Page 79 of The Mafia Marriage Contract

“You look like shit.”

“I feel worse than that.” I narrow my eyes at the cigarette. “You need to quit that shit.”

I shove past him, the scent of old leather, scotch, and gun oil heavy in the air. This apartment is like a fortress. Surveillance feeds line the walls. Technology components hum in every corner like a heartbeat. This is where all the private hacking and recon work is done.

“Fuck that. I put my life on the line every day I walk out of this place. I’m keeping every vice I have.” Bronx closes the door and flicks the lock.

“You here to brood or bleed?” he says, nodding at my busted hand.

“Both.”

He hands me a glass of scotch without me having to ask. I tip the glass and gulp it down. It’s neat. Aged. Almost sharp enough to cut the edge off Livvie’s betrayal.

“She met with Roman behind my back.”

Bronx exhales hard. “Fuck.”

My jaw tenses as I sit on the couch. “Yeah.”

He refills my glass before he drops into the chair opposite me, eyes narrowing. “You sure?”

“My men saw her leave and picked her up on the sidewalk outside his hotel.”

“And she told you nothing?”

“She lied through her teeth. Made up some bullshit, likeI wouldn’t see right through it. When I pushed her harder, she confessed.”

My pulse trips over itself as the anger comes rushing back again. The fucking humiliation of having my own men find her outside the hotel of another man has my gut in knots. She’s done it for the last time, though.

Bronx runs a hand through his dark hair. “This is what I warned you about. That woman is a blade pointed at your fucking throat.”

I slam the drink back and put the glass on the table in front of me. “I know.”

“You don’t act like it.”

“I didn’t kill her, did I?”

He scoffs. “Congratulations. You want a trophy for restraint?”

I stand up and pace the length of the room, my boots dragging along the floor, each step heavier than the last. My shoulder screams beneath the sling, but I ignore it.

“There’s something off with her,” I say, scrubbing a hand down the front of my face. “It’s not just Roman. It’s like she’s… I don’t know. Breaking apart. Fighting herself. She’s holding back.”

Bronx watches me with hawk eyes, lifting a single brow. “That doesn’t mean she’s not dangerous, K. Her father’s a problem. The Tribunal wants him gone. Maybe he’s onto something. Maybe he’s convinced her to work against you and they caught wind of it.”

I heave a deep sigh. Cormac was extremely accommodating when I called him about Livvie’s whereabouts. He was responsive. But it doesn’t makesense that he’d lost tabs on his number one security guy and that eats at me. “I need to figure out who the fuck she’s loyal to.”

“Yep,” Bronx says. “Because it sure as shit isn’t you. And I don’t know when you’re gonna wake up and realize that she was involved in that hit on you. I don’t give a shit what she says or how good she fucked you afterward. She’s an O’Callaghan and this sham marriage of yours doesn’t change that. Her father wants to be king. You think he wouldn’t try to knock you off your throne?”

“I gave her a necklace with a GPS tracker in it. She took it off before she left the penthouse,” I say, my chest tight. “The guys only found her because they tailed her to Roman’s hotel.”

That necklace… I saw the music notes in the jewelry store and thought she’d like it. It was more than just a tracking device. I wanted to get her something nice, wanted to take her out and spend time peeling back her layers since most of the time our own private war is raging.

Goddammit. My fingers twitch, and I want to punch something again. Instead, I point at the glowing monitors. “What about the Blood Vault? Have you found anything else?”

Bronx pours himself another scotch and stomps out the cigarette. He nods toward the computers. “We’ve got partial access. Our guy found a buried key string. But it’s protected with an old IRA encryption protocol. Fucking pain in the ass to crack.”

“You think we’ll get in?”