Chapter One
Shane
"Bro. Shelby's tracker is dead."
"What the fuck do you mean, dead?" My eyes trail across the room to meet my brother's dark ones. “She's at the club tonight, it can't be dead. You know she's not safe there. You know she's wearing one of those tight dresses. The style that have all the guys drooling and following her around, eager to slip something in her drink."
My brother, Rafe, nods. "I'm not getting a read on it. Maybe the software is glitching."
"I thought you replaced the battery the last time we stopped over at her apartment?"
Gio, my other brother, looks up then. "We shouldn't have let her go."
"He's right, she's not safe without us. I know you want to give her freedom, but this is dangerous for her–and us."
"Where was the last place we tracked her?"
Rafe swipes at his iPad screen and then rattles off the name of a club on the south side. "Fuck, that place again? It's packed on Saturday nights."
Gio grunts an affirmative. And before he can say more I launch out of my chair, heading for the elevator that will bring me down to the lobby of the building and out into the streets of Chicago. I need to get my girl, need to make sure she's safe, need to make sure no other assholes are fucking with her.
My brothers are right, I shouldn't have let her go away to college.
Our family was too important, but I sensed she needed it after her mother died and everything went to hell on her. I held her in my arms for weeks while she cried. And I held her hand for months in therapy while she grieved the loss of her mother in a freak accident on the L train.
She's all I have now, and I will do anything to keep her safe.
In truth, the things I felt for my stepdaughter were far from appropriate, especially since I'd raised her by myself since she was fourteen. But I was all she had in the world.
I grew up in Chicago's gritty underground. You had to do all you could to keep your family safe where I came from. The Andolini name means things on these streets, good and bad, depending on who you are. Even though I left that life long ago–my brothers too–that doesn’t mean we’re out.
No one ever really gets out.
As I reach the parking garage to duck into my Maserati and head to Shelby’s last known location, I hear my brothers’ footsteps coming for me.
"I don't need your help," I bark over my shoulder at both Gio and Rafe. I know it won't do any good. I know they love her just as much as I do and there's nothing I can do about it. We've always shared everything. Growing up in the dark underworld of Chicago left a mark, and raising Shelby together is the one saving grace we all cling to.
And this girl needs saving.
She was always too sweet, too naïve for this town that we lived in. We managed to protect her from it for her entire life. We gave her a normal upbringing and were able to send her to college free and clear. We paid for her apartment so she wasn't subjected to the college pricks on campus that would undoubtedly try to ruin our girl.
But she isn’t a baby anymore.
She fills out her dresses with curves that make me salivate at night, causing me to grip my dick in my fist to thoughts of her. She is a good girl; she comes home every holiday, helps us make family dinners, and says grace over the table with her hands clasped tightly. And all the while…I fantasize about sliding my dick between her lush, fat tits and fucking them until I cream all over her pretty lips.
I’m a bad daddy, to be sure. But as far as Shelby knows, I’m the best dad in the world.