Vow to Protect: A Dark Mafia Arranged Marriage Romance

by J. L. Beck

  It takes a few minutes, but Kai finally answers. “He mentioned this soup his mother made him as a child when he was sick… I can’t pronounce the word or even write it down, too many sounds, but when he explained it, he told me it was a traditional Czech garlic soup. Something they make for illness or hangovers.”

  I narrow my eyes and stalk toward him. “You’re not just making this up, right? To get me to stop asking questions because I won’t do that to him.”

  “No, I’m serious. We talked about it when we were recovering from a party in the pool.”

  It doesn’t sound very romantic, though. Wait—I gape at him. “Pool?”

  He points at the ceiling. “It’s on the roof.”

  Excitement bursts through me. I love to swim. “Can we go up there?”

  “Don’t you have a romantic soup to prepare?”

  He’s right, but now that I know the pool is there, I won’t forget. “Okay, I’ll talk to the cook and get the stuff I need. You can go glower at something or whatever.”

  His mouth turns down hard. “I don’t glower.”

  I stare at his lips, which some might consider pretty, and then let my gaze run back to his eyes again. Yeah…right. All the men in this house are professional brooders.

  Thankfully, he slips out of the room with no further insight. I fish my phone out of my pocket and text the cook my shopping list. As usual, when I request something, she complains for about five minutes and then does as I ask. If only because she fears I’ll tell Adrian she ignored my directives.

  When I tell her she has to clear the kitchen for the night, she’s going to be pissed, but it’ll be worth it once I present my gift to Adrian. I just want him to know what this time of safety, this freedom, has meant to me.

  I putter around the library until someone interrupts with lunch. There’s too much to do, but I want to get things ready for dinner. First, I send Adrian a text asking him to meet me for dinner at seven in the kitchen. He agrees but immediately asks why.

  I can’t help but smile when I send him back a kissy face emoji and nothing else. But I better get to the kitchen before he tries to find me to get answers.

  The kitchen is deserted when I enter, and my grocery requests are lined up neatly on the counter. Cook is efficient, I’ll give her that. She hates me, but I still intend to win her over one of these days.

  According to the recipe I found, the soup isn’t much more than a garlicky potato soup. It looks good, and the recipe says it’s the traditional soup for illness. Either way, I suspect Kai is right, and he’ll love it all the same. But just once, I want to feel like I accomplished something. It might be small, but I’ve latched onto the idea, the fantasy of seeing the joy written on his face, and I can’t let it go.

  Once the soup is done, I have to admit it smells delicious. I set out the bread, wine, and salad to go with it. It takes me a few minutes to change into a white lace dress I know he loves and make it back to the kitchen before he saunters in.

  But when he does, damn. He seems to take up the entire room. His posture is carefree and effortless, but I can spot the power in his wide shoulders, the muscles in his long legs. He’s a cobra ready to strike, and tonight, I’m his prey.

  “Thanks for coming,” I say meekly, undone by the dark need in his eyes.

  He takes the seat I pulled out for him, and I sit beside him on the other. “What did you do, Angel?”

  I ladle some soup into the bowl and serve the bread, wine, and salad next. When I finish, I turn to face him, studying his features for any clue to his response.

  “Angel…” he whispers. When he looks up at me, the need has changed to something softer, gentler. “You made this for me?”

  “I asked Kai. He told me you mentioned it before, and I wanted to do something special for you. To make you feel cared for, for once.” I tuck my chin and face my own food so he can’t see the blush on my cheeks at my own admission. Things between us are different for him, different from what I want between us. I don’t blame him, not one bit, but I still want him to know how much I appreciate the effort he’s gone through to maintain our agreement. Not that spending night after night underneath him, screaming out in pleasure is much of a hardship for my side of things.

  He leans down and takes a tentative bite. I’m on the edge of my seat with nerves. I’ve cooked a little bit in my life but not much because I’ve always had chefs. But cooking for someone seems like something a caring person would do. A way to feed them and show them they are loved and wanted.

  “It’s delicious. Thank you,” he whispers a few seconds later.

  I hide my face again so he can’t see what his praise does to me. How it makes me squirm, not only in happiness but in a different way.

  When we finish eating, he turns to me and pulls me onto his lap. It’s an awkward position on the stool, but he seems to make it look effortless. “There’s something I want to show you now. Will you come with me?”

  I nod, shifting off his lap, but he lifts me into his arms as if I weigh nothing and trots off out of the kitchen and down the hall. When I wrap my arms around his neck, he resettles me and takes me up a few flights of stairs. The distance is easy for his long legs as he takes two risers at a time.

  When we get to the top, he nudges the door open with his hip, and we step out into the darkness. Well, it’s mostly dark. As we come around a corner, I gasp. There’s the pool Kai mentioned, and above it, the stunning city skyline on display.

