Page 30 of Desperate Crimes (Mergers & Acquisitions #6)

T he limo glides smoothly through the streets, eating up the miles between us and what promises to be the most important confrontation of my life.

But we could be crawling through gridlock or suspended in fucking time for all I care.

Because I can’t stop looking at her.

Leanna.

My wife.

She’s sitting next to me in the back of the limo like she doesn’t know what she does to me.

Like she’s not a goddamn fever dream wrapped in midnight silk and moonlight.

The dress— the dress —is the one I hoped she’d wear.

The one I had hung in the closet just in case she felt like breaking my soul a little more.

Blue.

Not just any blue.

What my father calls Fury blue.

The deep, inky kind that mirrors the sky right before it swallows the sun.

Raw silk clinging to every curve, hugging her breasts with a scoop neckline that rides the edge of indecency.

Thin straps on her shoulders glitter like stars, but they’re nothing compared to the shimmer in her eyes.

And I’m fucking ruined.

“Is something wrong?” Leanna asks softly, her voice brushing against me like velvet across a raw nerve.

“Wrong?” I echo, fighting to suck in a breath.

My lungs are working, but the oxygen never makes it past my belt.

“No. Not wrong. Just—” I sigh and shake my head. “Look at you.”

She blushes. Actually blushes. Sweet and demure and devastating.

“Thank you. You look good too.”

She thinks I look good?

I grin.

She bites her bottom lip.

Jesus. This woman.

I’m in a Brioni tux I barely registered putting on.

My tie is probably crooked, and my jaw is clenched so tight it might crack.

Because I’m sitting here trying not to haul her into my lap and bury myself inside her before we get to her father’s estate.

Because this woman?

She’s my sun. My moon. My everything.

Her skin is bronzed from days in the garden, kissed golden by the sun, her natural blonde hair gleaming like wheat under moonlight.

There’s a freckle on her collarbone I want to taste.

A pulse in her throat that jumps when I look at her too long.

And I always look too long.

My heart swells with a love so violent it doesn’t feel like love at all— it feels like need.

Like blood and flame and barbed wire pulling tight around something soft and sacred.

I want to say the words.

The ones she deserves. The ones she aches to hear.

But they catch in my throat every time.

So I show her.

I try to, at any rate.

I cook for her. I keep her warm.

I order her gifts.

Worship her body like a man on his knees before a goddess.

Make love to her like a madman.

Like she’s not just my obsession but my breath, my blood, my compass in this fucked-up world.

Now we’re going to face them. All of them.

Her parents, her aunts and uncles, my family too. The cousins. The kids.

The empire of blood and influence we were both born into.

They’ll all be there. Watching.

Judging.

Some will think I stole her. Some will think I forced her.

They might call me a thief. But I’m not some common criminal in the night.

I know the law. I am the law in rooms most of them are too afraid to enter.

And by every sacred contract, by blood and ink and the seal of her breathless yes— I own this woman.

But it’s more than that.

Leanna is mine. But I’m hers, too.

And tonight, the world will finally see that I didn’t just steal a bride— I claimed a queen.

The limo slices down the coast highway like a blade—polished, quiet, and deceptively civilized.

Leanna sits beside me, all silken curves and quiet tension.

She’s staring out the window at the sea, but I can feel her.

She’s in her head.

Probably dreading the moment her father lays eyes on us and realizes exactly what we’ve done.

But me?

I’m thinking.

Scheming.

Brooding.

Whatever you wanna call it, I’m doing it.

And the one thing none of them seem to fucking understand—what they need to learn—is that when it comes to her, there is no negotiation.

We can talk about contracts.

Territory.

We can even talk about that smug, two-faced bastard Caas and the fact that as of this morning, I’ve now got him by the balls.

He thought he could play both sides.

Thought he could flirt with Viper Enterprises while slipping intel to Volkov Industries behind my back.

But Sammy was right.

Adrik does need Caas’ territory overseas.

That land straddles a stretch of coastline where six rare earth mineral mines are just sitting, untapped, unreachable—because Caas locked them down.

Until today.

I finalized the deal this morning.

That land? It’s mine now. Ours.

So now the great Adrik Volkov— Leanna’s father, the Dark Wolf himself —is going to have to choose.

Let go of the illusion of control and welcome me into the family like blood or risk losing the future he’s been clawing after for the past three decades.

Either way, I win.

But what I really want to accomplish tonight—the biggest hurdle they’re gonna have wrapping their heads around—is the fact I didn’t marry Leanna for leverage.

This wasn’t some power grab.

It wasn’t a calculated move in some cold-blooded merger.

She was never part of the game.

But she is the reason for everything I do.

Every breath I take, every fucking hour I work, every move I make now— is for her.

And if Adrik Volkov thinks he’s going to storm at me like I’m some low-level thug who stole his precious daughter in the middle of the night, he’s going to learn real fucking quick what happens when you threaten the one thing in this world I won’t give up.

My wife.

My Princess.

My Persephone.

I reach across the seat and take her hand.

Her fingers tremble, but she laces them through mine anyway.

Good girl.

Whatever happens tonight, she’ll feel my presence beside her like armor. Like claim.

And if her father wants to go to war?

Then so be it.

Because I’ve already won.