Page 45 of The Mafia Marriage Contract

But before I give her the file, I head to the bar across the room and grab a glass off the shelf for each of us, pouring two shots.

I pick up one of the glasses and hold it out to her as a silent test of control.

She snatches it from my hand but doesn’t drink it down. “I don’t want to play any more of your games, Kingston. I want to know what you found out. I am your equal, goddammit. Not your little trophy sidepiece. I gave you and Bronx privacy. Now you owe me the courtesy of the truth.”

I take a sip of my drink. Livvie’s jaw sets, an expectant look on her face.

“You went to the meeting, not me. I am tired of being kept in the dark.” She steps forward. “So you’d better stopstringing me along. I won’t accept this life, do you understand me? I am not a second-class citizen or a muted wife.”

“No,” I say quietly. “You’re not. But you act rashly and make dumbass decisions. That stops now.” I glower at her. “Because from here on out, you need to be more careful with where you put your trust. If you aren’t, you will destroy us both. Understand?”

“What the hell does that even mean?” she says, squeezing the glass. The tips of her fingers turn white from the pressure.

I square my shoulders and walk over to my desk where the thick folder lies on top of it. I pick it up. “I mean that the people you trust don’t give a flying fuck about you, so stop trying to protect them and make excuses for them.” I shake the folder in the air, then hand it to Livvie. “See, this is all the shit Roman didn’t tell you about.”

I pour myself another whiskey while Livvie flips through the contents of the folder that Conor gave me—photographs, financial records, documentation from secret meetings that her father kept hidden from her. All the sins he committed against the Tribunal. The reasons why he’s going to be punished.

The color slips from her face, a sharp hiss of breath the only sound in the otherwise silent space.

She finally looks up, disbelief etched into her features.

“Your father made deals behind the Tribunal’s back. Deals that cost lives. That’s why you got dragged into this marriage, Liv. It’s payback for his sins.”

She drops the file back on my desk like it just singed her fingertips.

“Fuck, this is all about moneyand power. He murdered those people, all to claim his throne. Men who sat around our dining room table. I knew he was ruthless…” She shakes her head. “I just hoped he’d stop one day. You know? Find another hobby that wasn’t butchering his friends. Now it’s come back to bite him and I’m the one stuck in a dead-end marriage, paying for his fucking sins.”

The hairs on the back of my neck rise. “All marriages are dead ends, right? Happy couples living in harmony until the day they die.”

Livvie rolls her eyes. “Happy and harmony weren’t gifted to us on our wedding day, Kingston.”

“Your father built an empire on top of the weak,” I say in a matter-of-fact tone. “And that help came with a cost. He did things that went against the Tribunal's plans. He put their operation at risk and by doing so, he put a target on his back.”

She lasers me with a fiery look. “Great, so I’m paying the goddamn debt. How convenient for him that he didn’t need to suffer, that I was at his disposal to fuck over.”

Then she closes the distance between us, her eyes burning a hole into my soul.

“And what did getting to the top cost you, Kingston? Who did you kill to get there?”

A pang assaults my heart.

Wrong question, princess. It’s not who did I kill, but rather… who will I kill.

15

LIVVIE

I couldn’t sleep after leafing through the faces from my father’s past. So I spent the night alone in my new sanctuary.

The file of evil deeds sits on the music stand like a wound that refuses to close, bleeding his actions into every dark corner of my mind.

My father climbed to the top by betraying the people close to him. Men who followed him into danger and ended up murdered by his hand.

It's no surprise he pimped out his eldest daughter to the Viacavas to save his own neck.

Raising me in a mansion with financial privilege and a string of nannies didn’t earn my love.

And Kingston?