.”

“I’m not sure why you think that’s so unnatural,” I add skeptically.

“Because it’s Edward Balestra, and he runs the most feared syndicate in this area, Unc!”

I tap my chin. “Well, it’s a weakness we can exploit when we need to. Don’t forget that.”

“Which means I have to actually be good to little Mia so they don’t think we were involved in anything…if it comes to that.” Ricardo talks to me with such logic, beyond his years, that I immediately feel like an asshole. Especially since he brought me around to his point with conversational hand-holding.

I grunt. The kid is right.

But I don’t have to like it.

I don’t have to like any piece of this, even when I know it’s the next step in the evolution of our own syndicate. We can’t stay where we are, working our strip clubs, and expect to mobilize the same upward growth as Balestra. Not unless we do something drastic.

It should soothe me that we’ve done enough growth to even be considered for a marriage proposal. Shockingly, it doesn’t.

The overt touching, the flowery language, all dig under my skin.

I shouldn’t care what Ricardo does with her before the big day and the fucking wedding march. I need to not care. Fuck, though. I loved the way her cheeks turned pink when I talked about throwing her over my shoulder…I’d chosen each word carefully to see if I’d get a reaction out of her. And I had. The best kind of reaction because the anger in her eyes tells me she knows exactly what she’s doing, what I’m doing, and is annoyed.

What a combination.

Then I’d blown it by touching her, tasting her. I mean, what am I, an untried teenager? I put that shit behind me a long time ago.

“At least it got me an in with the family and puts me right in the heart of the compound,” I say as if I’m trying to look on the bright side. “It got you in a one-on-one meeting with the old man.”

Ricardo grins sheepishly. “Sorry about you having to hole up with them, but I’m sure the room is going to be comfortable. You’ll just have to survive without your special old man mattress for a while.”

I’ll miss the damn mattress too. “This is going to be a long…well, I’m not sure how long. When do they want the wedding?” Shit. That feels like something I really ought to know. I should have been in the damn meeting with him rather than playing cat and mouse with a luscious little princess.

“Eight months,” he answers. Settled again, he reaches toward the door for a magazine and haphazardly flips through the pages. Already back to giving me only a portion of his attention. “Apparently, her mother needs time to plan, but the old man wants it done as soon as possible.”

In the grand scheme of things, eight months really isn’t a long time. Although it does bring me to my forty-third birthday and passed by a couple weeks.

I swipe a hand through my hair, dragging it down the side of my face to scrub my chin and goatee.

“Gives us time to find out who might be hunting the girl. You know, in the meantime,” I finish.

Ricardo doesn’t even look up. “Any ideas yet?” he drawls. “Too soon for leads, I know, but you must have come up with a few strings to tug on later.”

It bothers me, on one level, to have Ricardo so dependent on me. Especially when he’s being groomed for greater things. I’ve sweat and bled to launch him higher than I’ve ever been, and here he is, waiting for me to check things off a list. Again.

Rather than give in to the annoyance, I say, “I found out about the meeting and thought about a few avenues. But now? You’ve got me on babysitting duty. It will be hard to follow the tracks I need to follow.” My voice sours. “You’ll have to step up.”

“Already ready.”

“Are you?” I press. “Seems to me you’re too busy looking at naked chicks and jacking off to your mom’s employees to take this engagement seriously.”

Ricardo drops his magazine, his brows flicking downward just north of a full-blown scowl. “If you don’t want me looking at your Playboys, then stop leaving them in the car.”

He says nothing else, and pressing him isn’t going to do shit to help my mood.

The rest of the drive falls into the silence of family or close friends, with my nephew leaving me alone and me all too happy to return the favor.

If I’m going to have to hole up at the Balestras, then I want to drop Ricardo off as quickly as possible and get my shit handled at home. Even a quick nap before the real shit begins. Someone really is targeting Mia—I saw the evidence myself.

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