Chapter Twelve
“You shouldn’t have let her go,” Alex said. He’d stayed at my house the night before as we strategized our next moves. Dom made it clear that I needed to marry this girl to protect the family, and to protect her.
The fucking file of information that Alex compiled about Ivy softened my brother’s heart. I couldn’t blame him. She’d had a shitty life.
“She wasn’t going to agree to marry me last night,” I told him. We were sitting outside of Ivy’s house watching the front door. We’d relieved several of Dom’s men who were charged with watching the house and making sure that no cops or Bratva came for her.
Alex sighed heavily. Ivy also got under his skin, and for whatever reason, he was determined to save her from the big, bad wolf. Unfortunately for him, that wolf happened to be me.
“She might have been more agreeable if you hadn’t strangled her nearly to death,” he muttered.
I rolled my eyes at him. “You aren’t going to let that shit go, are you?”
He turned to look at me. “No, I’m not.” There was an edge to his voice. I’d noticed that it had been there since he’d come to the club the night before. “What the hell has happened to you?”
I raised a brow at his words. “Want to be a little clearer?”
“You never would have hurt a woman before.”
I shook my head and turned my attention back to the house. “Not you too,” I muttered under my breath. Dom lectured me the night before, and this morning. He too wasn’t happy that I let Ivy go, but he at least saw the wisdom of my plan. She needed to understand the danger for herself. If she didn’t, I’d have to drag her down the aisle by her hair. Not that I was opposed to that. It would just be that much more challenging if she wasn’t onboard.
“You’ve been different since the trial,” Alex said. “Reckless and angry.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” I snapped. My eyes didn’t leave the window. “I don’t need you giving me shit too.”
Alex shifted in his seat. It was the first sign of discomfort he’d shown in the three hours we’d been on stakeout. “You know you can talk to me,” he said.
I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but I was worried that he would cry. “You’ve turned into such a stiff since you’ve been married,” I told him. “I hope that shit doesn’t happen to me.”
I looked over at him briefly. His jaw tightened at my words. Like my brother, Alex had had an arranged marriage. Unlike my brother, I wasn’t sure if Alex had feelings outside of respect for his new wife.
“She’s been through a lot,” Alex said. There was a look in his eye that I didn’t like. Something that told me he would have volunteered to bring Ivy into the family if he was able to do so. I didn’t like it.
I might not want to marry the woman, but if she was going to be mine, my cousin needed to fix his googly eyes.
“What does your wife think you are doing today?” I asked, shifting the topic. “She must be lonely in that Westchester mansion all by herself.”
A frown formed on Alex’s face. “Her father’s in the family,” he told me. “She knows what it’s like.”
I made a small humming noise of agreement. My sister-in-law also knew what it was like, but that didn’t stop her from expecting my brother to be home at a decent hour. I smiled as I thought about Sasha.
She was one of the few people I still liked. Though, I knew she would rip me a new asshole when she found out what the hell I’d gotten myself into.
I turned my attention away from Alex and back towards the brownstone. “How do they afford this place?” I wondered aloud. It was a shit neighborhood, but we were still in New York City, and housing was disgustingly expensive. The brownstone they lived in was an apartment complex, probably too small for three people, but still expensive. “She must make a fucking fortune at the club.”
I’d never seen Ivy there before. Tits like hers you remembered. But I’d caught the tail end of her dance, and it had been a crowd pleaser. She’d also joined me in the back room for a private dance, and though she’d shown obvious nerves, she’d been willing to go through with it.
I wasn’t a slut shamer by any means, but I didn’t like the thought of my future wife being passed around like a prize to whoever was willing to pay the highest.
“Her grandparents owned the property,” Alex said. He’d worked to compile even more information on Ivy into the wee hours of the night. I was certain that my folder now contained her grade school pictures.
“I’m assuming they don’t own it anymore?”
He shook his head. “The mother sold parts of it off to pay for her husband’s gambling debts.”
I shook my head. Dom wanted every piece of Ivy’s life laid bare to him before I proposed to her. I wasn’t surprised. My brother might not want me to go off killing half-assed, but he wasn’t stupid. He had every right to be paranoid. His own mother-in-law had tried to use his wife to murder him.
“It might have been a mercy to put her out of her misery,” I muttered. Even I couldn’t disagree that Ivy’s life was a shit show. I’d see her eyes when she thought I was going to kill her. Some part of her accepted it. No matter what she might say, I saw the way she welcomed death, and it intrigued me.