CHAPTER FOUR #2
He’d been waiting here for a while.
He knew.
I broke into a cold sweat, every fiber in my goddamn body trembling.
Fuck calm all the way off.
They’d already made up their minds.
This wasn’t negotiation; it was intervention.
They were taking Tierney away from me. No. She was mine. Mine. Besides, she didn’t want to get married. She loved her freedom. With me, she had a version of it. I respected her boundaries.
For the most part.
Fuck, fine, I had some room for improvement in the boundaries department. So what? At least I didn’t make her marry or screw anyone.
Not even me.
“Sit down, son. This conversation is long overdue.” My father gestured to one of the recliners. I walked over to it and sank down. Everyone else sat, too. I trained my face to its usual jaded expression while my mind went underwater.
“This is about the Callaghan girl,” my father announced.
“Yeah, I did the math.” I blew a cloud of smoke from the corner of my mouth. “What about her?”
“Coppola and her… It’s a good idea.”
“No.”
The men in the room exchanged frustrated glances.
“You can’t marry her, Brother.” Luca clapped a hand on my shoulder.
“I know.”
“What do you think you’re doing, then?”
“Making sure no one else can, either.”
“So it’s true, what they say.” My father gripped his jaw, drawing a labored breath. “You’re still sweet on her after what she did to you.”
“Wouldn’t go that far.” Some of the coldness returned to my voice. “It’s a slight fixation. Totally manageable.”
“You’ve killed all of her lovers,” Enzo pointed out.
“And yet nobody ever found the bodies or conducted an investigation that led to our doorstep. As I said—manageable.”
“Stefano Coppola personally came to me when he landed this morning.” Tiernan spoke for the first time, leveling an icy, one-eyed glare at me. “He asked me for her hand in marriage.”
The silence that followed was so loud I was surprised my eardrums hadn’t exploded.
“I’m going to accept,” he finished.
“She won’t agree,” I growled, the coppery taste of blood flooding my mouth. If I’d bitten myself, I couldn’t feel it. I was numb all over and yet in excruciating pain.
“She’ll have no choice,” Tiernan countered. “My sister rarely does what’s good for her. Marriage will redirect her energy into something worthwhile—life away from the parties, loneliness, and fake friends.”
“Yeah?” I leaned forward, tapping my cigarette into an ashtray on the coffee table. “Doing what, sucking some stranger’s dick?”
“She’s always wanted to live by the Mediterranean Sea.
” Tiernan ignored my words. “She’ll live a life of extravagance and pampering.
No pressure or expectations. Far away from the baggage and mess of New York.
Coppola will be good to her. He has a small child.
She’ll have someone to fawn over. His first marriage was a love match, and his late wife had been happy.
” My brother-in-law looked almost defeated, and I knew why.
Loving Tierney Callaghan was a messy business.
I’d made the mistake of doing it once and barely survived to tell the tale.
“Let her go. She needs this. It’s time for her to be happy. ”
“How’d his late wife die?” I asked.
The room was quiet.
“How did she die, motherfucker?” My voice boomed, ricocheting over the curved, grand ceilings of my parents’ mansion.
“Do you know? Because I do. She was trying on a dress in a boutique when some asshole slipped into her changing room and shot her in the neck. Retaliation for a stolen drug shipment. That’s how.
She bled out for six hours before she finally died. You want that for your sister?”
“Coppola dealt with the clan responsible for the attack,” Luca supplied solemnly. “Tierney will be safe.”
“Spin it any way you like, but you’re selling your sister to a criminal.” I stubbed my cigarette out, smoke fanning from my nostrils.
“You did the same to Lila,” Tiernan said matter-of-factly.
“Freedom.” My jaw clenched. “I gave Lila freedom through you. You were her only way out, and I knew she’d have you wrapped around her finger before the week was out.”
I’d been the sole supporter of my baby sister marrying Callaghan, and their marriage turned out to be the most successful human venture since sliced bread.
But it was different. I knew Tiernan was incapable of hurting Lila the night he’d found her on the fountain and spared her life.
It was the first time he’d shown mercy to any creature.
A fatal human error I knew he wouldn’t have made under normal circumstances.
