Five
“ A nd this is the garden. When Master Edison’s mother was alive she loved sitting out here when it was sunny,” Oona explained as she led me through the cobblestone garden that looked like something out of a Shakespeare play, her arm looped affectionately through mine.
I made appropriate noises under my breath, the same way I had throughout the rest of the massive house tour that had taken nearly an hour and a half. The little section of the mansion where my room sat was in an enclosed courtyard, making it feel as if the rest of the house was far away.
The house—a veritable mansion really—boasted three stories, eight bedrooms, a grand hall, and countless little parlors and offices. There was also a section of the western wing where the staff and security lived.
Oona had given me the historical background of the place and it sounded as if Edison Keane’s great grandfather had built it after coming to the New World in the mid-eighteen hundreds and starting a mining company.
I wasn’t quite sure when the mining and other operations had turned shady, but the Keane family were well-known mobsters for as long as I could remember.
Sometimes it felt as if the city I was born and raised in still existed in the 1940’s where the Irish, Italians, Russians, Chinese, and Japanese hovered just behind the curtain of our squeaky-clean metropolis, pulling at all of the strings that mattered.
Even if you weren’t a part of one of the five crime families, they still managed to string you up like a marionette whether you liked it or not. It was a constant tug-of-war for power—to be the strongest of the bunch so you could leech off of them and make your people stronger.
And yesterday I’d become the rope in a power struggle that was much bigger than I ever realized.
“Sweetheart?” Oona’s voice cut through my mental ramblings and I turned to find her frowning at me. “If you crease your brows together like that, you’ll get wrinkles—just look at me—I’ve been frowning at Master Edison and Rhodes for almost as long as I’ve been alive and I’ve got these lines to show for it.”
To prove her point, she reached out and scrubbed her thumb between my eyebrows until the muscles in my face relaxed.
“Sorry,” I apologized sheepishly, giving her arm a squeeze. “I was in another world for a minute there.”
Truthfully, I liked Oona. She reminded me of the nanny that had raised both Romey and me for the majority of our lives. The one who’d been fired a week after Romey turned eighteen and who we hadn’t seen since.
“Try a few minutes,” Oona teased dryly as she wheeled us around to face a tall hedge that had a wooden gate in the center. “But for now, I was told that you like to swim.”
Oona opened the gate and tugged me inside of the hedges where I found a small pool area. The pool itself was thin, no more than a twenty-five yard lap pool, but the surrounding area was calm with a little wrought-iron table and chairs and a single chaise lounge surrounding the water.
“How did you know that? That I like to swim?” I asked, ducking down to dip my fingers in the water. It was lukewarm, telling me that it was heated.
“Master Edison has your file, love, did you think he wouldn’t do his research on you?” Oona said it with a laugh, as if it was obvious and she let me explore the pool area to my heart’s content as I tried to digest the information she’d just given me.
If he had a file on me, then he had to know about my leukemia and which doctor treated me while I was in the hospital. Edison Keane seemed like a smart man, so I figured he’d have made the connection between me and the skinny bald teenager with the same name. So why hadn’t he said anything yet?
Or he knows and you just didn’t make enough of an impression on him the same way he did with you, a nasty voice whispered in my mind, causing me to straighten abruptly and wipe my hands of the pair of jeans I was wearing that fit like a glove.
Apparently, my file also included all of my clothing sizes too.
“Don’t you think it’s a little unfair that he gets to read a whole file about me, and yet I know nothing about him?” I knew I sounded like a petulant little child, but I didn’t care.
I’d spent the past six months being yanked around by my parents, by the Amantes, and now by Edison Keane. It was dizzying to think that I was barely an agent in my own life—a life that I hadn’t always been sure I’d live after my diagnosis.
Oona opened her mouth, probably to defend her master, but then her eyes went to something that was behind me, and she promptly shut it again.
“I’ll tell you about me if that’s what you wish.” Edison’s familiar deep timbre came from behind me. “All you needed to do was ask nicely.”
