Page 46 of Filthy Little Regrets (Princes of NYC #2)

twenty-eight

MACE

Enjoying my wife’s reluctant pleasure is the only reason I make it through the week leading up to the fight.

More than the way her body fits perfectly with mine, the look in her eyes when I give her what she’s loath to admit—or the way she melts in my arms right before she falls asleep—is the sweetest sort of victory.

I didn’t think me staying away would bother her so much.

Her anger filled me with a twisted sort of pride.

After I found that she had changed the setting in my phone, forwarding my texts to her device, I needed to test our relationship. I don’t know why she did it or what her end game is. If it’s jealousy or something more. Two things are abundantly clear, though.

My wife likes me.

And she’s a sneaky little hacker.

I should probably be mad and not delighted that she had the audacity to invade my privacy.

I shouldn’t be proud that she got away with it for so long.

Everyone always underestimates Cassia. She’s smart, and I can’t help wondering if she’s plotting my demise or what else she might be doing to spy on me.

A smile cuts across my face at the thought. Fucked up as it is, I like when her claws come out. I’d happily let her destroy me.

Cassia looks up from her breakfast, eyebrows lifting.

“What?” Her cinnamon hair is pulled back in a tight bun, showcasing her perfectly symmetrical features and those lips I love to taste.

The low-cut top reveals enough cleavage that I consider the merits of gouging Tony’s eyes out, but if he can’t see, he can’t protect her.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” I tell her.

She grabs her coffee cup, averts her gaze, and takes a drink. Her throat bobs as she swallows. My cock twitches, but there’s no time to test how good it would feel for her to take me in her mouth. Vito wanted a meeting this morning, and tonight is the fight.

Taking the last bite of my breakfast, I gather my dishes and carry them to the sink.

The cleaning staff will take care of the rest. Cassia is still avoiding looking at me.

I need to see those pretty icy blue eyes one last time before my day turns to shit.

Prowling toward her, I watch the way her spine straightens, her body leaning toward me, despite her every effort to ignore me.

Stopping beside her, I grasp her chin and pull it up. Her gaze flies to meet mine, narrowing in protest, but there’s the slightest softening in her posture. She craves my touch.

I’ve got you, wife .

I smooth my thumb over her bottom lip, tracing the mouth that loves to test me. My pretty wife is filled with venom. Lucky for her, it’s the only sort of poison I’ d willingly drink.

“I’m picking the movie tonight,” she says, grasping for some type of control.

A grin tugs at my lips. I knew she liked our little ritual. It gives me reasons to hold her, and when the lights are off and the movie is playing, she stops pretending like she hates cuddling.

Reality slams into me. I won’t be holding her tonight.

It’s fight night. If it wasn’t for the mafia circling my sisters, I’d blow it off and stay home, enjoying my wife’s company.

I rub Cassia’s cheek with the pad of my thumb, and she leans into the touch.

Leaving her, if only for a night, is harder than it should be after a few weeks of us being married.

Sometimes I wonder if she’d escape if given the chance.

I don’t like to think about what I’d do if it came to that.

Cassia injected me with her toxin, and I’d burn the world to bring her back where she belongs: with me. “I won’t be home in time.”

Her eyebrows pinch together. “Why?”

“I have something I need to do.”

She scours my face. “And what is that?”

“Something for work.” Though the lie is stupid, I don’t want to taint her with the violence. The deaths. It could easily be mine, but dying isn’t an option. Too many people would be at risk if I died, including my wife. She’s quickly found her way on to the short list of women I’d kill for.

“Don’t wait up.” I lean in and kiss her, savoring the feel of her plush lips against mine, keeping the stolen kiss as a memory to carry me through the day.

“Your father tells me you’re not a fan of my idea of our families joining. ”

Vito Marino is on my shit list. The smug tilt of his lips as he sits across from me at Mamma Lucia’s has me eyeing his men standing guard.

There are three of them. Big guys with guns they’re not afraid to use.

Then there’s the kitchen staff. Mamma L’s is a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that’s always busy and impossible to get a table at. Unless you’re a Marino.

