Cade Burns
Waking up with Aria in my bed was a privilege-one that I couldn’t help but soak in as I got up at sunrise and made my way toward my office. She didn’t even stir as I moved, and humor filled me as I saw exactly how little of a morning person the woman was.
We’d shared a bed a few times before, and they had never been experiences as seamless as this one. Last night, it hadn’t been a fight. She hadn’t told me that she hated me and didn’t want to spend time in my bed with me. She had simply conceded, nodding and admitting that she’d love to sleep in my room.
It had been unexpected, but I forced all thoughts of last night away as I sat at my desk and got to work on the mounds of paperwork that needed to be done today-paperwork that I’d conveniently put off for weeks.
I worked for three hours, checking the clock occasionally. When it was late enough that I knew I didn’t risk her wrath, I made my way into the kitchen and got to work on something simple. A few minutes later, I strode up the stairs and opened the door to the bedroom.
She still lay face down on her pillow, snoring softly. The cascading hair down her back had me examining all the curves of her body visible beneath the sheet, and I felt an immediate erection coming to life. I’d never made a woman breakfast in bed, and I’d certainly never been aroused by merely looking at someone beneath the covers, but Aria had become something different. Something far more valuable.
She took a deep breath before stretching her limbs slightly and pushing herself onto her elbows before looking over her shoulder at me. She pawed a strand of hair from her face, and her expression still looked sleepy as she looked me up and down, eyes catching on the plate in my hand.
“For me?” she asked with a raspy voice. She cleared her throat as she sat up and smiled at me.
That fucking smile did things to me that I didn’t want to admit, and my gaze dropped to where she rested her arms on her knees in front of her. Red and raised on her skin was a familiar-looking brand that turned my stomach, and I didn’t think before speaking. “I want you to get a tattoo.”
Her brows shot up, and she blinked in surprise. “A tattoo?” she asked. “I don’t have any tattoos.”
“I want you to cover your brand,” I told her. “You were given to me, and I want it to be official. I want you to be mine officially, and I offer a tattoo design to a select few members of my household-the closest members. It shows that you are loyal to me and only to me.”
I could see the conflicted look in her eyes for just a moment before it went away.
“I can’t have a Ruso brand and a tattoo for your household,” she said, shaking her head and gnawing at her lip.
I strode to her side and set the plate on the bedside table as I dropped to the floor in front of her. I knew that she couldn’t have both, even if there was an alliance between our people for now. I wasn’t ignorant enough to think it would hold forever, especially not at the rate we were currently going. “I’m asking you to cover the Ruso brand.”
She took a sharp inhale, looking at the bed between us. I gathered her hand in mine and flipped her arm, revealing the brand. It was ugly with harsh lines, and I knew it would still take quite a while to heal fully and fade into barely raised lines. Probably years.
“I know it’s a big ask-”
“A really big one.”
“I also know that we have a bad history, but I want to change that. I understand why you did what you did, and I was an ass for not seeing it sooner. You were a child, and I should have never fucked with you. It’s more my fault than yours, and I want to offer this as reparation.”
She chuckled and shook her head, looking at me skeptically. “You want to mark me as yours as repayment?”
I didn’t hesitate before pulling off my shirt and turning, pointing to the intricate tattoo on my shoulder blade-one that was only shared with a few people. “This isn’t the brand of my employees. It’s my family tattoo. The only people who wear it are Elizabeth, Serg, my father, and me. And
Elizabeth’s husband wore it, too.”
That silenced her as she pulled herself to her feet and looked at it more closely, tracing her finger across the ink. “Why would you offer it to me?”
“You’re my family now.”
I hadn’t spoken those words aloud, but somehow, they felt right. They felt like the complete truth, and my chest loosened as I said them. I’d married her for a purpose that didn’t involve her at all, but the purpose had fallen secondary to what I felt for her. I thought back to when it had started -when that pure hatred had transformed into this-but I couldn’t pinpoint a moment.
Maybe it had been when she’d run from the car in the middle of a battle to save one of my people, or maybe it had been when we’d first slept in the same bed. When she’d tended to my wound there.
I had no idea when I started feeling this, but I knew it wouldn’t stop.
“You killed my father,” she said, taking a deep breath. I clenched my jaw, knowing that it wasn’t something I could apologize for. “I loved him, and I’ll never stop seeing him in a good way for all the great things he did for me in my life. He was an excellent father, and he made me who I am today, but I know what he did to you. I know that he was a cruel enemy, and I don’t fault you for hating him. I just-” she cut herself off and shook her head. “I feel like justice still needs to be served.”