Wheeling around, I found Edison standing by the gate to the pool area, one hand carelessly tucked into the pocket of his suit pants as he stood looking like a damn GQ model in front of me.
“I’m not sure it is what I wish,” I said carefully, reminding myself that despite the pretty room and garden and pool it was all still a part of my new cage, no matter how nice it may have been.
Alpha , my inner omega purred when his scent caught on the breeze and was carried to my nose. It sounded like someone else’s voice completely in my head.
I was told a symptom of my long battle with leukemia was that sometimes my instincts would feel detached—like a part of my brain had separated and created an entirely new person that was now sharing my brain.
A person that needed to shut her trap before I started panting over the man who’d crashed my wedding yesterday. The one who I refused to be attracted to even if he smelled divine.
Edison’s chuckle rumbled through the little hedge in the yard as he stepped inside of the gate and I saw the man who I quickly realized was an ever-present shadow come in behind the alpha.
Rhodes , my inner omega reminded me in a caressing whisper before unhelpfully adding: Alpha .
She really needed to get some better material because this was starting to get old.
“Well,” Edison said as he settled onto the lounge and rested his elbows on his knees, his fingers clasping in the valley between them. Again my eyes were drawn to the various rings he was wearing and the large signet ring of a bird on his pinky finger. “I’m Edison Keane and stone-face here is Rhodes McCreary, my second-in-command.”
As Edison spoke, I caught Oona slipping away out of the corner of my eye, leaving me alone with these two men. “And I’ve been the head of the Keane family for two years now ever since my father passed away.”
That meant that he hadn’t been in charge that night when he and Rhodes came to the hospital to be treated by Dr. Stedmeyer. It was probably why they stopped coming as well. A boss definitely didn’t get shot nearly as much as everyone else, and if they did, they had a private doctor to treat them.
But the information that Edison had just given me were things I already knew. Despite knowing it was a bad idea, I crossed my arms over my chest and shot him what had to be the brattiest glare I could manage. “And?”
Edison’s smile was slow and dangerous but for some reason fear wasn’t the emotion that was swelling in my stomach. “What else is there?”
Sucking in a steadying breath, I shrugged.
“What do you like to do? Do you have hobbies? How old are you? Normal stuff someone should know about their…” I searched for the proper word. “ Fiancé .”
The jury was still out about whether or not I would go along with this man. Pack Ricci was a known entity to me, and past that night four years ago, I knew nothing about the man sitting in front of me.
A snort came from behind Edison and I watched as he turned to look at Rhodes, his expression shocked for only a breath before it smoothed out into the same suave smile he’d been wearing since the beginning of our conversation.
“I’m afraid I don’t have much free time on my hands thanks to my current… ah… career choices.”
I frowned at that because it felt like a cop out. Truly, he got to know everything about me and yet wanted to keep himself shrouded in a veil of ridiculous masculine mystery.
Opening my mouth, I was about to wish both of them a good day and scurry back to my tower, but Rhodes cut me off before I could speak.
“He likes to garden.” Rhodes nodded at the man in front of him. “And paint too. He also plays tennis every morning.”
I blinked at the man, surprised that he was saying anything at all. Rhodes, at face value, seemed to be the epitome of the tall, dark, and stone-faced stereotype that I’d come to expect from men like him.
Edison cleared his throat, clearly just as shocked by the other alpha’s intervention as I was. “He’s right. When I have time I like to do all of those things.”
“So why didn’t you tell me about them?” I crossed my arms over my chest.
His growl met my ears, and for a moment, I thought I’d gone too far. My mouth had gotten me into trouble before, but I’d forgotten that I wasn’t in my own house giving attitude to Ethan and Miranda Chandler. No, I was being a brat to the head of a mob family.
“Sorry,” I hurried to say, my gaze dropping to my feet automatically as I kicked myself inwardly. It had been stupid to let my emotions get the best of me.
