Page 20 of Dangerous Men

“XXL,” I tell her with a smug smile. Next to me, Alec rolls his eyes, but so what? It’s true.

Sydney frowns, selecting a shirt from the pile and standing up. “I’m so sorry, the biggest size we have is a large. Will this work?”

She hands it to me, and I grin. There’s a muffin on the front of it, with big sparkly eyes. I pull it on over my head, yanking on the fabric to cover my stomach.

It’s useless. The shirt doesn’t reach my belt, and the sleeves are so tight around my arms I feel like I’m going to burst through the seams. I’m one hard flex away from ripping the entire thing into pieces. But the way her eyes linger on my body, the tip of her pink tongue coming out to wet her lips again, has me grinning.

“It’s perfect,” I tell her.

And for the first time, I don’t give a fuck whether Alec wants to share.

Because I won’t be able to stay away from this one.

9

SEBASTIAN

I’m surrounded by idiots.

“Can you take that stupid thing off?” I ask, glancing over at where Ashton is lounging on the couch, taking up the whole damn thing all on his own. As usual. “It’s an eyesore.”

Ashton just shakes his head with a laugh, running a hand over the front of his new shirt. The words printed on the front are stretched so tight across his chest they’re not even legible. A grotesque cartoonsomethingabove them looks like it was flattened by a truck.

“No way, it was a gift from our girl,” he says, grinning like an idiot. “I might never take it off.”

“Excuse you?” Alec says, pivoting in his office chair to stare him down. “Since when is she‘ourgirl’?”

His tone is openly hostile, but he’s not fooling either of us. For whatever fucked-up reason this is what he’s always preferred. Whatboth of themhave always preferred. One woman shared between the two of them. Whatever possessive streak he has with this new one is hardly going to change that.

“Since I saw her and fell head over heels in love!”Ashton groans, rubbing his face. “And come on, you can’t tell me she isn’t down for it. With that stuff she likes to read? Fuck, I bet she’s thinking about it right now, imagining all the things the two of us could do to her. All the ways we could take her…”

Fucking idiots.

“Focus,” I snap. “Viper will be here any minute, and she’s not going to be anyone’s girl if he finds out about her, right? So, cover it up ortake it off.”

Grumbling, Ashton finally does as he’s told.

Smart move. Our final brother isn’t exactly right in the head, and if Alec and Ashton are the type to fixate on something, it’s nothing,nothing, compared to how obsessive Viper can get.

They’ll want to keep him as far from her as possible until they’re finished with her and have moved on.

Right on schedule, a few seconds after Ashton pulls on a massive hoodie to cover his ridiculous shirt, the door flies open, and in he walks. Murder on two legs. Almost as big as Ashton, hair cut right to the scalp to showcase all his scars, Viper stalks into the room.

Viper was never quite right, even back at the orphanage where we all grew up together. He was always a little too violent, a little too close to having a full-on meltdown over nothing at all.

Years of working for the East Coast mafia in Empire City with us under Dante just made him worse. Far, far worse. And now the creature that stands before us isn’t so much a man as he is a loaded fucking gun. Thank God we’re the ones with our finger on the trigger.

Viper doesn’t say anything. He enters with a grin, showing too many teeth, and walks right up to Alec’s desk before dropping something heavy on top of it.

Giovanni’s decapitated head lands on the wood with a wet thud.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ashton swears, standing up from the couch and turning away from it. He grips his hair in his hands, bending forward at the waist, and I wonder briefly if he’s going to be sick. For all his fighting, for all the violence he’s endured and inflicted, Ashton never really developed a taste for blood.

Not like some of us.

Alec barely reacts. He stares into Giovanni’s cloudy gaze for a long moment before looking up at Viper.

“Did you get a name?” he asks.