Top Dog

“So you’ve decided that we have no future together then?”

I made the mistake of looking into his eyes and felt my knees growing weak again. I reached for my purse and clutched it tightly to me, allowing the feeling of the material to root me into reality.

It didn’t matter how I felt.

What I thought.

What I thought could be between us.

It shattered my heart that Romeo had chosen this lifestyle instead of me. He may have watched over us a

ll these years but he hadn’t come after me or his son before now. The strong, family oriented alpha male hadn’t whisked us away from this dangerous life. And now he was enmeshed in it.

And that meant I had to protect Matteo from his own father.

“I will see my son,” he said again. “I love him, and I have a right to be able to be in his life.”

Without thinking, I loomed over Romeo until my shadow was covering his face. Close enough to feel the heat of his body emanating toward me. Close enough to be reminded of the reason why I’d succumbed to him in the first place.

Close enough to smell the cologne he hadn’t changed in over six years.

“Over my dead body,” I said.

CHAPTER 2

ROMEO

She’s one fucking woman.

I closed my eyes as I leaned back in bed, my mind replaying that moment.

How she loomed over me.

How her hazel eyes grew deep with protective anger.

How her words stung me to my core. I couldn’t show weakness in front of my bodyguards. I had to keep up appearances as best as I could, but I’d wanted to reach out to her and spin her around, take her into my arms, plant my lips upon hers, and show her I was still the man she remembered.

The man she had dreamed about.

The man who craved to the core of my being to live free of darkness and gloom.

I didn’t want the position. When my father died and I had to step up. I was weeks away from making my move to go find Julia. For years, I’d held her memory in my mind. For months, I’d wondered why she left me. Why she skipped town without a word and never came back. And it wasn’t until I used my father’s resources to track her down that I figured out why.

Her father sent her away because people knew about us, but he kept her away because she had gotten pregnant.

Out of duty, I took the position. But I swore to my family things would be different, that I would make things different. The streets of New York had seen enough death and anger and destruction. What everyone needed was for our two families to work together. I was determined to creep us out of the grasp of the federal authorities and become a legitimate operation, a family that protected the streets we loved instead of keeping it in this vice grip of fear and blood.

That was my dream.

An era of peace.

Julia had looked spectacular. Her hazel eyes, speckled with flakes of gray and yellow, were as beautiful as I remembered. Her long brown hair with those luscious red streaks made her tan skin glow in the dark. Soft. Supple, with curves that had blossomed as she had become a woman and mother. The dress she wore clung to her breasts and nipped in at her waist before flaring over a pair of hips that had my cock pressing against my pants all through dinner.

But her strength.

Where the hell had that come from?

She used to be so mild; well-tempered and quiet. Her voice had been a soft whisper in the wind compared to the forcefulness she used at dinner. I remembered her as a fragile dove, but what I got was a winged eagle, with talons bared and ready to fling whatever got in her way into the air to die a lonely, heartbroken death.