Coppola wanted Tierney because she was beautiful and because she was mine.
“Stefano will give Tierney a wide berth,” Tiernan drawled apathetically. “She wants freedom, and even if she can’t see it right now, this is the closest she’ll ever get to it. I’m not asking, Achilles. This match is happening.”
My father flashed my brothers and Tiernan a loaded look, and they filed out of the room, giving us some privacy. I watched them leave, curling my hands into tight fists to stop them from shaking.
Dad waited until the door clicked shut before he turned to me and spoke.
“A don should wed a wife who is loyal, obedient, and self-sufficient. Someone to run his home and bear his sons while he runs his empire.” He laced his fingers together. “The Irish girl is none of those things.”
“I know.” I clenched my fists tighter. Unclenched them again.
“Do you?” He studied me intently. “Because that means you cannot run around chasing a forbidden skirt. Settle down. Take a wife. Assume your role as the don of the Ferrante clan. This stalemate between you and Luca… You can end it right here, right now.”
I looked up, curling my fingers around the armrests to stop the shaking. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He’d been dragging his feet about choosing a new don for years. “Are you jerking my chain, or are you going to put this in writing?”
We all worked hard, but most men always found time to play.
Not me. I didn’t take a wife, girlfriends, lavish vacations around the world or semiprofessional golf tournaments.
I didn’t indulge in shopping sprees and weekends with 50K-a-night prostitutes to numb my nonexistent conscience.
I worked, and then I worked some more. I forfeited my life to the Camorra and deserved nothing less than ruling it.
I deserved it more than Luca, who thought he was entitled to it because he was the firstborn.
More than Enzo, who had the personality of a friendly, enthusiastic puppy.
And more than that nameless bastard who was our half brother my father kept in touch with over the years.
“That solely depends on you,” he said. “I’ll give you the role if you give up this woman. Nothing good will ever come out of her. She’s an exposed weakness. An Achilles’ heel. Coppola knows it—that’s why he’s asked for her.”
Right on all fucking accounts. I could never have her.
Deep down, I knew it, too. Even if I could, she’d be my ruination.
She’d undone me when we were teenagers. Completely obliterated my soul into shit.
Fuck knew what she was capable of now that she was a full-fledged femme fatale. I’d be a fool to find out.
“Let her go,” my father said. “And I’ll give you my kingdom.”
Swallowing hard, I digested this new reality into my system. This needed to stop.
The stalking.
The killing.
The obsessing.
Enough was enough.
No more tossing, turning, praying to a God who’d forsaken me before I’d taken my first breath. No more fixating, hating, shaking.
No. More.
Collecting myself back into the unfeeling monster I was, I threw my father an enigmatic look. “The Irish girl won’t be an issue. If Sangue Blu wants her, he is welcome to her.”
My father leaned forward, using the last shreds of his energy to pinch my cheek, kissing his fingers. “That’s my boy. I always knew you were my special one.”
Blood thundered in my ears. I stopped my hands from shaking by threading my fingers together.
“Are you sure about the Callaghan girl?” he asked.
“Positive.”
“In that case, you wouldn’t mind doing one last favor for me, would you?”
I had a feeling I very fucking much would, but it made little difference at this point. I arched an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Deliver her to Coppola personally. Show him that he’s wrong. That she is not your blind spot.”
A few moments later, we reentered my father’s office, sat at the round table, and started the voting process. My father picked up his gavel. “Stefano, make our cut twenty percent. You’ll pay standard, like everyone else.”
“Do I get the redhead?” He grinned.
My father jerked his chin in a nod.
Coppola gave him a two-finger salute. “Twenty percent it is, then.”
“All vote for the new order.”
Every man in the room raised his hand. Every man but me. Coppola watched me closely, waiting for a crack in my facade, a shred of evidence to my weakness.
I pushed it all down, including the urge to warn Coppola not to hurt her in bed, like all the others did. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Tierney was a big girl. A big girl who knew how to work a gun and a knife like no one’s business.
She’s an addiction. A disease. A problem.
I raised my hand, my face blank.
My father slammed the gavel on the table. “We’ll deliver her to you by the end of the month.”