I was the monster. I had to keep it together. I had to let her go and get her out of this mess of a family instead of pulling her further in.
I told her to leave. I yelled at her to stop fucking with me, and then I punched the wall numerous times when she did just that.
A few days later, I got the call that Katalina wanted to go dress shopping for the and swore fluently at Bastian over the phone.
What the fuck were they thinking?
I drove there enraged that we were taking no precautions, that we were pandering to the whim of a pretty little girl who thought she needed to try on dresses while rival mobs who worked with the government wanted her dead.
I got there and kicked a chair over to sit in.
“Seems like you’re in a great mood,” Cade grumbled, not looking up from his phone.
“Shut the fuck up.” I snatched his phone and threw it on the floor just to piss him off.
He glared at me. “Pick it up.”
I laughed at his command. He knew I wouldn’t do that shit if he held a gun to me.
Bastian walked over and picked it up for him. “Stop being children,” he mumbled as he handed the phone to his brother.
I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest.
Then the damn woman who haunted my every thought came out of the dressing room, and all my muscles tensed. “That dress is unacceptable.” The throbbing pain at the base of my skull intensified. She had the uncanny ability to give me migraines, to make me hurt in places I’d never hurt before.
I needed to keep my distance, and yet today, I couldn’t risk her safety even to save my sanity.
“I’m sorry.” Her frosty gray eyes narrowed. “What are you even doing here?”
Bastian chuckled from one of the black leather chairs near me as the saleswoman fluttered about. “He’s here because he’s family.”
Katalina stood before me in a black couture gown with delicate beading strung in swirls over a mesh fabric. Everyone would wonder if they could catch a glimpse of her tits in that gown. I wondered too as she swished back and forth and her eyes jumped to Bastian, then Cade, then Mario.
“Mario, you’re family,” she said. “Cade’s family too. Maybe soon to be my brother-in-law.” She smirked at her dumbass joke. I didn’t find that shit funny in the least. “But Rome’s your cousin and the muscle. Dressing the girlfriend for a party where we introduce ourselves as a couple doesn’t need muscle.”
“When the girlfriend is just the bait, it does,” I shot out, even though she wasn’t looking at me. “You need eyes on your asses because this is tempting fate. It’s being idiotic when you could have just been sent a dress.”
She glared at me. This was probably all her idea. The woman was obsessed with finding some sort of perfect outfit for every occasion. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to look deadly and completely fuckable all the time or— Then again, that was probably exactly what she was doing.
The messing with my head had to stop.
I growled and surveyed the store. The windows at the front of the building were wide open to onlookers, but we had two watchmen who would alert me via a ping to our watches if something was off.
Everything was fine. We just needed to get this over with.
“Not that dress, Katalina.” I turned to the saleswoman. “Find her another one.”
“Actually . . .” She bent her arm behind her and pulled the zipper down. I took a step in her direction just as she let the dress drop to her feet.
Fuck, that woman.
All-black lingerie and heels contrasted with her smooth skin.
Bastian jumped out of his chair and strode to her side, beat me to her. “Katie, not okay.”
The smirk she donned pissed me off and made my dick twitch at the same time.
“You’re playing with fire, Kate-Bait,” I said over Bastian’s back.