“Justice was served,” I told her. I hadn’t planned on telling her what had been the driving factor behind my decision to attack, but if she was questioning this, she needed to know. “I didn’t attack your father until he killed my brother-in-law. My sister’s husband was one of the casualties of his last attack, and he was a good man. He deserved to have justice, and we did what we had to do. Elizabeth is still mourning his loss.”
Her eyes widened, and she didn’t say anything for a long moment as she looked at where I held her arm, stroking the brand there gently. I could tell that she was struggling to make a decision, but finally, she spoke.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I asked.
“I understand why you did it, and I can respect that decision. I’m still going to grieve my father, but I-I can make this decision.” She nodded, but I could tell there was more she wanted to say. “But, Cade? I can’t hurt my brother. I know it may come to that, but don’t ask me to be any part of it. He may not love me, but I’ll always love him.”
My chest ached as I saw the pain in her eyes as she said it. Despite the love she had for her brother, I wanted to kill him for putting that look in her eyes-for making her feel like she wasn’t good enough for him.
“I won’t let you be any part of that,” I swore.
I turned and wrapped an arm around her waist, bringing her body to mine. Our lips met, and the spark between us felt new and unexplored. It wasn’t just the physical need that had driven us previously. It wasn’t the physical attraction. It was so, so much more. The longing that flowed between our lips was palpable, and I waited for her to pull away and say something more, but she didn’t.
I took a step closer to the bed and rested her back on it, devouring her lips with mine, deepening the kiss that I knew would lead to different, more powerful places.
The door to my room barged open, and I whipped my head around, finding my sister there.
“Not now,” I demanded.
“Yes now. Get to the conference room.”
In an instant, she charged out, slamming the door behind her and telling me that something was happening-something big.
“We’ll take care of the tattoo later, I promised, struggling to pull away from her.
Aria laughed as I offered her a hand, and she pulled herself up, colliding with me again. She gave me a sidelong peck on the cheek before continuing forward and toward the conference room. I trailed behind her, and the oversize T-shirt she wore had my cock rising in my pants. The things this woman did to me…
When I entered the room, finding Serg and Elizabeth already inside, with serious expressions on their faces, my thoughts about bringing Aria back to bed died. “What’s happening?” I asked. Aria moved to the spot beside Serg, and I took in all the photos on the table before me-photos showing a lot of the Ruso men. Armed.
“They’re moving closer and closer into our territory, almost as if they’re taunting us,” Elizabeth said, shaking her head. She pointed at a photo in the center of the table. “This one right here is at the pharmacy two blocks from the house. They’re getting bolder.”
“We can’t trust him,” Aria whispered, grabbing the photo and looking at it. She shook her head. “We can’t.”
“I’m aware that we can’t trust him, but why is he testing the boundaries? Why wouldn’t he keep in his own lane?” I asked nobody in particular. “It’s almost as if he’s trying to see what he can get away with before I snap.”
“That’s exactly what he’s doing,” Serg said. “These men are all armed and looking for a fight. It only takes one incident to cause another damned shootout and take the lives of more of our men. I say we call off the alliance and attack outright.”
I shook my head. “The second we do that, the whole Italian mafia will be on our doorstep seeking retribution. They stick together on matters like this, and everyone already wants to be involved. They want this alliance to end, and we can’t afford to have everyone come here.”
“I think this alliance fucked us more than helped us,” Elizabeth admitted. “Now that we’re allied, the families who never gave us a second thought are looking our way. And God knows that Matteo doesn’t plan on helping us against them.”
It was a grave miscalculation on my part, and now I had to do whatever was best for our people. Regardless of if we broke the alliance or not, we’d have the full force of the Italian mafia on our men. But if we stayed in it, we’d have a chance against them. They wouldn’t come down on us, knowing that they had to fight one of their own families to succeed.
“We can send out some undercover teams just to make sure if something does happen, we’ll be equipped to handle it swiftly,” I decided. I needed to figure out what to do about this alliance because it didn’t look like it would end peacefully, regardless of the decision we made.
“He’s not going to follow through if you call on him,” Aria said. “You’d be better off breaking it now and calling it a day. You’d be much better off than if you trusted him to help you.”
I nodded, knowing that she had a good point. I could see how hard she was trying to get me to believe that, but she didn’t understand how dangerous it would be to breach a contract with him. I couldn’t defend myself against all the Italians allying, and this was the type of situation that would call for it.
If we held firm to the alliance, we faced the growing wrath of four families, and if we broke it, we faced the undying wrath of one. And if he had enough backing from other families-if he played his cards right-we could face far more than just that.
The only thing that was holding back the floodgates was Aria. As long as she was alive, both Matteo and I would be cautious about our footing.
It made sense why the other families wanted to see her dead, and I wouldn’t let that happen.
“I think we need to sit down and have a conversation with him.
Together.”