Chapter 8
GIO
I’m not one to play games. I tell a woman exactly what I want and what I don’t. The women at the bars we run know exactly what they’re getting with me: a one-night stand. Maybe two if the fuck was that good, but it usually isn’t.
Yet, here I am the following day, sitting at my desk at work, unable to stop thinking about her. I stare at the number she added to my phone, naming herself Call Me Red taking care of them is in his blood. I’m not one to milk a cow. My sister, though? She loves it.
We’re different, she and I. I’m loud, where she’s quiet. I’m hard, where she’s soft. She can talk anyone out of doing anything with her gentle way, while I’d beat them into submission. Two different people, but close as ever. I’d kill for her without any hesitation.
She only recently turned seventeen, and my father is going to want to marry her off. It’s what’s done within our families, but I plan to stop it at all costs. She doesn’t want it, but she’s too afraid to speak up. Not that our father would ever listen. But there’s a better chance he’d listen to me.
Eriu has a right to meet someone and fall in love the normal way instead of having someone shoved down her throat on her eighteenth birthday.
The only reason my father didn’t try that bullshit with me is because I was far too broken for him to force that on me.
I kinda just stayed broken, pretending I was fixed.
He knew that after what happened to me, I’d never marry anyone. I have no desire to fulfill some antiquated womanly duty. I’m better off on my own.
My father has no idea that sometimes when I think about what I’ve been through, panic grips its fist around my throat until I can’t breathe.
And he can’t ever find out. If he thinks I’m weak, that I can’t handle myself, he’ll kick me out of the academy and not even blink.
Enforcers can’t be weak. They can’t have baggage that could affect their mission or their life. And that’s what I’d be. Baggage.
He’d apologize, sure. He’d tell me he’s doing it for me. That he doesn’t want to lose me like he lost Mom. But in the end, I’d lose the one thing I care for besides my family. I’d lose my job. And that means everything to me. It’s the one thing that keeps me sane.
So every day, I fight to keep it together, not showing the world a glimpse into the woman I’ve been forced to become.