Kane’s lip twitches, and then he drags me from James’ arm and into his own. “We don’t,” he says, plastered to my back. He brushes my hair to the side and kisses my neck. “You’re the queen now. You make the rules.”
A thrill runs through me. “I guess I do. That’s…I don’t know how to feel about that. I’ve never been in control of anything before.”
Ari knocks his knuckle on the wall. ‘You’ve been making the rules for us since you arrived,’ he signs, James repeating the words aloud for Phoenix.
It doesn’t feel like it, but maybe I’ve just been looking at us with the wrong lens.
“If that’s true, then okay. I say fuck the reception. Fuck the dancing and the cake and all that other wedding crap. This ceremony wasn’t for us.”
“Alice,” Kane says quietly.
I shake my head. “I understand it was a power move. I knew what I was signing up for. But if you really want this to mean something, let’s get the hell out of here when they least expect it.”
Kane’s grip on me tightens, and he turns my chin to kiss me. “Alright, my queen. Your wish is my command.”
Chapter 15
KANE
We takeour leave to a small sanctuary—not an island, but the room is on the water, a private manor that’s not off the grid but not easy to get to. There are miles of forest around us and a beach directly out the terrace door. There are a thousand things to finish—but we can have this moment.
Leo’s still locked away in the manor because Alice might believe him, but I don’t trust so easily and especially not someone with Romano blood running in his veins.
But if she’s right, we’ll know. And if she’s wrong…
I suppose we’ll know that, too, by the time this honeymoon is over.
I’ve sent Ari and James off to patrol, not because I don’t trust my guards, but because I trust them to see things that someone else might not. I want to believe we’ve been given a reprieve. After all, Alice is my wife now, but I don’t trust Guido. Phoenix ensured the little fucker wouldn’t be able to turn on a single screen today without seeing her say I do on a loop, but there’s no telling what hell beast that will unleash in him.
The one thing a narcissist like him hates more than anything is someone like me winning, and to him, Alice was the ultimate prize.
Glancing over my shoulder. I see Alice lounging on the massive sofa that’s almost as big as a bed. Phoenix has her, holding her close, his big hands on her stomach. She’s changed out of the wedding dress and into a T-shirt and leggings, and it does something to me to see her like that.
We’re all in various states of undress, but the look on her face when she saw that I brought all her comfort items was worth the pain in the ass it was to keep it a secret. She’s still done up from the wedding, though. Her hair’s still resting in loose curls, her makeup slightly smeared, but it suits her.
Fuck. Everything suits her.
I cross the room and sit, stretching my legs out to take the pressure off my sore stump. I know I’m going to need another surgery. I was warned that I wasn’t going to heal right with the amount of walking I was doing. They’ll have to shorten the leg to give it more of a muscle cushion, and it shouldn’t matter to me, but it makes me want to burn something because that just means more time that I’ll be down.
And I’ll live with the pain for now. Until this is over.
Alice’s hand creeps across the small divide until she’s touching my fingers, and I scoot back into the cushions so I can bracket her other side. Phoenix continues to rub her stomach, and I can see trouble playing out on his face.
“Talk to me,” I tell him.
He stiffens, not because he didn’t know I was there, but because I’m an asshole enough to say that in front of our new bride. His fingers still, but they don’t leave her. “It feels too easy.”
I close my eyes and lean back, pinching the bridge of my nose. He’s not wrong. It would be easy to think that we got away with the ceremony without any kind of retaliation because Leo was the real power behind Guido’s seat.
But I know better than to go there.
Alice shifts slightly, curling her backside into Phoenix so she can shift her feet under my thigh, and I grab her ankles, pulling them into my lap instead. “You have eyes on them all, right?”
“As much as we can,” Phoenix says. “They haven’t even attempted to hack into our system, so they’re either trying to throw us off, or their tech guy is dead.”
She doesn’t shudder, but I can see her face go a little stormy when I look at her. “But if you didn’t, is there any chance they’ve slipped past your security?”
“Yes,” Phoenix says simply, because he’ll never be arrogant to assume otherwise. “But we’re as safe here as we’ll ever be.”