“Peregrine,” Edison’s voice met my ears and it was so soft that it had my eyes darting back up to see what his expression looked like. He didn’t seem angry—despite his earlier growl.
Edison’s dark brows were drawn together like he was trying to find the words to say but was struggling.
“Perrie,” I corrected him, my voice more gentle now.
“Perrie,” he affirmed, straightening. “I apologize for putting you in this situation and for not being more forthcoming. It isn’t in my nature.”
“So why not let me go?” My father may have been powerful politically, but even I knew that there were more well-connected omegas in the world, hell, even in the city. I was a twenty-two-year-old woman that had barely gotten her high school diploma.
“You know I can’t do that. Your father promised you to me and I need you. Marrying me doesn’t have to be a bad thing, I will take care of you and so will my people.” His words were cajoling as he yet again shot another look over his shoulder at Rhodes who shifted uncomfortably in the stiff position he’d been standing in ever since Edison sat down.
There was something in the look they exchanged that I couldn’t quite decipher and Edison’s expression was odd when he faced me again.
“I can’t be that important, I’m barely even an omega at this point,” I pointed out with a scoff. Sure, my father seemed to have shaken both the Irish and Italians down for everything they had when it came to me, but he always did have a habit of overinflating his worth to others, so it wasn’t any different for him to do the same to me.
I’d been worried ever since meeting Pack Ricci that their expectations for me were much higher than anything I could hope to achieve—hell I wasn’t even sure my heat would actually happen.
The doctors all reassured me that it would happen, but I’d heard Mr. Amante and my father talk about it more than once when they thought they were alone.
“How can I be sure that you aren’t selling me a faulty product, Chandler. I’ll have you know I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime.” Mr. Amante’s voice echoed in my head, my heart thudding in my chest.
With Pack Ricci it had felt safer—Elio had all but told me outright that they had no interest in the actual sex part of the pack relationship and the three others had grumbled their agreement.
How they expected to have an heir, I had no clue, but it had been a relief to hear.
But with Edison Keane? I could see that he intended to be my alpha body and soul, filling me with a mixed sense of dread and the tiniest feeling of excitement.
“Besides, how do you expect me to be a mobster’s wife? I’ve never even touched a gun,” I finished stubbornly.
There was a beat before Edison burst into laughter, his mouth opening wide as he leaned back on the chaise, shaking his head with disbelief.
Even Mr. No-Expression behind him cracked a half-smile, his dark eyes crinkling in the corners as he otherwise remained still.
My face filled with warmth as the man continued to guffaw, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes as he tried to regain control of his composure again.
“Pet, what exactly do you think the wife of a crime family boss does?”
I shrugged, thinking about the mafia movies that Romey had been obsessed with when he was a preteen. My memory of it was vague but I knew that most of the women seemed like femme fatales —all sex appeal and grit—or they were the wife getting cheated on with said femme fatales .
I didn’t like either of those options. I was pretty sure my sex appeal started and ended with my omega pheromones, not to mention the fact that my coordination on land left much to be desired. It was the main reason why I’d taken up swimming as a sport—you can’t trip easily in the water.
“You won’t ever see a gunfight if I have anything to do with it.” Edison’s voice was suddenly low and his expression grave as he spoke. “But I can have Rhodes here give you some basic self-defense and weapons training if that makes you feel better.”
Rhodes’s expression shifted at the most microscopic level. I didn’t know how I knew it, but it was clear that the alpha wasn’t super enthused about becoming my own personal Mr. Miyagi a la Karate Kid .
Seeming to pick up on my sudden discomfort, Edison changed tactics. “How about this, why don’t we create a contract that benefits both of us, would that make you feel better?”
I thought about it for a moment before nodding slowly, still unsure about whether I should trust the man even to do that.
Edison’s smile was triumphant and he stood, gesturing to the gate. “Good, then shall we go to my office and get it all written out, it shouldn’t take too long.”