Page 78 of Scandalous Kingpin

My stomach roiled.

I wanted her back. I wanted her in my city, in my house, in my bed. And she couldn’t stand to even look at me.

One bad judgment call had cost me the one thing I couldn’t live without.

And now I’d lost her, along with every other piece of me that mattered. It all lay scattered around her feet, following her around wherever she went.

“Fucking hit me,” Aemon growled. “Fight back so I can keep my promise to her and kill you fair and square.”

I flashed a grim smile. “If she wants me dead, kill me.”

His next blow sent a fresh burst of pain straight to my skull.

“She made me promise not to, you fucking asshole.” His mouth twisted, and he shoved me away with disgust, his jaw flexing. “You don’t deserve a place on this earth, never mind in her heart. Why in the fuck she still loves you, I’ll never understand.”

He was right. It would be easier if he killed me. But then his words sunk in and hope sparked like a flicker of light in the dark of a nightmare. Her heart… It was mine.

He kicked me, but I was too high on the realization that Ivy’s heart was still mine.She still loves me.

“I will fucking end you and your entire family. Tell Juliette I’m coming for her too for betraying her best friend.” His voice cracked on the words, his sister’s pain as raw as if it were his own. “We’ll never forgive you. Any of you DiLustros.”

That makes two of us.But as I said before, I wasn’t a good man, and I refused to give my wife up. I physically couldn’t.

So I would fight for her. It had nothing to do with the Murphy brothers. My loyalties lay firmly with the only woman who’d ever accepted me for what and who I was. All my faults and invisible scars. She loved—possibly still did—all of me.

Aemon’s face hardened. “If I ever see you near my sister again, I’ll kill you.”

Just the idea had my stomach churning all over again.

“Or we can make a business arrangement,” I offered, coughing out blood and wiping my shirt sleeve over my face.

He shook his head. “You have nothing of interest to us, not unless you’re ready to offer up your brother and his scheming wife.”

I wasn’t proud to admit—to myself at least—that if I didn’t have an ace card, I would consider offering him precisely that.

“How about something better?”

He scoffed. “Such as?”

Shifting to kneel on my knees, I gripped both my hips with white-knuckled fists. “A way to smuggle your product into continental Europe.”

He stilled. “Who said we want a way in there?”

I shrugged. “It’s what got your athair into bed with Sofia. He always wanted to expand, but she double-crossed him.” Surprise flashed across his expression. It wasn’t a well-known fact. There were only three individuals who knew that fact, and two were now dead. How did I learn it, you might ask? I hacked into mydear great-grandmother’s database that she kept away from her regular businesses. It was one of the most code-protected pieces of information I’d ever encountered. “She got knocked up, my guess on purpose, and instead used his little corner of coastal Ireland to move flesh from Europe to Russia and the States.”

I watched Aemon process the information, seconds stretching into minutes.

“And what do you want in return?” Before I could answer, he added, “Not my sister.”

It was a matter of saying the right thing. Words were currency in these parts. “Of course, if your sister doesn’t want me, I won’t force her.”

“Get me the contacts and a way to move my product,” he gritted. “And get me the dog my sister wants.”

He shot one last disgusted glance in my direction before he left. The door banged shut, and I knelt there, staring out the window for what felt like hours while a single thought played on repeat.

I planned on taking what was mine if it killed me. I’d get on my knees and get my wife back and show her exactly how sorry I was.

I couldn’t live without her light.