Monster: Made & Broken (A Mafia Bad Boy Romance) (11 page)

“
Well, since you’ve finally deigned it worth your time to show up, perhaps you would like to start out by explaining why you murdered the nephew of one of our only remaining allies?” My father’s face was expressionless as always, but the clipped tone spoke volumes about the amount of self-restraint he was affecting to remain so.

“
He tried to steal from me,”I said, turning my focus on my father. “Information. They’ve turned on us.”

For once, my father’s carefully schooled mask fell, incredulity taking its place. “He did
what?
What information?”

“
Sensitive information. The kind they could have used to take us down.” I’d carefully crafted my answer to what I’d known was an unavoidable question. It had to have enough truth to it that it justified my actions, but there also needed to be no hint of the exact content—or the method they’d used. My gut twisted at the thought of what my father would do to Evelyn if he ever found out she’d been involved.

My father stared at me for a long moment. Then his lips thinned, his eyes turning dark and dangerous. Had I been younger, I would have expected his belt to follow. The muscle memory of the pain he could inflict with that strip of leather made my hands clench and the monster inside snarl.

“
I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. “The Brigses have been loyal to our family for decades. Whatever your reason for lying to me—”

“
He’s not lying,” Blaine interrupted, effectively silencing the room. “Gerald tried to pull a fast one on me during a deal last year. He wasn’t pleased that I caught him in it. I thought he understood what would happen if he ever stepped a toe over the line again. Apparently, I was wrong.”

My father snapped his head around to glare at Blaine, and I felt a stab of fear for my older brother. He looked as relaxed and confident as ever, but he had to know that what he’d just admitted to was not likely to go down well with our father. He took even the remotest hint of insubordination to the extremest consequences, and Blaine had a wife and baby at home.

“
Explain,”
my father hissed, clearly on the edge of losing his infamous temper.

Blaine shrugged. “The deal was forty million and a shipment of automatic weapons for a development site up in Manchester. Turned out to be a sham. He was expecting me to find out when it was much too late to do anything about it without losing face. So, I took the shipment of automatics to him and reminded him not to mess with the Steels. Perhaps I should have been more thorough with my reminder if he thought it a good idea to try and steal from Marcus.”

“
And why, pray tell, am I only hearing about this now?”

“
I handled it. It wasn’t necessary to bother you with it. Brigs promised to let the deal go back and to behave—I expected no more trouble from him.”

Our father stared at him for a moment longer before he turned his focus back to me. Apparently, he’d accepted the explanation.

I had a hard time keeping the shock off my face. In my entire life, I’d never known him to let an issue of this size just drop. Just what was going on between the two of them? I looked back at Blaine for a clue and caught him exchanging a loaded glance with one of the twins. Had they known about this issue with Brigs? What else were my brothers hiding from our father? And from
me?

“
You do, of course, understand that we would have been in a much better position if you’d simply detained Leo rather than turning him into mincemeat?” my father asked as he folded his arms across his chest.

I nodded. Killing Leo hadn’t been a conscious choice—it had been an instinctive reaction to seeing him abuse Evelyn, and I’d lost control. But if given the choice, I’d have done it again. He had hurt her, badly, and tried to rape her. I would have killed a man who subjected a girl I didn’t know to such treatment, let alone the woman who sang to me to appease my nightmares.

“
That temper of yours is going to be the death of you,” Father said with a scowl. “But I won’t let it be the end of our Family, you understand? From now on, you call one of your brothers before you act on something like this and let them deal with it. There are going to be no more slip-ups.”

He didn’t have to verbalize the threat—it was clear from his tone and his cold stare. One more incident that brought trouble to the Family, and I wouldn’t like the consequences. I briefly wondered if it would be enough for him to order my murder like he had Jeremy’s.

“
What are we going to do about Brigs?” Louis said as he took a step forward, carefully putting himself in between me and our father as we stared each other down.

“
We can’t let attempted theft go unpunished, even if Gerald wasn’t going to avenge Leo’s death. Which he will,” Liam continued.

Our father let out a deep sigh. “No. We’ll have to take him down. The problem is that he was our last bastion of solid support, so we’ll have to keep it within the Family. You will all need to gather your crews—I’ll handle the intel. Make sure everyone stays quiet and is ready for action. We’ll have to act quick before this gets out to the wider community. If the rest of the underworld think we might be losing a powerful ally before he’s been taken down, they might think to rise against us. God knows there’s been enough muttering in the shadows for the last year.” He shot Blaine a pointed look.

I never did understand how my brother got away with the stunt he pulled. He broke the only law in the underworld when he informed the cops on the people who had kidnapped his wife. That our father hadn’t disowned him for bringing the Family into bad standing was baffling, to say the least.

“
Fine,” Blaine said, ignoring our father’s stare. “We’ll get our crews together. We’ll wait for you to get in touch, and then we strike.”

“
Yes,” our father agreed. “Is everyone clear? Then get out—and don’t any of you get into any more fucking trouble, you got it? We’re stretched thin as it is.”

I left without another word, seething on the inside as was so often the case after having interacted with my father. I hated him, had hated him since I was a kid, but he was the iron fist that held the Family together.

“
Marcus.”

I looked up from my path toward my car, raising an eyebrow in question at Blaine as he cocked his head at me and walked over to his car, which was parked at the far end of the driveway.

When I made it over to him, he was silent for a bit as his eyes followed Liam and Louis’s exodus from the driveway.

“
What information did Brigs try to steal?” he asked me.

