Marco repeated his question again. Lila wondered if this was all a bad dream she could wake up from. She’d just witnessed Marco kill a man in front of her eyes. How did he expect her to react?
It wasn’t like she had zero guilt either. She held his gun, pointed it at the man while Marco made a phone call. Marco gave her arm a squeeze and she blinked a few times.
“I’m good,” she said hoarsely.
“No, you’re not,” he said. “But we’re both alive and that’s all that matters.”
The police sirens grew louder now. Marco had somehow managed to convince her to move away from the corpse and sit at a nearby park bench. She shivered and pulled his coat tighter around her shoulders. Lila didn’t know how long she got lost in her own head but the sound of more cars arriving made her look up.
Marco was speaking to another man who looked hastily dressed. Ryker, she remembered, recognizing his tattoos. Two men from the Familia had arrived with him and were talking about how to dispose of the corpse quickly and efficiently while Marco spoke in a low voice with Ryker.
Ryker jerked his head toward her direction.
“What about her? She saw everything,” Ryker was saying.
She froze like a deer caught in the headlights. Why hadn’t she tried to slip away when she could? There’s no use, she thought. She was knee-deep in mafia business now.
Her father might’ve tried his best to hide what he did but she knew on some basic level how they operated. Lila had witnessed the head of the Familia commit murder. They weren’t going to just let her go.
“Lila’s with me. She’s not going to talk,” Marco answered for her.
That gave her some relief but now, Ryker and the other two Familia members’ gazes landed on her. She stared them down, not giving an inch. Finally, they went back to whatever they were doing.
Ryker shrugged. “I understand. Matthias would have wanted to question the shooter.”
Matthias? Marco’s brother was the Familia bogeyman. Someone who specialized in getting answers. No one had seen him in public for years and for a good reason. Her father told her a very bad man once tortured Matthias, disfigured him so badly that Matthias only kept to the shadows these days.
“I’ll deal with Matthias,” Marco said impatiently. “I’m taking her home. You’ll handle the police?”
“Leave them to me.” Ryker then walked up to her. She stood up. Marco looked pissed as hell. “Lila, you’ll really keep quiet about what you saw here?”
Marco scowled and looked ready to murder Ryker, but she knew Marco saw the other man like a brother. They were close, best friends even. Ryker was only concerned about Marco. That was all. The Familia protected each other. Always. That was what her father told her.
She needed to make a decision there and then. Marco claimed he intended to keep her, not discard her right away. She chose to believe him. Lila wasn’t picking a side. She already did that when she’d agreed to Marco’s proposal. To want him meant accepting who he was and what he did. Marco would never change. Unlike her father who chose to be in this life, Marco was born to it.
“Marco protected me from him,” she said, nodding to the corpse. “That’s all I need to know.”
Ryker gave her a small smile. “Good. That’s all I need to know.”
“Was that necessary?” Marco asked Ryker coldly.
“Just making sure, that’s all.”
“I’m taking her home now,” Marco said.
He offered her his hand and she saw blood had dripped from his wound to his fingers. She grasped it. The road Marco walked would be steeped in blood, and she knew that from the start, but someone had to be by his side. To walk that path with him.
Being the head of the Familia took its toll on him. To stand at the top, Marco had to stand apart from the others. In his own way, he was lonely just like she was. He didn’t need to tell her all this. She knew some of it from her father because Marco was all her dad talked about during their conversations.
Marco led her to his car. The drive back was a silent one. When Marco told her she wasn’t a simple distraction, that made her incredibly happy. Deep in her romantic heart, she’d always known Marco was her guy. Despite the complications he came with, she still wanted to be with him, to get to know him on a deeper and more intimate level.
She’d known since she was fifteen. All the men who came after him had been nothing but disappointments. Even after her father took a bullet for Marco, a part of her still loved him, but the rest hated his guts.
Her father had devoted his entire life to Marco, to the Familia. That had been his choice. She couldn’t condemn her father for his actions when essentially, she was doing the same. She chose Marco, chose the Familia.
Lila changed her mind about going back to her apartment. She wouldn’t be able to sleep after what she saw tonight and the last thing she wanted to do was be alone.
“Do you have a first-aid kid back at your place?” she asked him, breaking the quiet.
“Sure I do.” He sounded surprised.
“Take me there. I’ll patch you up,” she said. An excuse, and they both knew it.
Marco didn’t argue. He turned the car around and drove. They arrived in a good neighborhood in the city. Not the best, but a decent one. She got out of the car and glanced at the apartment building he must be staying at.
“What happened to the big house on Burton Avenue?” she asked.
“Still there. Matthias and his Lara took up residence there. I wanted my own place. A big house is just a pain in the ass to maintain, especially when I live alone,” he said, ushering her inside the building.
