Forbidden Cravings (Wicked Cravings #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

MASON

T here were those who were hunters, and those who were prey. I was a hunter. I’d always been a hunter. But something had gone wrong. I’d miscalculated, and it had cost me dearly.

Soft breaths came from where Riley slept, curled in the nook of her window seat. Clutched in her hand was a small black box. I knew what was in that box and what it would mean to our family, the potential for unforeseen change that it held. A ring. A fucking engagement ring. I had the urge to tell Tyson to throw it out when he had called to tell me about it. He would have done it, no questions asked. But I’d ignored my desire, thinking of Riley and how she hadn’t healed yet.

I walked over and draped a blanket across her frail frame, hating that she was still suffering, and I didn’t have the cure for it. Christmas had come and gone, as had New Year’s, yet she was still a shell of herself. Riley had run from me and the lies I’d woven to protect her from my world, but my way of protecting her had failed drastically.

After one last glance, I closed the door to her room, careful not to wake her. Returning to the main room of my home, I poured myself a glass of scotch and sat, thinking about the mistakes I’d made and the situation that now faced me. Snow was falling in thick flakes that broke up the moonlight, and I stared at them as they slowly covered the back deck. No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t find a way out of the predicament my lies and Riley’s impulsiveness had left me in.

Greyson Tides. The last man I ever would have considered for my sister. A lethal boss who nobody fucked with, yet I’d attempted to do just that in my ambitious, arrogant plan to increase my territory and take a chunk of his. It had been rash, and I’d failed, expecting him to come after me, to retaliate. But Tides wasn’t rash. He was a patient, calculating man who played games only the best bosses could survive. Years had passed, and I’d thought it was over. I had matured, changed to the point that I now considered myself his equal, yet he still didn’t strike. Until his patience paid off and Riley landed right in his city, in his hands. And that was a complication I couldn’t unravel because Riley’s heart was entwined within it.

Resting my head in my hands, I tried to simmer my frustration. I’d been gone three days, dealing with meetings between the territory bosses that sat north of me and mediating a dispute between them. And in those three days, nothing had changed. Tyson had stayed with Riley, watching over her. Not that she ever moved. She stayed in that damned room, barely eating, not moving from her spot at the window. The only time she’d left the room was the day I allowed Tides to see her.

I’d known Tides since I first climbed my way to power, and never had I seen him so vulnerable. I could have taken him out then and there. He was alone, his men not with him, and he’d come unarmed. I’d contemplated it. Stepping foot in my territory and daring to come to my home was grounds for war. Hiding the fact that he’d known my sister was in his city the entire time, that he’d touched her, and broken her heart, gave me every reason to fill him with holes and be done with him. But the man who’d stood at my gates that day asking to see my sister wasn’t the notorious mob boss I knew. This man was disheveled, desperate, broken even. And I knew then that whatever had happened in his twisted game, it had changed. He was in love with Riley as much as she was with him, and the knowledge of it killed me.

My phone rang, jerking me from my thoughts, the sound loud in the house's silence.

“You there?” I asked Tyson when I picked up.

“On my way.”

“Then why are you calling?” I asked, knowing he was on his way to the airport to pick up his sister.

“Checking on you, buddy.”

I took another drink, staring at the floor, my silence my only reply.

“What are you gonna do?” he asked. He’d been my best friend since grade school and knew me well enough to read the silence.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

With the Clint Randall debacle, Riley had been weepy for the days following her hospital stay, but she’d bounced back quickly. Even if she wasn’t talking to me, I had my men watching her. She returned to work, returned to life.

But this? This was different. Something in her had broken that I couldn’t fix, and I could fix anything. Not this time. This time, I had a feeling only Tides could fix her. So, I’d instructed Tyson to leave the ring for her and when I returned earlier in the evening, she had it clutched in her hands while she slept.

“Although,” I continued, “I don’t know that it’s up to me. Riley needs to make the decision.”

“And if she chooses Tides?”

I cringed, hating the idea. My sister doing anything with my enemy was difficult enough to deal with, but to think of her marrying him was like a stab in the gut. Shit, all of this had been a stab in the gut. But she hadn’t known. I’d left her in the dark and she had no way of knowing who he was until it was too late.

Leaning back in the chair, I considered my options. I could kill him…well, I could try to kill him. He was a difficult man to kill, and he was the most powerful of all the bosses. But killing him would crush Riley and leave her more devastated than she already was.

“As much as I hate it, I’d learn to deal with it,” I answered. “I just want her to be happy again.”

Tyson let out a heavy sigh. He was as close to Riley as he was to his sister, maybe closer, and I knew he considered her to be another little sister. “I could kill him,” he finally said.

My chuckle felt out of place. “But you wouldn’t for the same reason I wouldn’t.”

“Damn, we’re fucked, aren’t we?”

“That’s the perfect word for it.”

“I just got to the airport. Maybe Casey can talk some sense into her when I get her home, or at least convince her to leave her room.”

“Let’s hope,” I answered absently before hanging up.

Setting the phone down, I looked out at the snowy night sky. There was nothing more important to me than Riley, and there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Maybe this wasn’t what I wanted, but maybe it was the right thing for Riley. If I had to deal with Greyson Tides in my life, I’d bear it as long as Riley came back to me. As long as she was happy again.