Amante’s contract was signed almost a month after mine.
“What do these contracts even matter? She is a better fit for my boys age-wise at least, what young girl wants to be tethered to a man fifteen years older than her?” Amante huffed, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Alessandro, if I recall correctly, you and your late wife had a nearly twenty year age difference and she was one of ours.” Volkov’s thickly accented words were the first he’d spoken since I’d entered the room.
Trying not to show my shock over his sudden interjection, I schooled my expression and nodded. “Besides, Perrie and I have already reached an understanding and I have her consent, can you really say the same?”
Amante’s face began to turn purple as he glanced between me and Ethan Chandler who looked about two seconds from bolting from the room entirely.
“And what if she ends up the same way that all of the women in your family seem to end up? Half-crazy and stuck in a tower like some tragic fairytale princess?”
The Italian’s words hit like a brick and I reeled back in my seat as if he’d thrown a physical punch at me. Even the rest of the people in the room stiffened with shock as they all wheeled to face the man.
Any mention of Aine Keane was a taboo and all five heads knew it. My mother had been the living victim of the last turf war when the Serbians had kidnapped her and done unspeakable things because my father refused to sell them guns. While the Keane family wasn’t the only source of weapons in the city, we specialized in making the kinds of guns that would be completely untraceable to the authorities.
After the abduction and torture of my mother, the Serbians had been wiped out completely and six families became five. At this moment, looking at Amante, I was half-tempted to try and make it four.
“If you ever hope to purchase another Keane weapon,” I told him slowly, my voice low as I tried to contain my anger. “Then you have better shut your fucking mouth and never mention my mother again.”
Tension hung heavy in the air as Amante seemed to realize the faux pas that even the other three heads wouldn’t forgive him for. There was a largely unspoken rule that the women and children of the families were off-limits when it came to our disputes.
Honor among criminals was rare, but to keep this alliance together it was required on some level.
Pushing my chair back, I stood, gathering my file folder and handing it to Rhodes. “This meeting has been… ah… eventful to say the least. I’d invite you to my wedding, but I’m more of a private affair sort of man. Have a fantastic day.”
Turning on my heel I swept out of the office, my men falling into step behind me as I went.
“Are you all right?” Rhodes asked once we’d gotten on the elevator again.
I didn’t answer, the storm cloud that always seemed to form over my head at the mention of my mother was too thick for me to even form a response to his well-meaning question.
Perrie isn’t my mother, I had to remind myself as we drove back to the mansion. Not everyone is as breakable as she was.
Seven
Three days into my new life and I was practically climbing the walls of the Keane estate.
When I was in the hospital I’d read my fair share of mafia romance out of sheer boredom and so I figured that, living the life of a mobster’s wife would be full of gun fights, kidnappings, and a healthy dose of BDSM from the attractive mafia man with a heart of stone—not that I wanted the BDSM or anything like that.
But the actual reality of it all was wildly different.
Every day at the Keane estate was damn near idyllic, like something out of a regency era novel rather than dark, sexy romance.
The mansion was just outside of the city, but looking outside of the window one would think they’d been transported to the English countryside. The expansive, well-manicured grounds were surrounded by a thick green forest that seemed to block out the view of everything except for the haze of high rise buildings in the distance.
My mornings always started with a long swim in the pool and me pushing myself until I was wheezing and shaky. I was determined to get some kind of stamina back—even if it killed me—and it was a good way to work out my worries about my impending second wedding.
After my swim I went to my omega classes where an ancient old omega, who’d long since stopped having heats, droned on about the intricacies of what she called ‘the fairer designation.’ She quite literally brought in an old school projector with pictures from the sixties, but I at least got the gist of it as she explained how to control pheromones and tamp down on emotions so they didn’t send every nearby alpha into a frenzy.
There were also some other things that sounded completely outdated like always submitting to your alpha and not going against your alpha’s orders—both things that I took with a grain of salt as I doodled in my notebook.
From there, I would go to my first meal of the day with Edison Keane, and by extension Rhodes McCreary. The first real thing I learned about my husband-to-be was that his second was always nearby.
While we were negotiating our contract, I figured that the two meals would feel like pulling teeth with the alpha when it came to conversation. After all, that first day by the pool Edison seemed reluctant to share any information about himself and his grumpy second-in-command had been forced to chime in.
But I was pleasantly surprised that Edison was actually a pretty good conversationalist. There was rarely a moment where we weren’t talking about something.
The first few days were about me. What did I like to do, what did I like to eat, what were my thoughts about XYZ… all things he probably could have read in my file but still asked as if he was curious to know.
Then, slowly, he started to tell me about himself. His time in college which he viewed as one of the best times in his life because he was free from the constraints of the Keane family, how he liked old black and white movies, and even if he didn’t outright state it, his affection for Rhodes.
“Rhodes was a menace from age fifteen to twenty-five,” Edison joked as we sat around the long, shiny dining room table, gesturing at Rhodes who he made sit and eat with us every day.
The man still hadn’t warmed to me any, his sharp features always remaining neutral whenever I was around, but whenever Edison looked at him, I was sure that his dark eyes warmed by a few degrees.
“Never met a rule he couldn’t break—I thought our RA was going to have a stroke by the time we moved out,” Edison finished, popping a grape into his mouth with a self-satisfied smile.
I laughed, trying to focus on the chicken on my own plate. It was getting increasingly harder to keep myself aloof from the man even though I kept telling myself that this was just a business arrangement.
“You seem put off by my talk of our university days.”
I shook my head, pushing a bit of pasta with my fork as I tried to figure out the most diplomatic way to say what I wanted to say. “I’m not—I’ve just never gotten to go because I was sick so it’s hard to relate.”
Silence hung awkwardly at the table and I could feel two pairs of eyes practically drilling a hole into the top of my head as I stared down at my plate. We almost never mentioned my time in the hospital and they had certainly never outright asked about my leukemia.
“What would you want to do if you had gone to college?” Rhodes’ question surprised me. He’d never actually asked me anything during mealtimes, leaving that completely to Edison.
