Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 64885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
“You marrying his only daughter without his blessing says otherwise.”
“She called in a favor,” I said again. “You know how our game works. It was undisputable.”
A flash of respect sank into his eyes as he nodded slightly. “Have to give the girl credit. She certainly used your little poker game's rules to her advantage.”
I shifted my head from side to side, silently thinking about what she originally wanted.
“What was that?” my brother asked, reading me as easily as I would read him. One of the perks of growing up and working together for almost thirty years, we had an uncanny ability to see through each other's masks.
I blew out of breath. “The only thing I could do was amend her original favor,” I admitted, since there was no use in lying to him. “And I took the best option for all of us.”
“You mind explaining how this is best for us? I've already heard through our sources that O'Brien is furious. He's no doubt planning an attack. Hell, he might try to make it look like you forced her into this marriage, and that will give him grounds to take her back by force.”
My hand balled into a fist atop the desk, and I shook my head. “I'll kill him before he gets to her.”
My brother's eyes widened, and he studied me for a few heartbeats. “What was her original request?” he asked instead of addressing the more complicated matter, which was me getting territorial as fuck.
“She wanted me to... ensure that her value would be stripped, and she wouldn't be able to be sold off to another family.”
“She wanted you to fuck her?” He tilted his head. “And you married her instead?”
I ground my teeth together as I took a deep breath. “Fucking her would’ve given Doyle grounds to at best lock her away for the rest of her existence. At worst, make her death look like an accident. I wasn't about to put her in that position, especially when she was so frantic and thinking that was the only way out.”
Dante looked at a loss for words, something he usually never struggled with. My brother loved to talk more than anybody I knew. “And you haven't fucked her yet? Even after marrying her?”
“I haven't touched her,” I said.
It didn't mean that I hadn't thought about it every waking and sleeping second.
“I fully intend to leave this marriage as clean as I entered it. Once I know she's safe, once I'm able to set her up where she can make her own choices and not be in danger, then I'll let her go.”
Dante scoffed, a dark laugh ripping through his lips. “Come on, little brother,” he said. “I know you've been out of the game for a while, but you never forget. She'll never be safe. It doesn't matter if you give her a hundred million out of that billion of yours and send her off to some island nobody's ever heard of. The O’Briens aren't going to stop until they get their precious princess back. Either to re-break her or to punish her. This isn't just going to end because you throw money at it.”
I closed my eyes, doing my best to tell every single one of my muscles to relax. I knew Dante was right, but I also knew that I didn’t have another option.
Serenity couldn’t stay married to me forever. She was too good, too sweet, and too innocent to get entrenched in my world. If she got one genuine look at me? Got one whiff of my past? She’d be terrified.
I knew she’d grown up in the life, but women in our world were kept in the dark on purpose. At least with the way the O’Briens did things. The Maxfields had done that in the past, but thankfully we'd gotten progressive somewhere around the eighties. Still slower than everybody would’ve liked, but at least I'd grown up in a family where my mother had a say, and the business was only better for it.
Still, I wasn't going to ruin Serenity's life by ensuring she stayed shackled to me forever.
“From where I'm sitting,” Dante continued, and I opened my eyes to focus on him, “you have two options. One, you broker a deal of peace and give her back. Or two, you consummate the marriage and commit to her for the rest of your life. One of them keeps her safe, and one of them takes her situation out of your hands.”
I shook my head, immediately rejecting both options. “Neither one of those is acceptable to me.”
Dante threw his hands up. “There is no option three, Gareth. If there was, you would’ve thought of one by now. Would it be so bad to consummate the marriage, make it irrefutable? You obviously care about the girl or we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation.”