Chapter 2
Leo
One second, Alessa is excusing herself to the bathroom. The next, she’s straddling me with a wickedly sharp knife to my throat, still gloriously naked.
If I make one wrong move, it will slice my throat wide open.
What the fuck?
“Who are you?” she asks in a deadly tone. Gone is the sweet, sexually sated woman from ten seconds ago, whispering she loved me too, and in her place is a woman I don’t recognize.
I raise my hands in a placating gesture. “What’s going on?”
She presses the knife in further. “Who. Are. You?” she grits out.
“Baby, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” With every word, my throat rubs against the knife, and I feel blood slip down my neck.
“Your tattoo says Perez,” she replies. I just look at her, and she scoffs. “Like you don’t know who the fuck I am if you’re rocking a tattoo for the fucking Perez family.” She spits the name Perez like it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
I swallow. “Who’s the Perez family?”
Her eyes narrow to dangerous slits. “One last chance, Leo. Why do you have the name Perez tattooed on you?”
Everything is running through my head at once. I love this girl; that isn’t a lie. I fell for her almost immediately. She has something about her that I want to soak up with a fucking sponge. But falling for her was never a part of the plan.
She grabs her phone from the nightstand when I don’t answer, flicking it over to the speakerphone after she dials a number. She lays it on the bed beside me, never taking the pressure from the knife.
A deep male voice answers. “Hello?”
“Ryder, I need you,” she replies.
“Where?” Ryder asks, instantly alert.
“Beach house. Bring Gage and Dex.”
I hear him shouting in the background. “On our way,” he says and hangs up.
“Such a shame,” she mutters. “We could have been great.”
I feel the sharp sting of a needle in my neck. Her beautiful face wavers in and out, and the last thing I remember is a tear slipping down her cheek.
The first thing I notice when I wake up is I have a pounding fucking headache, I’m freezing, and I can hear murmurs of voices around me. I keep my head hanging like I’m still knocked out and try to get my sluggish brain to pick up what they’re saying.
It all starts coming back piece by piece. Dinner with Alessa, the best sex of my life after, telling her I loved her, then her seeing my tattoo and flipping her shit.
Fucking idiot.
I keep it covered any other time, and in my rush to get to dinner with her, I forgot. I planned to tell her, but it never seemed like the right time.
“…. fuck do we do with him now?” a deep male voice filters through the fog.
I recognize it from the voice on the phone and risk a peek to see the face.
I dig through my drugged brain for everything my brothers told me.
Ryder. Ryder Venchelli. Son of Rocco Venchelli.
Twenty-five. Alessa’s second in command.
“How did you not know who he was?” That voice is like gravel over concrete.
Raspy and low. Dexton Barlow. Twenty-six.
When Alessa took over, he rose through the ranks quickly.
Six-foot-six, easily two hundred and sixty pounds of pure muscle.
Covered in tattoos. Thick, dark brown hair that is long enough to cover the scar that runs down the side of his head.
Pretty sure he can crush me under his boot. Or with his bare hands.
I finally look up enough to see them standing in front of a table and a wall full of weapons. Weapons you torture someone with.
Fuck.
Alessa shoots the big man a glare, causing the one with the wavy brown hair to chuckle.
Gage Lawson. Twenty-four. He came into this life when his dad, Connor Lawson, was recruited when Gage was a kid.
Now he stood side by side with Alessa in pictures, hiding behind the pretense that they are just spoiled, rich kids.
“He doesn’t look like either of the Perez brothers, asshole,” she spits out, causing the big guy to put his hands up. “I’m not a fucking idiot.”
“He didn’t say you were,” Ryder says gently. “We just need to figure out what to do now.”
Sensing I’m awake, her head slowly turns toward me, and she smiles.
It’s not that sweet smile I got earlier.
This one is full of malice and slightly unhinged.
My brothers warned me going into this that all of them wouldn’t hesitate to shoot first and ask questions later.
I figured I wouldn’t ever fall in love with her.
It was supposed to be an easily executed plan, and we could all get what we wanted. I was wrong.
And I’m fucked.
“Look who decided to join us,” she purrs, twirling the knife she had pressed to my neck earlier. “You ready to fess up?”
I have two options.
Lie and die for it.
Tell the truth and die for it.
Either way, I’m dead.
I take a deep breath and decide on the truth.
