Page 95 of Brutal Devil

One by one, they file out of the room until the only ones remaining are my brothers and me, our guards escorting Revello and his crew to the door.

“I don’t like the focus on Luna,” Saint says quietly when they’re gone.

I sigh, a knot tightening in my gut. “I don’t like it either, but they don’t leave us with any other options. If the only way we can cement the joining of the families is for the Revellos to see that Luna is fine, then let them see her.”

“Or they could be luring her out, like a lamb for the slaughter,” Scorpion points out.

“If the Animal is behind Tomasso getting clipped, Luna could be next,” Lucky adds.

My chest seizes. My brothers aren’t saying anything that hasn’t already occurred to me, but that doesn’t change the factthat the mere thought of any harm coming to Luna makes me want to set the whole fucking world on fire.

“I’ll protect her,” I grind out.

“Priest,” Saint says, a note of warning in his voice.

She’s not his to protect. She’s mine.

“I said I’ll protect her,” I repeat. “I’ll protect her, and we’ll do what we have to fucking do. Unifying the families is what we’ve been working toward for the last year, and I’m not going to allow anything to jeopardize that now.”

“Not even her?” Saint asks.

And I know what he’s really asking. What his eyes are saying. If I cared about Luna, I wouldn’t let her become a pawn in this sadistic fucking game Amedeo’s playing. But I’ve been handed the keys to the castle, and I’m not going to turn my back on them. Our father raised us to be cold, heartless, brutal. To feel nothing except loyalty to the family, the need for more. That’s who I am.

I’m the don.

And you don’t get to remain the don by being soft. By falling in love. By making yourself vulnerable. Fuck that shit. I can do this, and I can do it my way.

I pop my jaw. “Not even her.”

Chapter 23

LUNA

“Repeat that, please,” I say, reasonably sure I must have misheard Priest.

Because when he stalked into the living room a minute ago, looking dangerous and hot and like everything I shouldn’t want, I swear he said I’m getting out of my underground prison.

But that couldn’t be right. Could it?

“Is that ink on your fingers?” he asks instead of answering my question, taking my fingers in his and holding them up for his inspection.

I hate the jolt of sheer electricity that goes through me at his touch, almost as much as I hate the heat that rolls down my spine and the pulse in my clit. The faintest hint of smoke clings to his designer suit, and I can’t help but wonder where he was.

“Yeah, it’s ink.” I tug at my hand, but he won’t let go.

I’ve spent the morning and the afternoon writing a hailstorm of poems. Maybe none of them are good. Maybe all of them are. They’re too fresh and too new for me to have a handle on them, all raw and messy, like the woods after a summer thunderstorm.

He smirks. “You liked my gift.”

“I liked finally being able to write again, even if the medium is archaic,” I correct acidly.

He doesn’t need to know it, but I’ve always written rough drafts of my poems by hand. There’s something about the tactile scratch of a pen on paper, the smell of the ink, the slight bleed, that is necessary for my process. It doesn’t matter that I’ve grown up with my fingers practically attached to a keyboard or a cell phone. I’m a pen-and-ink girl, and I always will be.

Priest gives me a knowing look, his gaze dipping to my mouth. “You telling me that this isn’t the brand of pen you have about two dozen of stashed in your things?”

“I don’t know.” I raise a brow at him. “Are you telling me that you were digging through my things, gangster?”

Okay, it’s kind of cute that he made an effort to buy my favorite pens. The writer in me is swooning. The rest of me still knows what I’m dealing with here—a dangerous Mafia don who forced me into marrying him.