Come back, I wanted to say.Finish what you started.
If there was a female equivalent of blue balls, I was getting it. My body ached for more of their skilled hands, tongues, and fingers. Between the two of them, I wasn’t sure which one I wanted more.
Except I didn’t really want them. I only wanted to use them for their gorgeous bodies. Nothing else about them interested me one bit.
“Where are you going?” I asked as Bastian hopped off the bed and followed his brother toward the door.
Damian exited the room.
Bastian stopped at the entryway and glanced over his shoulder at me. “Go to sleep, Cherry. You have a big day tomorrow.”
My brothers were sick, demented assholes. I shouldn’t have left Alex alone with Damian and Bastian. I could not trust them with any woman, especially not one as important as Alexandrea Wellington.
I heard Alex yell, then moan through the open door at the end of the hallway. Either she was enjoying herself or being tortured. With my family’s legacy on the line, I couldn’t take any chances with her life. We needed the merger between our families.
As I rushed toward her bedroom, Damian and Bastian stepped into the hallway with satisfied grins. Bastian pulled her door closed and tapped Damian on the shoulder, whispering into his ear. Whatever these psychos were plotting would not end well for Alex.
“What did you do to her?”
They met me in the middle of the hallway that was dimly lit by wall sconces. A yellowish glow illuminated their mischievous faces.
This house reminded me of a medieval castle, a home fit for a knight. As a child, I knew I would one day become a member of The Devil’s Knights. I used to think the secret society was more like a chivalrous guild.
But I was so wrong about that.
When we were kids, we would pretend we were knights from medieval times. Until we grew up and learned the real Knights were the corrupt bankers of the criminal underworld.
Damian slid his thumb across his red lips, giving me one of his usual creepy smirks. He was mentally unstable and emotionally bankrupt. Most people kept their distance from Damian. You could see the madness dancing across his emerald eyes. At all times, his sanity dangled by a thread, and only my father and Bastian could control him.
“We were just saying goodnight to our pet,” Damian remarked, his voice filled with evil laughter.
Bastian patted me on the shoulder and smirked. “Don’t worry, Marcello. We took good care of our girl.”
“She’s notyours.”
Their real last names had secured their futures.
Damian Townsend.
Bastian Kincaid.
Legacies at any club on the planet. Like Alex, they were American royalty, direct descendants of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Billionaires with more money than they could spend in their lifetime. Their parents had died in a plane crash when they were nine years old. My father had adopted them, thinking they would be useful in the future.
But he didn’t foresee us needing Alex. He didn’t know that by making them Salvatores, it would also put them in the running for Alex’s hand in marriage. The Salvatores founded Devil’s Creek, but our bloodline didn’t trace back to the Founding Fathers.
Our control over The Devil’s Knights, and the powerful alliances my father built, kept us in the good graces of The Founders Society Elders. But we were running out of time. We couldn’t be part of their elite club if we didn’t marry a Wellington. Alex was the only woman from a Founding Family that was of marrying age and our only hope of survival.
Sure, we would still be billionaires if we didn’t marry a Wellington. But we would lose all of our connections. All of the alliances and control over the criminal underworld. My father collected secrets, and those secrets had allowed us to maintain our foothold for years. And now that others knew those secrets, he was losing his grip.
“Afraid of a little competition?” Bastian laughed. “Always so serious, Marcello.”
They didn’t need her, not like Luca and me. One of us had to marry her. One of us had to produce an heir with the Big Pharma Princess. The Wellington dowry, and all the rewards that came with it, would set up the Salvatores for hundreds of years.
Alex’s grandfather was one of the richest men in the world, third on the Forbes Billionaires list. One of the five Elders who ran The Founders Society. The secret society that governed the smaller ones, including The Devil’s Knights. He had direct authority over the organization my great grandfather had founded after he moved to the United States from Italy.
But we had one bargaining chip. A secret my father held over Carl Wellington’s head. And that secret gave us Alex.
It gave us another chance.