“My name is Leonardo Janelle Perez. Half-brother to Evander and Mateo Perez. Son of Frankie Perez,” I tell her while looking her straight in the eye.
I see the hurt flash through those pretty eyes before she can cover it up. “That’s all I lied about,” I insist.
“That’s enough to lie about,” she barks. “You knew who I was, didn’t you?”
I shake my head. “Not the first night, and I didn’t find out until I showed Mateo a picture of you.”
That’s the truth, and that’s how we ended up with this half-cocked fucking plan.
Bag the Poletti princess and call for a truce.
I didn’t know who she was the first night I met her.
All I saw was this gorgeous woman with a smile that lit up a room, blue eyes I wanted to get lost in, and hair black as night.
My brothers wanted the truce after our father died but didn’t know how to do it.
We didn’t want his lifelong blood feud to last any longer.
The blood feud that scarred up Dexton’s face.
I didn’t expect to start having feelings for her.
Just after four fucking months, she already had me wrapped around that tiny finger before we ever slept together.
Now I’m gone for this girl, and she is, without a doubt, going to kill me.
I don’t think now is a good time to mention that she lied to me too.
“How the hell did you not know who she is?” Gage scoffs, spinning a chair around to sit in it backward, two feet from where I’m currently tied up.
I look down at him and know why I’m cold. I’m in my boxer briefs, tied with my arms over my head, toes barely touching the ground. I’m in a concrete room, which they all seem familiar with.
“I’m new to the family,” I tell them honestly. “I didn’t even know who I was until a year ago. Dear old Dad paid my mom off to disappear when he knocked her up so his wife wouldn’t find out. Evander and Mateo found me and welcomed me into the family.”
“Why did you keep seeing me, then? I know your brothers told you about the family rivalry,” Alessa points out.
“We don’t want to be rivals anymore, and we wanted to find a way to end it when I ran into you.”
“You don’t believe this shit, do you?” Ryder asks, then looks at her face. “You’re fucking believing him right now!”
“Shut up,” she hisses at Ryder, then walks toward me, stopping to look up at me.
“So, if I call for a meeting with the families, Evander and Mateo will confirm what you just said?” she asks, and I nod.
“Keep in mind that if you’re lying, I won’t hesitate to start a war by killing all of you,” she warns.
I believe with one-hundred percent certainty that she will. Me getting caught wasn’t a part of the plan, but here we are.
I nod. “I get it.”
“Everyone out,” she orders.
Ryder bristles. “Les, I don’t…”
“Out!” she cuts him off; that one word rings through the room with authority.
They all make their way through the door to the right. Ryder gives her one last meaningful look before shutting the door.
She looks at me without the mask she’s been wearing while they were in here. “Was any of it real?” she asks softly.
“It was.”
“I can’t believe I fell for your shit,” she says with a humorless laugh. “Apparently, I still am because I want to believe you so bad.”
“You can believe me, Baby. I swear.” I’m pleading at this point, and I don’t even care.
It isn’t even that I’m begging for my life, which I am.
I’m pleading with her to believe me because I don’t want to lose her.
I could feel my heart breaking just thinking about it.
These past four months have been the happiest I’ve ever been.
“How?!” she asks, throwing her arms in the air, knife still in hand. “You have lied to me for months, Leo. You told me you lov…” She shakes her head hard once, shaking out what she was about to say. “You made a plan to set me up.”
“To unite the families,” I insist. “We wanted to show you that we aren’t like Frankie.”
She rolls her eyes heavenward. “That is not how you do that. All you showed me is that you’re all liars. Just like him and the rest of the Perez family.” She looks at me again, and her eyes look haunted like some old memory is creeping up. She blinks, and it’s gone.
What the fuck was that?
“Do you know why the feud started?” she asks, sitting in the chair Gage vacated, crossing one leg over the other, tapping her knife on her thigh. I shake my head. “Evander and Mateo didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head again. “They said they didn’t know why or when it started. They were young and raised to hate the Poletti’s. They formed their own opinion when they realized Frankie was a fucking monster.”
“Do you know how Frankie died?” she asks with that weird tilt of her head.
“He was tortured. They always figured it was one of his many enemies and never investigated it.”
She nods. “It was,” she confirms, then looks me dead in the eye. “It was me.”
I know my face shows my shock. This beautiful girl tortured Frankie Perez? Did I know her at all? Apparently not. The only real thing I know about her is what my brothers told me.