The doorman didn’t blink at the blood on Marco’s shirt, merely greeted him with, “Good evening.”
“Who’s Lara?” she asked.
“Matthias’s woman. Wife.”
“Wow, and you mentioned Sky’s with Ryker now?” she asked. “That’s a lot of changes in a short time.”
“It’s about time those two bastards found women who could handle them,” Marco said. “Although I’m still not sure what Sky sees in Ryker.”
Lila poked a finger into Marco’s cheek.
“What?” he asked as the elevator reached his floor—the pent-house suit. There was only one unit here and she wouldn’t be surprised if he owned the entire building.
“You’re in a good mood again,” she simply said. They got out of the elevator. There was a guy wearing a suit standing right outside the door. Marco nodded to him. She didn’t recognize this one but he seemed professional and didn’t give her a second glance. Marco opened the door and flicked the switch on.
Lila’s heart thudded violently. Normal people didn’t make jokes after seeing someone murdered. Was something inherently wrong with her? They entered Marco’s apartment.
“Where’s the kit?” she asked.
“Bathroom. This way.”
She followed him, curiously looking around his apartment. It was spacious and had doors leading to what looked like a pool. Marco opened the bathroom door and pulled out a first-aid kit from the shelf above the sink.
Lila pulled the toilet seat down and made him sit. Marco complied. He looked a little baffled by her actions. She didn’t know what she was doing either.
“Take off your shirt. I want to see your arm.”
“Just a graze, I told you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure. Dad used to say stuff like that all the time. Just a minor wound, bruise, whatever. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“No one talks to me like that,” Marco remarked but nonetheless did as she asked.
He unbuttoned his white shirt, revealing hard planes of muscle and ink. She swallowed and wondered if she’d made the wrong move. For a second, all she wanted to do was reach out, explore every inch of his marked skin, and touch the fierce beasts embedded there. A hawk’s wings wrapped around his right shoulder. A dragon curled around his six-pack abs and ribs and probably the entirety of his back.
“Like what you see?” Marco sounded amused.
The smug bastard knew she was gaping. She cleared her throat and focused on her task. Lila opened the first-aid kit and took out her supplies. She cleaned the wound first, and Marco didn’t even let out a hiss when she dabbed it with disinfectant.
“You’ve been patched many times, huh?” she asked.
He said nothing as she finished placing a bandage over the cut. He was right. It was just a graze, but she was glad she’d taken care of it. She packed everything back in the kit and set it aside. What next?
The last thing she wanted to do was sleep. The image of the dead man would haunt her in her sleep. Had she done the right thing in keeping quiet? Lila couldn’t turn the clock back now. She’d made her choice. All that was left was to stick to it, stick by her man, except was Marco her man?
“You’re good at this. Too good,” he finally said. Marco stood up, practically towering over her. Her back touched the counter. She let out a squeal when he placed his hands on her waist and lifted her so her ass sat on the marble surface.
Marco positioned himself between her legs. God. He looked good, just in his pants. Lila’s dress rode up her thighs so that her black lace panties were exposed to his face. He slid his hand up her thigh and she didn’t bat it away. She breathed hard.
“What happened just now won’t happen again,” he told her, looking deep into her eyes. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Just tell me something. That guy—he wasn’t a good man, was he?”
Marco shook his head. “He’s working for the Bratva. They control most of the drug trade in the city and use bastards like that all the time. Addicts to do their dirty business for them.”
“That’s low,” she whispered.
“Listen to me, Lila. He would’ve killed me, then you without hesitation. If he’d failed, he’d tattle to his bosses about you, about us. That’d put you in harm’s way and I can’t have that. That’s why he needed to die.”
“You’re talking about lives as if they amount to nothing,” she whispered.
Oh, she understood his reasons. It should disturb her that Marco sounded completely casual about killing, but it didn’t. He did what he’d needed to do tonight to keep them both safe. Her dad always told her that the Severin Familia had their own code of honor, that they always protected their own. The same didn’t work for other gangs.
“Not nothing,” Marco said, leaning in close until his trouser-covered groin brushed against the edge of her panties. Her heart beat nervously like the wings of a hummingbird. “In a sick way, his death brought you closer to me.”
She ran her fingers up his muscled arms, over the black ink there which concealed old bullet wounds and scars.
“In what way?”
Marco leaned in close to whisper, his breath warm against the shell of her ear. “Insurance. I can’t let you go now. Not ever.”
She shivered at the certainty in his words and the fevered look in his eyes. Marco was stating a fact. The cocky bastard truly believed she was all his for the taking. Any shred of resistance died the moment he closed his mouth over hers. This time, Marco didn’t hold back. He used his hands to peel her dress down her body, exposing her bra, the slutty underwear she wore for him.
“You know that, right?” he asked her, slipping the bra from her shoulders.