  I wiggle for him to release me and race to the edge of the clear glass railing. “It’s so beautiful.” I have to shout through the sharp wind ripping around us.

  “Come here,” he whispers in my ear, tugging me back into him. I go with zero hesitation.

  With his arms around me and the warmth at my back, I could stay like this for hours, watching the glittering lights of the city blink out one by one.

  “I have something else for you, Angel.”

  I turn to look at him. “I don’t need—”

  He picks me up again, this time around my ass. I automatically lock my legs around his hips, spreading myself wide. It only takes a few strides for him to get to the wall by the stairwell. Then another second to shove my dress up, rip my panties at the seams, and drive inside my body with his.

  I freeze against him, and he follows suit, giving me a moment to adjust to the sheer size of him. But the tension in his shoulders tells me he’s not going to be easy with me, not this time. And I don’t mind. I feel a little wild myself staring at the buildings like anyone could look out their window and see us fucking against the wall.

  “Please,” I say and dig my fingers into the back of his neck to pull slightly on his short hair.

  He arches his hips into me and then sets a brutal pace. His hands around my ass, tugging me to meet him, protects my skin from the scratch of the wall after each brutal stroke.

  There’s nothing to do but cling to him and feel my body stretch around him, sparking pleasure along my nerve endings. I’m so wet I can feel it on my thighs, on his stomach, everywhere. I don’t know where it came from, but I throw my head back, leaning it against the wall, and let him take me hard and fast.

  “Please,” I say again, then it’s more like a plea, a mantra, a hymn as I repeat the word over and over. The wind snatches each syllable, but I know he hears me. He fucks me faster, deeper, almost painfully now, driving us both toward the end I need in my soul.

  I dig my fingers into his scalp, my fingernails cutting deep. His pace falters once, and I know he’s close. When I tug on his hair and scratch at the back of his neck with my other hand, he shoves into me once more, his cock brushing me just right that it sets off an orgasm so hard I can’t even breathe through it. I’m shuddering, head to toe, and finally, I suck in a long drag of air, the sensation washing through me as he reaches his own end.

  As usual, once he finishes, he stays inside me for a few moments, growing softer in my pussy until finally, he slips out. Then he sets me on my feet a
nd gently eases any fluids that have escaped back into me.

  “Let’s go to bed, Angel. There is a lot more I have to say about this gift?”

  I blink, suddenly nervous, as I tug my dress straight. “Like what?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll give you feedback while my mouth is between your pretty thighs and my lips are on that sweet cunt of yours.”

  He doesn’t wait for me to answer, just lifts me into his arms and carries me to our bed.

  29

  Adrian

  Vincent, my third, isn’t Kai. The hard part is I shouldn’t be mad at him because he’s not Kai. It doesn’t keep me from throwing a little more effort into sparring with him in the gym before we start the day. He takes my latest hit with a grunt and then rebounds with a strike to my ribs that will hurt later. I appreciate him not pulling any punches because of who I am. It’s something I’ve always liked about him.

  We square off again and go a few more circles. The mats around us groan and squeak as our bare feet move across the surface. Across the room is exercise equipment the others use more than I do. I usually find the release I need right here, punching things until they tell me to stop.

  Vincent gets in a jab on my shoulder, and I know I’m distracted. “Let’s see you do that again, Kid.”

  He’s one of the younger men on the team and doesn’t appreciate me pointing it out. Instead of another strike, he sweeps his legs out but not fast enough. I dance away, careful to avoid another swipe if he’s got any fancy ideas.

  We continue until my arms are so tired it takes effort to hold them up. A sharp chime on my phone ends things for the morning completely. I check the message and then glance at Vincent, who is opening his texts too. Kai sent them to both of us.

  I strip the gloves off my hands and grab a towel and a water on my way out the door to the command room.

  Kai is there, looking impeccable as always. I deliver a glare as my greeting, but Vincent claps him on the back and throws his long frame into the seat next to him. “What’s up?”

  Kai grabs a couple of pieces of paper off the printer, handing one to each of us. I don’t bother hiding my impatience. “Don’t you have things to do that involve keeping my wife safe?”

  Despite the set of his shoulders screaming out his anger, he doesn’t show any of it on his face. A skill I always admired in him. “This does involve keeping her safe. Will you just read it? Please?”

  Vincent lets out a low whistle and tosses the sheet on the table, then looks at me, waiting. Well fuck. This can’t be good if he doesn’t just give me the summary version in passing. Who prints out emails these days?

  I cross one arm under the other and scan the sheet, slowly taking in the words, even as something dark and dangerous builds inside me as each new word collides with the next. When I finish, I crumple the email in a ball and launch it across the room.

  “What the fuck is that old man playing at? He thinks he can snap his fingers, and the council will grant his wish to get her back?”

