Wed to the Bad Boy(23)

I opened the door, and crossed my arms, "that was totally unnecessary."

"But it got your attention." He said as he walked into the condo and looked around. "Well, I have to say, the motherfucker sure has good taste."

He sat down in a very expensive looking leather chair and crossed his legs, looking at me.

"What do you want?" I asked.

“I'm impressed. I told you to get to know them, to learn about them, and you made a beeline right for the next in line.” His vision narrowed. “It wasn’t what I expected, but we can certainly work with it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The best way to get a permanent link to the damn Fitzgeralds. You. You will marry Greyson Fitzgerald.”

I crossed my arms and bit my lip. Marrying any man, especially not a future mob boss, was not on my agenda. I had a Ph.D. to finish, and I should’ve been at school even now writing papers and finishing my reading. I was already starting to get behind.

No, my plans had very little room for a man.

“I have no intention of marrying anyone.” I said, taking control of myself for the first time in days. “I’m not your lapdog, and I won’t do it.”

“You seem to forget what family you belong to,” Dennis stood, looming over me. He didn’t touch me, but he got so close I thought he would. “You belong to us. You work for us. You do what I want when I want, do you understand?”

I swallowed, hard. “I could take away your entire life in an instant and don’t think I wouldn’t hesitate to do it. You will do as you are told. You will.”

“You wouldn’t,” I sucked in a breath and looked at him with new eyes. He’d never threatened me before. I knew he was capable of it, but I just had never experienced it. I didn’t expect to.

“You have no idea what I am fucking capable of Joanna. Your father, you, it could all go up in smoke. Literally or figuratively, you decide.”

He’d kill me, kill my father if I didn’t do what he wanted. I might as well have handed him my throat on a platter if I said no.

“Well then, what choice do I have?” I asked.

“I thought you’d come around.”

I stared at him and watched as he turned around and walked out the door. “Expect your lover-boy to approach you about it soon. Got a deal in the works.”

I sat there, smoldering with anger until I could come up with a better plan. Then I grabbed my purse and ran out the door.

The only thing I could think to do was get the fuck out of here and back to my regular life. Maybe if I did this would all just go away.





Chapter Eight





Joanna



Words on a computer screen. That was what I needed. It was so much easier to concentrate on the economic influence of women in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century than it was to think about my own issues.

“Where is she?” The sound of that voice put me on edge. I could hear it all the way across the rows and rows of cubicles.

Greyson.

I didn’t want to stand up. I knew that if I did, if I went to him, he would look at me and think I’d jump at his every beck and call. I had work to do. I had a shit ton of it, honestly. And I didn’t want his interference.

So I sat there, and I let him come to me. I tried not to look peeved as he found my cubicle and glared at me.

“I thought you were going to wait for me at home?” he asked his voice low.

It didn’t matter, it still carried, and I was sure the entire office heard it. I blushed.

“I had work to do.”

The man furrowed his brow, actually furrowed it, at me.

“Come on, we’re leaving.” Greyson grabbed my wrist and pulled me up to him, but I pulled back, staying exactly where I was.

“I said I have work to do.”

“And we have things to discuss, or would rather do it here?”

This was the second time in one day that someone was trying to boss me around, and I was getting sick to death of it. I rolled my eyes and stood up, shaking him off of me.

“I’m sick to death of men bossing me around. You can ask me to leave, you can wait until I’m done, you can do anything else, but you are not going to tell me what to do.”

He reached out for me, but this time he was not nearly as gentle. His pull was rough as he grabbed my arm and tugged me into his own body.

He intentionally, quietly, dipped his head down.

“You need to reassess who in the fuck you think you are talking to. I’m not your family. I’m not like anyone you have ever known. You will come with me, and you will do it now.”

Just the smallest trace of fear, mixed with arousal, flowed through me. I wasn’t finished with this argument, but what he said earlier resonated through me. I didn’t want my peers to be privy to my life outside of school. I was already enough of an outcast as it was.