Page 14 of The Boss

I am.

I am pissed about the woman.

I do not want this.

I wave off my best friend and end our sparring match, irritated.

A random Italian kidnapping gets fucked over sideways and I end up engaged to their princess.What the actual fuck?

If it wasn’t so good for my family, if Mancini himself weren’t so eager to use this mishap to expand his slimy reach to Canada, giving me way more leverage than he should, I would’ve refused. Hell, I tried. I added my own terms, demanded his help in New York and the full dowry amount and still he went for it.

Insanity.

And that’s saying something in our world.

Mac hands me a water bottle, both of us panting hard. “Well, boss, at least she’s easy on the eyes. Too bad she’s stuck with your ugly mug.”

He nudges me with a laugh but I just shake my head.

I’ve heard that about the Mancini girl, but I don’t care what she looks like. I didn’t look through the photos the team gathered. I don’t care about her personality either. Doesn’t matter. We won’t be getting close.

I have worked too hard, too long, sacrificed way too fucking much to get tangled up in some girl. And they tangle you up. At one point I thought I wouldn’t mind marrying. Not for love, of course. But I considered a kind of distant companionship with a sweet, soft-spoken Irish girl. Or maybe a nice Canadian, one of our associate’s daughters. I liked the idea of some sons to run around the house.

But my world got darker and darker. I decided a while back that I didn’t want to drag anyone else into the deep end with me.

Plus, I’ve watched it happen over and over again…

A capo loses his cool in an interrogation. A don loses a whole section of his business as a ransom. A soldier spills all his secrets at the sight of a knife poised against a pretty throat.

I watch my cousin walk across our gym, giving one of our new kids shit about his form. My eyes move on, looking around the room at the handful of soldiers currently working out. I know a few of them are only in here because they want to watch me spar, want to be in the room with me.

I exhale.

Good men die when their leader loses his mind over a woman.

I can’t afford to be exposed that way. I fucking hate exposure. I finally have the compound off the grid. The men are a content, competent, well-oiled machine that runs in the shadows. No more iPhones or Instagram. All the showboats in my ranks have been killed or calmed.

Now we let the whispers about us do half our jobs. Just last week a man—if you can call him that—pissed himself and started singing a song of secrets, simply because one of my enforcers walked in his direction at the club. We weren’t even there for him.

I take a swig of water having finally caught my breath. I get one gulp down before a group of men bust in the gym door. Immediately the energy shifts.

“Boss! Killian found the Canadian asshole that was overcharging us trying to escape out of town. He’s on his way to the warehouse with him now.”

The men start to murmur and shift, dropping weights and clanging the metal equipment.

I stand as I finish the water off and they all quiet down.

I crack my neck and close my eyes to say quietly, “I won’t bother showering then, since this is sure to get messy.”

Everyone cheers and I grab my shirt from the edge of the ring. I’m tense as I put it on, and not from the training with Mac. Or the dead lifts I did before that.

I know this Mancini arrangement is good for the Quinn clan. I know this partnership is even better for my long-term goals. It’s what had to be done. Mancini crawled through the rumors and the darkness and made me an offer that can’t be refused.

But I’ve read the files on his supposedly stunning daughter.

Luna Mancini is not a stay in shadow, speak in whisperskind of woman.

Which is why, yes, I am fucking pissed.