Eight Brothers Fiancee (Love by Numbers 7)

Huxley leaned up towards the driver. “Redirect to my place.” He looked back over his shoulder at Alexa and I. “We’ll explain all the details when we get there.”

15

Huxley

I wasn’t quite sure where my hairbrained scheme stemmed from, but being with Alexa made it all click in an instant. I wanted Alexa. Not just once, not just right now, but for a long time. I realized that Harley was right when he said that we shouldn’t rush things and risk losing her. That’s why we needed to bring her with us to Italy. She needed to see our family for what we truly were, and maybe she would know how to sort things out with Malia too. Originally, we’d decided to leave her out of it and just keep her safe from Malia’s wrath, but we were running out of time. Despite what he said, Harley had no plan, and if we went to Italy, Harley was going to have to marry that devil woman and then we’d definitely lose the chance to be with Alexa. We needed to take the risk that showing her everything wouldn’t scare her off. If she could handle the real Foxx family, then we’d know for sure she was the one.

She sat down on the couch, still holding Harley’s shirt around her. She looked good enough to eat, but now wasn’t the time to focus on that. We had to fill her in and see if she could come up with a plan where none of us could.

“Harley.” Alexa scooted a bit closer to him on the couch. “I could tell something’s been distracting all of you for a long time now. Even if I can’t solve the problem, I’ll find a way to help.”

Harley shook his head, looking at me with concern. “I still don’t think this is a great idea, Hux. We have no idea what the implications of this could be.”

I sat down on the other side of Alexa. “No, but we don’t have anything better.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “She’s the smartest thing we’ve got going right now. She can plan circles around us, so maybe she can figure this one out too.” I looked right into his eyes. He was scared; we all were. “We don’t have any other choice.”

Alexa was shaking a bit under my touch. She could sense the seriousness of the situation. Still, she reached out and took one of Harley’s hands into hers. “Don’t shut me out. Besides,” she giggled and nodded her head back towards me, “this one promised me a complete expose on your family, so…” I smiled, loving the way she was attempting to comfort him, and waited for Harley to say something. If he wasn’t on board, it would never work.

Finally, Harley closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. He held it there for about thirty seconds before exhaling and opening his eyes. He squeezed Alexa’s hand and nodded at me. “Okay.”

Alexa shot me a quick glance of satisfaction and then looked back at Harley. “Okay.”

He swallowed hard. “You know Malia, my,” he held up his hands to do air quotes, “‘Fiancee?’”

“Yeah. Is she not actually your fiancee?”

“She is, but not by choice,” Harley explained. “It’s an arranged marriage.”

“Really? I didn’t realize American families did that sort of thing.”

“Our dad,” I took over, “struggled when he first started his company. His dreams were bigger than his pockets, and pretty soon he found himself in need of an investor otherwise he was going to go out of business. Unfortunately for him, no one found value in investing in a brand new news company. There were already so many at the time, and people couldn’t see that my dad was a visionary when it came to building and expanding a business. No one would invest.”

“He decided to approach a man not as interested in the business itself as he was in getting paid back,” Harley explained. “With more interest than was legal.”

“He went to a loan shark?” Alexa asked.

Harley nodded. “The man he found was notorious for shady, underbelly dealings in Dallas. Dimitri Marcello.

“I’ve heard the name before. The Marcellos are one of the most elusive and dangerous mob families in the country,” Alexa said. “Your dad got mixed up with them?”

“More than mixed up. He signed a contract that gives the Marcellos nearly half of the control over our entire company,” I said. “For as long as the contract is in my dad’s name, our company is owned and controlled by them.”

“The arranged marriage is to get around the loophole that my dad found. If he turned the company over to me, it would void the arrangement between my dad and Dimitri, the only problem is, the original contract includes a clause that says I must be married to inherit the company. My dad just assumed Dimitri was an old-fashioned guy, but it turned out the plan was always to make whomever inherited the company from my father marry someone in the Marcello family to keep control in their court.” Harley sighed. “Ergo, Malia.”