Mia can’t help grimacing, but she nods. “That’s what I said.”
Cherie casts a skeptical look between us. I lift up my shirt so she can see my abs. “She couldn’t resist?”
Mia rolls her eyes and comes over to get Dom. “Put those away before someone gets hurt.”
Cherie watches at Mia takes Dom from me, but Mia’s level of comfort around me probably helps sell what her terrible attempt at lying did not. If I hurt Mia, she shouldn’t be this comfortable so close to me, taking our baby snuggling him against her chest.
Cherie doesn’t understand the way Mia is; she’s been sheltered from much of our history. Cherie knows Mateo hurt Mia, but she doesn’t know I ever did.
Now, thanks to Mia covering my ass again, maybe she doesn’t have to.
“I have to change his diaper,” Mia tells us. “Why don’t you two go back in there and I’ll be in as soon as I’m finished?”
Chapter Thirty Two
Vince
Carly stands in front of me, sliding her hand up my tie and giving me a sultry little smile. “God, you look good in a suit.”
“Seems like I can afford to buy a lot of them now,” I mutter.
The reading of my father’s will was this morning. I knew I would inherit a lot, but I ended up with even more than I expected. If I just burned the Vegas house to the ground instead of selling it, I’d still be set for the rest of my life.
“Well, you should,” she advises me, running her hand down my chest, letting her warm gaze follow. “If we had time, I’d take all this sexy clothing right back off you.”
I smirk faintly. “Maybe later.”
“If I’m lucky, huh?” she teases, leaning close to give me a kiss.
I wrap my arms around her waist and look down at her when she goes to pull back. “I’m the lucky one. Thank you for this week. I have not been my best self here.”
She lightly shrugs, dismissing the real threat we had to navigate this week. “Nah, you did all right. It could have been much worse.”
“Could have been better,” I admit.
“You have the rest of our lives to do better,” she informs me, wrapping her arms around my neck. “I didn’t expect you to bring your A-game under these circumstances. I knew these people brought out the worst in you. If this is the worst of it, I can handle that.”
Thankfully she doesn’t know about the fleeting thoughts of kidnapping that passed through my brain last night, so I damn sure don’t enlighten her. Instead I smile at her and lean in to give her another kiss.
Carly finally pulls back, wrapping her arm around me. “Now, let’s go get this over with.”
—
My father’s funeral is about as full of love as his life was.
Since he was important, the graveyard is flooded with people, but no one is sad. He may have touched all our lives, but the nature of his influence is easily expressed by how little any of us seem to care that he’s gone.
It’s easy for the women to forget who we are when we’re safely tucked away inside Mateo’s house. It may not be safe for me—especially in an emotional sense—but it’s easy to forget that he’s careful for a reason. That house is a fortress, populated with people who protect him and carefully monitored. It’s the only place men with as much power as Mateo has can relax a little and let down their guards—at least as much as men like that can ever put down their guards.
It’s not a surprise that this grave yard is crawling with soldiers, armed to the teeth, casting untrusting looks in every direction.
It is a surprise that most of the men are Rafe’s.
After spending the weekend relaxing at my old house, enjoying Mateo’s hospitality, and fucking my sister-in-law, now he stands alone in front of my father’s grave, surrounded by men who would die to protect him. He meets my gaze across the coffin and offers a grim smile.
His message is clear: Vegas belongs to him now. If I have a problem with it, there are more than a dozen well-armed men at this location alone who will happily gun me down.
Mateo has his own men here, but they’re damn sure not going to protect me. I have no army, no dangerous friends, not a single intimidating man to follow me. I don’t want any of that, but given it was my father’s and the archaic way my family organizes, I’m the one all that power should rightfully pass to.
Laurel stands by her sister, holding her coat snugly against her body. Carly wraps a protective arm around her shoulders, her other arm looped through mine.
“See, this is why I don’t have one night stands,” Laurel states. “You might get good sex out of it, but it might turn out the guy who delivers the orgasms heads a criminal organization and forgot to tell you.”