I frowned. I’d half anticipated news of my nephew—the only thing he and I really communicated about. Which was a big improvement over how things had been before Aidan’s birth, where we had hardly talked at all. Not that I was close with any of my brothers, but the twins tended to check in on me once in awhile.

“
Why do you ask?” I said, carefully taking measure of his face. Did he know something? I doubted it—if any of my brothers knew what our father had done, they would not have shown up here today pretending like everything was fine. Unlike me.

Blaine’s face was as neutral as ever when he said, “I noticed you didn’t specify when dad asked. Figured there might have been a reason.”

I grunted. “Not the sort of thing he needs to know about.”

“
Is it the sort of thing I need to know about? Or Liam and Louis?”

“
No.” If they ever knew, our family would be broken forever.

I might have hated my father, might have spent most of my time watching out that he didn’t hurt my remaining brothers like he had Jeremy, but my family was all I had. If it fell apart, I would have nothing left to keep the darkness from swallowing me whole.

* * * *

Chapter 13

Evelyn

When Marcus returned home later that evening, he looked like he was in a foul mood.

I’d managed to produce a half-edible pasta dish from the ingredients in his surprisingly well-stocked fridge, so when he came in the door like a brewing thunderstorm, I was sprawled on his sofa with my still-wrapped feet on his fancy glass coffee table and a plate of food balancing against my boobs.

I pulled my feet off the table and straightened up a bit, attempting to look more like the kind of high-class girl I assumed he usually spent his time with. A task that was made somewhat harder by the wine I’d spilled on my t-shirt and the pair of my favorite sweatpants I’d climbed into the moment he left the flat. I grimaced when I realized what a mess I must appear, hoping he wasn’t regretting the deal he’d made for my company in return for his protection.

“
You can’t have that,” he said the moment his eyes landed on the glass.

“
Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was off-limits.” I flushed despite having only opened the bottle because he’d told me to help myself to anything in the kitchen before he’d left. The wine both looked and tasted expensive, though, so he probably hadn’t meant for me to have it.

“
It’s not good for the baby,” he said, his lips flattening in disapproval.

I blinked. Even if he had no idea about the stash of birth control pills I’d sneakily stuffed into my bag when we went to my flat, it wasn’t like we’d even had condom-less sex yet.

“
I’m not actually pregnant,” I reminded him pointedly. “And this is good wine. Want a glass?”

“
You will be soon,” he said with a small growl, as if his plans to knock me up when he deemed me healed somehow meant I had to lay off the wine right this second.

“
Yeah, sure.” I rolled my eyes and put my plate down so I could get up from the sofa. My feet ached when they connected with the floor, but they were already much better than they had been earlier. “Why don’t you sit down? I made enough dinner for you too. Do you like CSI?”

He shot me an indecipherable look as I hobbled over to the kitchen counter where I’d left a plate with his food under some tin foil, but I heard him sink down on the couch a moment later.

Good. Perhaps he wouldn’t be a broody pain in the arse all night, then. I poured another generous glass of the fancy wine before I returned to the couch, bottle in tow.

Marcus wasn’t watching the TV, though, I noticed when I put the plate and glass down in front of him—he was watching me, with an intensity in his stormy gaze that made me feel self-conscious and awkward. I sat down next to him and released my hair from the messy bun so it could cover the splotch of wine on my top.

“
So… how was your day?” I asked, partly to make him stop staring at me and partly because I wanted to make up for the less-than-stellar start to the evening. While he’d been gone, I’d had plenty of time to think about what would happen to me if he grew tired of our arrangement and left me to fend for myself. It had left me with a stern resolve to be the best companion he could ever want, because I much preferred spending my days taking care of Marcus like some parody of a housewife than running into my former employer again.

Unfortunately for me, Marcus wasn’t much of a small talker. He simply grunted at my question and then turned his focus to the pasta, grabbing his fork to dig in.

“
Any news about Brigs?” I pressed, opting instead to try and pump him for news about the man who would undoubtedly be gunning for us both now.

Marcus, who had been mid-way through chewing his first bite of pasta, coughed violently and I saw him try to mask a grimace as he forced himself to swallow. He reached for the glass of wine and downed half of it in one go.

I felt my cheeks heat from his obvious distaste of my food. “I’m sorry. I suck so bad at cooking, I know. I’ll do better.”

“
No, it’s fine,” he said a little too quickly, turning his gaze back to me. “Thank you. For leaving me some.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, pretty sure he was lying. But why? If Marcus was anything, it was big and gruff and not at all the kind of guy who would lie about my horrible cooking to try and save my feelings. Right?

But as I saw him take another careful bite and almost succeed in masking his distaste as he chewed it, it was obvious that that’s what he was doing. A small measure of warmth spread in my chest and I offered him a genuine smile. “Of course. It’s part of the deal, isn’t it? You protect me and I take care of you.”

“
Hmm,” he hummed, taking another swig of the wine.

“
So, Brigs?” I pressed, filling up his glass once he’d put it down.

“
You don’t need to worry about it,” he said. “We’ll take care of him.”

“ ‘
We’ being your family?” I asked.

“
Mmhm.”

I frowned. “And you’re okay just trusting your dad with this? I mean, it was your dad on that video, wasn’t it?”

Marcus’ face darkened, and for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he nodded, not taking his eyes off the terrible pasta. “It was.”

“
And… he had one of your brothers killed?” I said, trying to somehow make sense of what he was telling me. “And you and your other brothers don’t even bat an eyelid?”