Destructive King (Mafia Royals 3)

I released a humorless chuckle. “She won’t even listen to the man she loves. What makes you think she’d listen to her uncle? The same one who kills for sport with one hand while holding a Nobel prize in the other?”

Phoenix choked out a laugh. “Sorry, it amuses me every fucking time.”

“Same.”

“Besides, Nikolai can be very convincing…”

I snorted and looked back up at my son’s hurt expression. “Fuck it, give him a call; I don’t need to know the details, just that he gets the point across to her in a way that I clearly didn’t.”

“Consider it done.” Phoenix’s grin was menacing. Hell, I almost felt sorry for Nikolai now.

Some of the sadness dissipated.

And to think it was Phoenix, the man who used to be enemy number one back in college, who was sitting with me in the dark… bloody, beaten, drinking wine and offering to fix what I couldn’t.

Yeah, God was probably having a laugh over that one.

Chapter Fourteen

“They say you die twice. Once when you stop breathing, and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” —Banksy

Ash

“Ma!” A swat landed on the back of my head after I attempted to grab one of the breadsticks she’d made from scratch. “That hurt!”

“Manners!” She jabbed a wooden spoon at me. The same one that she used to smack my ass with when I used to lie to her about finishing my vegetables. It wasn’t like it was a hard smack; I was just more terrified of it than I was anything else for some reason. Now just seeing it had me holding my hands up in surrender.

Dad chuckled.

I shot him a glare.

Got a middle finger back.

Then watched in horror as he picked up a breadstick and took a huge bite.

“How is that fair?” I asked the table.

Ma just grinned and kissed him on the head. “He’s worked hard today.”

“Yeah, son.” His grin made me want to hurl. “I worked real hard today.” Note that he said this as he was grabbing Ma’s ass.

“Not at the dinner table!” I nearly shrieked as Izzy walked in, sighed, and then blindly tried to find a chair while covering her eyes. Thank God the baby of our family, Ariel, was at a friend’s house, nobody needed that sort of trauma.

“What did we say about censorship?” I grumbled to myself.

Annie came in next, took one look at them, blushed, and quickly pulled out a chair.

Damn girl blushed at anything and everything like she was some virgin who’d never seen a dick before.

And mine just chose an inopportune moment to remind me and my brain that she had, in fact, seen mine, touched mine, that I’d been inside her, that I’d nearly gotten off on her. Used her as a way to make the pain go away, only to discover that she made it worse.

She always did.

Was it her smile?

Her fear of me?

Her presence?

No clue.

But it seemed after sparring for a bit tonight, after teaching her more of the basics, we had some sort of white flag waving between us.

Already I knew she had been hurt after the tweets that had gone out. Add that to my basically threatening the entire school, and it had been a long day.

And with Mom and Dad flirting over the pasta.

It promised to be an even longer night.

“So.” Ma held out her hands. “Who wants to pray?”

“Pretty sure you two shouldn’t,” I grumbled. “What with you fornicating all over the place.”

Annie flinched in her chair. Why the hell was I noticing every single thing she did? Like I was hyperaware of each reaction, each movement when all I wanted was revenge.

Pain.

Blood.

“Married,” Dad annoyingly pointed out, shaking me out of my dark thoughts as I pulled my head out of my ass and tried to focus on the plan ahead, which did not include thinking about how close Annie had been when we trained, the way her breaths came out in short little gasps from those parted full lips.

I adjusted myself under the table like I was in junior high and then looked up, only to see my dad giving me a knowing smile. “Been a long time since you’ve been to confession—you pray.”

Son of a—

Was it wrong to pray with a hard-on?

Because I was pretty sure that was in the Bible somewhere: thou shall not think of sex and thank God for food at the same time.

“Sure,” I grated out and bowed my head. “Dear God, thank you for our health, our family, and our food. Amen.”

I quickly grabbed my fork, so I was doing something with my hand other than thinking about rubbing one out beneath the dinner rolls and shot a glare toward my dad, who seemed to be purposefully taking eons to reach for the pasta and hand the dish to me.