Wed to the Bad Boy(123)

“She, huh? What you are saying is that I should be bringing a woman into the business?”

I looked up at the handsome son of the mob boss, and smiled. That was exactly what I was saying. It was a good plan. Perfect.

“You’re absolutely insane, do you know that?” Strike ran a hand through his thick raven hair and then grinned, the type of smile that made me think he was the unstable one.

“How so?”

“You fucking got out of this life,” he said. “I know you left after your dad died.”

“My family was never in the mob.” I called it what it was. The mob. The Irish Mob was a well-known organization in the Northeast, and anywhere we settled, they were there.

“No, but pretty damn close, and you know it. We do shit like this all the time, trading jobs, helping each other out. The shit your MC gets into, it is small time, normally, but dealing with drug suppliers and getting involved in a turf war? Come on, you know that it is dangerous as hell.”

“What do you know of my life?”

“More than you know. I asked around about you. Fallen princess with a dead brother and a hot head for a man.” He was uncomfortably close to me as he said that, his breath close enough to feel, but I remained stone-faced. “No to mention your ‘rage’ problem.”

“You know, then, that men of power are not something I could ever fear. Why did you force Fire and Steel to meet you in the first place? Why didn’t you just agree to their terms?”

“I worked with them a few times, but that was almost ten years ago, when I was just a kid, and a run around for my dad. I wanted to see who I was working with now. Besides, Hound’s Breath are good customers, or were, and I didn’t want to just drop them because not all of them could claim the same heritage. Or old connections.”

“You gotten shit since you dropped them?” I asked, trying to find a way to know more. Any information could be useful.

He eyed me for a moment, trying to decide if he could trust me, finally he said, “Haven’t heard from them. Not one call. Not from them, not from their parent organization.”

“Parent organization?”

“Princess, you have a lot to learn about this world. Anyways, I’ve already said enough. You’ll get your girl, and I’ll get my books looking the way they should. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some brothers to deal with.”

I didn’t want to know what he meant about that, I just watched him walk out of my office, letting my two “bodyguards” back in.

“Come on, Lala. We gotta get you back to the club or Rage will be pissed.”

Strike and Rage. They were so similar in so many ways; it made me wonder about Cullen.

Was I really as safe with him as I thought I was, or were they simply mirrors of each other?





Cullen

“Motherfucking piece of shit,” I swore as I looked at the stripped caliper bolt. Whoever worked on this piece of shit car before me ruined it. And I was sick and fucking tired of working to get it off, I was going to have to replace the entire fucking thing.

So much for saving Mrs. Sullivan some money. Now I was going to have to call her and listen to her bitch, but what did she expect for going to some big company to do her brakes last time? All because they were on sale. I threw my wrench on the ground and cursed out loud, my ire rising as I heard a chuckle coming from under the car in the bay next to me.

Fucking Mick.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, kicking his crawler, not hard, not even enough to be dangerous. I wasn’t a fucking idiot. I knew this shit was mostly safe, but I wasn’t going to risk him dropping the fucking muffler he was working on directly on his head.

“Isn’t it obvious, Cullen? You’re in looooooove,” Mick taunted me. “And it’s making you act like a jealous idiot.”

“This has nothing to do with—”

“Oh, yes it does. We’ve dealt with shit like stripped caliper bolts dozens of times this week. You’re pissed she’s over there with that motherfucking mobster.” Mick shook his wrench at me, looking like a fucking idiot on his crawler, lying on the ground head popped out from under a car.

“It isn’t like it’s the Italian mafia, Mick.”

“No, it’s worse. It’s our own people.”

“I just want to get all this shit done and over with. Fuck up the Hounds and finish our deal with the fucking Irish, and then get back to business as usual.”

“I don’t think that is possible. Nothing will be usual now. Especially without him.”

Sean. He was my brother-in-arms, and Mick was right. It didn’t help that we had to bury another one of our own. A prospect, but he was set to be patched in. And he was fucking dead.