4. Leon
4
LEON
M y eyes snap open the second I feel the bed jostle beneath me the next morning.
I find Mia halfway off the bed—clearly making an attempt at escape—and staring at me like a deer in headlights.
“Good morning,” I say pleasantly.
She returns the greeting under her breath as she stands and makes her way over to the closet.
In the morning light, it’s very hard not to stare at her naked form. The perfectly smooth, slightly bronzed skin of her back. The tight roundness of her ass that is already sporting purplish bruises from the night before.
My mind drifts back of its own accord. The way she’d sounded, the way she had moved against me, all of it had been unnervingly divine. The thought alone was already making me hard again.
I shake my head, reminding myself quite forcefully that casual sex was never part of this arrangement. Mia only agreed to this in order to fulfill her duties to the Guild…and to satisfy whomever threatened her father.
With no small effort, I glue my eyes to Mia’s face, vowing not to look any lower than her neck.
When she opens the closet doors, she seems genuinely surprised by the large selection of clothes within.
“Are you living here?” she asks as she helps herself to a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that will likely drown her.
“Temporarily,” I reply. “I’ve recently purchased a more…ah…family-appropriate property just off Central Park West.”
If I hadn’t been staring at her face, I might have missed the split second that she looked impressed. “A brownstone?”
I make an affirmative noise. “It will be ready in a few days.”
With a small stretch, I reach over to grab a bathrobe and make a beeline for the kitchen. Coffee was certainly in order.
I’m about halfway through brewing it, when there’s a patter of feet behind me.
“Do you expect me to live with you?” she asks carefully.
I consider this for a moment. Part of the deal was that I do everything in my power to ensure her safety, which would be considerably easier if I had eyes on her at all times.
But then again, I doubt such a suggestion would go down well. Considering we seem to have reached a temporary truce, I’m not in the mood to be on the receiving end of her yelling again.
“Eventually, but there’s no pressing need until the baby is born,” I say.
“Right,” her voice sounds distant, distracted, and when I turn to hand her a coffee, her face matches the tone of her voice. She glances down at the offering. “I don’t drink coffee.”
“Noted.”
There’s an awkward pause as I put the cup down. I rack my brain for something to ask her, to put her at ease again.
She looks so lovely wearing my clothes, I realize with a start. Her red curls are the right kind of messy to be considered charming and warmth just seems to radiate from her so naturally.
It wouldn’t be a bad thing to make the most of this situation. Perhaps we could even be friends.
I’m about to say as much when she breaks the silence for me.
“I suppose we don’t really need to know each other, do we?”
Her words turn my own to ash in my mouth. Right. Duty. None of this is personal.
“No. We don’t.” I drain the rest of my coffee, though it tastes much more bitter now, and deposit the mug in the sink with a little too much force. The handle breaks off with a small crack.
I ignore it as I storm past her back into the bedroom, quickly finding clothes of my own before gathering my necessities for the day. Suddenly, spending the morning alone with her feels absolutely abhorrent.
“What…what do I do now?” her voice asks quietly from the corner.
I pocket my phone and glance in the mirror. Respectable, professional. Cold. “Stay as long as you want, but I have to go. I’ll send my new address to Teo if you need it.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to exchange numbers?”
“Do what you want.”
“But what about?—”
I turn on her, suddenly very irritated indeed by her incessant nagging. “I don’t care, all right? I’m not your keeper, and, quite frankly, I have more important things to worry about than this. You stick to upholding your part of the agreement, and I’ll stick to mine. Agreed?”
Mia looks somewhat overwhelmed by my outburst, and so frightfully vulnerable in those oversized clothes. I have to look away so that she doesn’t see the guilt in my gaze.
This is decidedly the wrong thing to do, as her voice suddenly takes a harder edge.
“Oh, of course, my dear husband. Let me bend over backward to fulfill my wifely duties. How would you like me next time? Spread eagle or with a bag over my fucking head?”
I refuse to dignify her response with even a glance as I pack up my things. The cold shoulder does nothing to improve Mia’s mood, and she promptly leaves the room.
A second later, the door to the penthouse slams shut behind her.
It takes the entirety of the drive to the Prince’s Hand’s flagship casino for me to shake the bitterness that threatens to choke me.
I always knew this marital arrangement would be a strain at best, but it was foolish of me to think it could be anything more. Getting my hopes up was nothing short of embarrassing.
As I step across the familiar entranceway, I let the embarrassment fall at my feet, cloaking myself in the things that truly matter. The most important of which is survival for the sake of my sister.
By the time I made it to the meeting room, the morning's interaction with my unwilling wife was tightly locked away at the very back of my mind.
“Natali,” Dante greets me with an easy smirk, though I note he looks particularly gleeful today.
He’s one of the first to arrive, as has become his habit since the Guild saw fit to send one of their own men to help negotiate an alliance. Teo’s second was, admittedly, a point of tension to begin with.
But over the last few months, I’ve found that he’s grown on me some. Dante’s easy-going nature and extensive understanding of trade routes with our counterparts across the globe have been invaluable.
“Is it your birthday or something?” I give him a once-over—yes, his knee is bouncing beneath the table.
