Page 47

She scoffs. “Yeah, what a surprise that the man who laughed when I screamed for help said something you didn’t like.”
My mouth pulls into a grimace. “Remember that, do you?”
The tiny bit of humor drops from her face. “I’ll never forget it.”
That guilty feeling crawls across my ribcage, and I adjust my seat to face hers. “Nero is a complicated man.”
She lets out an incredulous laugh. “Complicated. Sure.”
I want to tell her that she can trust Nero. That he would never hurt her. That we might be bad men, but we aren’t bad like that.
But––and here’s the complicated part––I need her to keep believing that I’m willing to kill all her family and friends if she crosses me.
Not exactly the foundation for a trusting marriage.
“So, what is it?” she asks. “A gang or something?”
I sigh. “Or something.” I uncross my arms and drag a hand down my face. How do I explain this? “The Alliance is a, well, for lack of a better term, it’s a criminal organization.”
“Criminal organization,” she repeats slowly. “Like the mafia?”
I let my head tip back and forth. “More or less.”
“More or less?” her brows raise in challenge.
“Yeah, Honey. More or less.”
“Stop calling me that.”
I smile at her defiance. “No.”
She crosses her arms to show her displeasure with me, but it just pushes her tits up even higher and I can’t help but drop my eyes to the temptation.
She drops her hands to her lap with a huff. “How is somethingmore or lesslike the mafia?”
“I don’t suppose you’d settle for me telling you that you’re better off not knowing?”
“Not a fucking chance.”
“Fine.” I take a breath, deciding to just lay it out. She’s stuck with me now, so what’s the harm in her knowing? “Nero and I started The Alliance about fifteen years ago when we took out the two major mafia families in the area.”
“Took out…” she interrupts.
“Killed,” I say simply. “I wiped out the Irish, Nero brought down the Russians, and we combined the men that we left alive to create The Alliance. Where loyalty and trust means more than contaminated bloodlines.”
Her lips pull to the side, I watch her eyes as she takes in this information. “But, what do you do?”
“Bad things, Savannah. We aren’t good men.”
“But like what? Some of us aren’t familiar withmafia shit. Does that mean you sell cocaine and Tommy guns?”
My brow lifts. “You watch too many movies.”
She lifts her hands in awellgesture.
“We have different facets of men that do different things. And yes, some of those things include illegal substances and firearms. But most of it revolves around money. Around influence. Keeping our territory under our control and keeping other people out.”
I watch her swallow. “So, earlier, when you mentioned enemies…”