Lucia Marino was Vito’s great-great-grandma, and when she started the restaurant in the 1940s with her husband, no one expected that the Sicilian chef would become the head of one of the five families, but crazier things have happened.

Now, the restaurant is one of the longest standing in the neighborhood and a veritable stronghold.

There are guns everywhere. Some of the line cooks double as hitmen. I’m outmanned and outgunned. I clench my fist under the table, stifling the urge to slam it into Vito’s face.

“My sisters aren’t made for this world.”

He nods at the server who stops by with a silver tray that holds a prepared cigar.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” He takes the cigar and lighter.

“We all start the same. Babies, innocence yet corrupted,” he tells me, eyebrows lifting.

“You weren’t born with the killer instincts of a wolf.

You were made that way. With the right hand, your sisters can be made into mafia wives.

” Vito flicks the lighter, the flame flaring to life, and starts the slow process of lighting his cigar.

Clenching my jaw, I shake my head. “They’re not up for negotiation, and if Darius told you any different, he’s wrong.”

“You know what I think?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer, rotating the cigar around to warm it over the flame.

“Families like yours think they’re better than mine.

” His accent gets heavier with his irritation.

“Families like yours arrange marriages all the time. What’s the problem with a pretty little Astor becoming a Marino princess, huh? ”

I’m toeing a dangerous line. Offending the mafia is almost as bad as stealing from them. “Like I told Darius, my sisters aren’t being forced into any marriages. Not to a Marino, not to anyone else.”

“What if I don’t like that answer?” he asks with a vicious grin.

I wouldn’t put it past the asshole to try to kidnap my sisters to make his point. A deadly calm comes over me as I inch closer to taking my chances of putting this fucking mafioso in his place—the ground.

“Do we have a problem?” The question comes out between gritted teeth.

His men shift, hands moving toward their guns, but Vito shakes his head.

“Now, now, boys. The Wolf is going to make us a lot of money tonight.” His gaze roams over my face, the tight set of my jaw, and the promise of violence if he even thinks about taking my sisters against their will.

“I’ve seen that look before, but it came from a guy we call the Butcher. You know the name?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of him.” The man is a myth, a supposed son of a Marino capo who became the youngest mafia button man, but when they found out he preferred knives, he became the family’s first butcher. No one has ever seen any pictures of the Butcher of Manhattan, and no one knows his real name.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told him.

” Vito drops the lighter and the flame snuffs out as the metal clacks against the table.

He leans toward me, menace lacing his features.

“Keep looking at me with murder in your eyes, and you’ll find out why I’m the boss.

Your pretty sisters might look just as good painted in red. ”

The threat chills my blood. He’d do it, too. Kill innocent women because I fucked around and looked at him the wrong way. I swallow my anger, reining myself in until he sits back with a nod, eyes flicking to the door.

“Now, get the fuck out of my restaurant.”

The confrontation with Vito, my inability to find an easy way out of this fucking mess my dad got our family into, and the fact that I’m in this fucking warehouse again all these years later carves into me, forming a hollow that quickly fills and overflows with disgust and rage.

Disgust with myself for not sending my sisters away sooner.

Rage at my dad for everything he’s done.

The shoddy locker room does nothing to dull the growing roar of the crowd, their impatient chants filling the room.

I glare at the door. How many times have I been here?

Forced to fight and kill for entertainment.

It wasn’t always fighting to the death. Slowly, the spectators got bored, and things evolved.

I’ve won fights to save my sisters, but the sins are stains upon my soul.

Years of repressed anger greedily swallow up the rage from today.

Fresh fuel for the fire. Resignation fills my chest, and with a shallow breath, I drop into that dark, familiar place, the one that doesn’t know happiness.

That’s never seen light or joy or anything worth living for.

Sounds fade away the same way they did the first time I killed a boy in this very warehouse.

All that’s left is a faint ringing in my ears, a siren warning of impending danger.

My heartbeat steadies, and I rise from the bench, a chilling resolve sliding over me. The crowd parts when I approach. Sounds reverberate, but I can’t hear anything over the voice whispering inside my head. If you die, who’s going to protect them? Kill or be killed.