Dante taps the folder before him. “An early birthday present, perhaps.”
I quirk an eyebrow at him. If what he’s implying is true…damn it, the Guild works fast.
I take a seat at the end of the table and wait for the rest of the men to filter in. Most greet me with a tight nod as they enter.
Many of my men are from the old guard, left over from when my father and mother were running the Prince’s Hand, too set in their ways now to break away from me despite the looming alliance with a rival mafioso.
Most have now, thankfully, conceded on the merits of said alliance, but it’s still a relief when Maximilian shows up. The younger man throws me a half-hearted salute as he sits at the other end of the table.
He’s fresh blood courtesy of my relationship with the Californians. Max has added a sense of…relevance to the upper rankings of the Prince’s Hand that has been sorely missing. His competency has been an added bonus these last few months.
Once everyone finally settles in, Dante is practically bouncing in his seat.
I sigh and hold him off with a gesture of my hand. “Before we begin, I want a report on the Cartel bombings.”
It’s been a growing concern these last few weeks. Small bombs had been placed near the homes of various known lieutenants, and from Teo’s reports, they were targeting the Guild, too.
That threat is one of the other reasons I’d decided to relocate.
Max clears his throat to address the room. “Lab results are back. It was hydrogen, as we expected. But whoever is making them for the Cartel is barely giving them enough kick to take down a car, let alone a building.”
“Would it be possible if they planted multiple of the deVitales?”
“Possibly, but it would be incredibly inefficient. Why place ten small bombs when you could plant one big one? But nothing about the pattern of attacks suggests they’re even entertaining the idea of anything bigger.”
Dante considers this a moment. “So this is a scare tactic.”
“Or they have a limited supply of materials,” Max offers. “We know the Cartel doesn’t have the same relationship with local authorities that we do. Trying to secure destructive materials could prove more difficult for them without raising legal suspicion.”
Something about the way Max phrased that made my mind jump five theories ahead. “Unless they’re trying to provoke us to retaliate in kind. I imagine it’s easier to steal materials that have already been stolen from someone else.”
Max immediately nods in understanding. He was good like that.
“Sorry, what?” Dante looks at me in confusion.
Max does the courtesy of explaining. “It would be far easier for us to create explosives without the authorities getting involved. They may well be waiting for us to do so. That way, they can just target our labs to supply themselves without the hassle.”
“Keep monitoring the bombs, Max. Dante, report our suspicions to Teo. I want to know if he has a secure facility we could repurpose as a lab.”
Dante smirks. “You seem very sure he’ll be receptive to your demands.”
The entire table looks at him curiously.
I roll my eyes and gesture for him to take the floor. “All right, tell us the news.”
Dante stands and drops a folder before me dramatically. “You might be interested in reading that.”
It’s quite anti-climatic considering how thin the legal document inside the folder is. Though I suppose legal isn’t the term one would necessarily associate with it.
“For the rest of the room,” I monotone as I read through the contract, “our esteemed representative of the Guild has just handed me a contract of alliance.”
A murmur quickly spreads among my peers as I continue to read and get to the bottom of the page. My eyebrows dart up in surprise at what I find at the bottom of the document.
“It appears that Teo Vitale and his second, Dante Grasso, have already signed it.” I look at the latter in surprise. “I thought Teo would at least want to play chicken about who signed first.”
Dante smirks. “I think we’re all excited to get this over with.”
Now that I’ve met the Guild’s terms, I suppose there isn’t much point in waiting around.
I glance out at the expectant faces of those at my table, some even standing to get a better view of the document. My fingers inch toward my pen.
“I guess there’s no point in delaying,” I murmur as I go to sign—only to freeze when I notice the box next to mine and under Dante’s signature.
I still need a second.
There wasn’t a concrete reason as to why I had put off appointing someone new. Perhaps because the position had been filled by my sister for so long, it was difficult to imagine anyone else at my side.
But as I look around the room at the faces that have watched me grow from boy to man, there are frighteningly few options that could possibly fill Isabella’s stiletto-wearing, computer-hacking, no-shit-taking place.
Oddly, Mia suddenly springs to mind. I bury the thought quickly.
“Maximilian,” I call out absently. “Come here a moment.”
There’s the sound of a chair being dragged across the floor, followed by his footsteps. Everyone else seems to be collectively holding their breath.
I don’t speak again until he’s at my shoulder. “Would you be so kind as to sign here for me?” I point to the space in question.
Max does not move. “Is this your way of asking me to be your second?”
“Would you prefer a ring?” I wince as soon as the words leave my mouth. Too soon.
But Max doesn’t seem to notice. He smirks as he plucks the pen from my hand and scrawls his name in a surprisingly elegant script.
Once I’ve done the same, I risk looking up at our audience.
Dante, at least, seems pleased with this development. The rest seem torn between relief that the negotiations are finally over and staring daggers at Max.
It’s to be expected, considering he’s a newcomer, but luckily, Max doesn’t seem too concerned by their judgment.
“There we have it,” I announce as I hand the contract back to Dante. “Tell Teo I am looking forward to a very happy matrimony.”