Mark (Mallick Brothers 3)

Her eyes were swimming, and I had to fight to keep a smile from creeping up. I had learned over the past year that Scotti, while a bonafide badass in a lot of ways, also apparently had a tendency to tear up over just about any emotion. Pissed off? Tears. Grateful? Tears. Happy? Tears. I figured it maybe came from a decade of trying to be 'one of the guys' and therefore not allowing herself to let that shit out often. So now it was just coming out all the time. I found it endearing as fuck.

"Some day, baby, you're gonna realize you deserve every bit of good that comes your way," I told her pulling her against my chest so she could get it together. The tear thing didn't always end up leading to her soaking through my shirt, though it definitely happened. Sometimes she just needed to have a moment.

"Oh, so I was thinking," she said a moment later, sounding hesitant. "About the guest list."

"Okay..." I prompted when she didn't go on.

"Just, hear me out on this one, okay?" she asked, pulling away to look at me. The tears were gone and her lips were in a serious line.

"Okay."

"I want to invite Collings," she announced, making me jerk back.

"What?"

"Look, I know he's a cop. And if he had to, he would bring any one of us in because he's one of the few good cops on the force. But he's also someone who buried some incriminating evidence he had on me; he gave me and my brothers a chance to start over; he let me come back to you without always being worried. And he even called you guys about Eli," she went on, eyes going sad even as his name sent a punch to my guts. It never stopped. It never would. I almost hoped it never did actually. Maybe he gave up on us, but we didn't give up on him. "He does so much good around here, and he gets shit on just because he's a cop. We owe him a lot. The least we can do is invite him to our wedding."

Really, she had a point.

There were many, many times over the years when he had just enough to drag me or my brothers in, but never did. And, hell, after all that shit went down with Lex Keith and The Henchmen, he had been the one to help out Jstorm, get Wolf out of it, and save at least a small amount of dignity of the NBPD.

"You want him there, baby, he's there."

And six months later, he was, looking uncomfortable in one of his usual work suits, pulling at his tie, looking around at the interesting group of criminals that made up our wedding. Namely, several of The Henchmen and Scotti's brothers, but he showed up, and he wished us well. He told Scotti she looked beautiful. He told me not to fuck it up.

Scotti did eventually pick an 'empire waist,' which apparently meant that it kinda came up under her tits. Whatever. She looked fucking breathtaking in it with her long, dark hair left down and a crown of white flowers she had grown herself that matched the bouquet she had also grown herself.

And, the crazy chick she was, she accepted my hand, making me the happiest goddamn man in the world.Scotti - 2 years"I hate him," I declared to Evie who was working the store with me. "That is the second time this month he has come in and ordered a vase for both his wife and his girlfriend. Same flowers, same vase, same note. Guess it makes it easier for him not to screw it up when they bring it up to him."

I opened a very small, very cute, and very busy little flower shop in the main area of Navesink Bank. I had just so happened to luck out when the only florist we had in town decided to retire to Florida. And since I lived with Mark, and I worked, and the only real, large purchase I had needed to make was my car after I finally got my license, I had most of my chunk of the money from the holdups to use to make this dream a reality.

I had been working at, and loving, a nursery one town over, learning all the ins and outs of growing and taking care of various flowers. And while it made me happy, I always wanted to be my own boss. I watched Kingston flourish with his business, and it made me see how much I wanted to have something to call my own as well.

So I took my dreams and business plans to Charlie and Ryan and asked them to give me their honest opinion on the viability of my plan, them being the better business-heads in the family. To my utter shock, and delight, they had both been optimistic, insisting we needed a florist and that if my goals were modest, not to make a fortune, then I would be happy.