  I wave at the sheet. “That’s a load of shit, and he knows it. So what’s the point? The second I produce our marriage certificate, they can’t deny anything. She’s not going back, so why put in the effort?”

  “A trap?” Kai supplies. “The council will want to see you both, in person, to make sure she is well and not being coerced. It’s a smart play at getting you both in one location at a specific time and place.”

  “I don’t like it,” Vincent chimes in.

  I roll my eyes and pace across the room, back and forth from the door to the wall. The council will deny his petition. It’s as simple as showing them the proof of what she looked like when we found her. There is video evidence, and the medical charts the doctor kept, then the marriage certificate. It’s not so hard to believe that I saved her life, and she fell in love. They can’t deny a love match any more than they do a marriage of alliance.

  Doubts hit me, pummeling through the surety. I still haven’t taken care of Sal. What if she changes her mind about being with me and then tells the council something that will let them take her away?

  I stalk to the table and pound my fists onto the cold glass. Not hard enough to break the surface, but enough to make my knuckles and wrists sting from pain. “There is nothing they can do to take her from me, and if the council requests my presence, then we’ll have to get creative on how to meet them, so no other interested attendees crash the party.”

  Kai takes a risk and speaks up again. “What I don’t get is why make the effort? He never cared about her. We saw what she looked like when we got her out of that house…and he’s never shown any kind of affection at parties or events. Hell, we’d only seen her at one, and before then, he never once mentioned her existence. Like he wanted to erase her from his life completely. Maybe Sal was his attempt at doing that, and it failed, so now he’s trying to clean up the mess he made before he’s implicated.”

  I stare down my former second. “You think her father knew where things would go with Sal and hoped he’d solve the problem of his daughter’s existence for him?”

  Kai shrugs. “Why not? He’s not known to be the most ruthless of us for nothing. Just because things have been calm in his territory for some time doesn’t mean he’s stopped enforcing the law there. I think he’s just gotten so good at it, he doesn’t leave a trace of evidence behind.”

  I consider what he’s saying, and it makes me sick. With this new idea, I have to turn away so they don’t see how much I want to fucking rip out his guts. But it makes the most sense out of any other theories I’ve created on my own. Why else allow a man like Sal into Val’s life? When there was evidence easily seen on her skin of how he treated her, yet the man never made a move to protect her.

  “I have other news,” Kai says, drawing me from the edges of a fugue that would likely result in bloodshed.

  I turn. “What?” I grit out. “What else could have possibly gone wrong this morning?”

  He looks almost apologetic when he answers. “Sal resurfaced but then disappeared again. His family is hiding him, for sure.”

  “That’s better news than that fucking email. At least you have a location, right? We storm it and drag his fucking ass out.”

  Kai and Vincent wince, and I realize why. The season fucking ended over a month ago, or more…I haven’t been keeping track with my focus on making Valentina comfortable in our bed.

  If I make a move on them when the season is closed, it’s an act of war against them and the council as a whole. One or the other, I might be able to deal with some damage, but not both, not at the same time, and not if the council calls the other families as allies to protect them.

  Yet don’t they deserve to be annihilated if they align themselves with Val’s father against me? Isn’t that the very definition of corrupt? Not considering other sides, only the ones who pay the most. Not that it mattered, but I could out-pay her father ten times over if I wanted to.

  I think back to the night of the party and the few precious minutes which almost cost me so dearly. The few minutes I let her out of my sight when I’d met up with Nic Diavolo. Now, I wondered if his information stayed updated or if he would no longer be able to provide what I wanted.

  I pace the room again, considering. Diavolo is a titan in his own territory, his own city, and he doesn’t play games. If he knows where Sal is, he won’t lie about it. But he’ll also ask a steep price for the information. He is a businessman after all, and his second, Soo, is the same.

  “We might have another option to find Sal and keep him this time.” I stop and look between Kai and Vincent. “Diavolo.”

  “What about him?” Vincent asks, not having been there when I met with him that night.

  Kai fills him in. “He might have Sal’s exact location or know how to get it. He met with the boss the night of the season end party.”

  Realization dawns, and Vincent looks uncomfortable, realizing Diavolo was who I had been with when Val got attacked. No one wants to me
ntion the incident, or anything related to it, for fear I might fly off the handle and pummel something. They aren’t wrong. The closer I get to Val, the more frayed my patience has become, especially when the possibility of losing her is brought up.

  I need to see her, touch her, reassure myself she is real, and here, and mine. Instead of making plans, I turn to the door and stop. No. I need to see her, but her safety always comes first.

  With a groan, I turn back to them and grip a chair to calm myself. “Set up a meeting with Diavolo. Somewhere discreet where we can sit and have a meal, really chat. I’ll see if I can get him to open up about what he knows or find out more about his connections to Sal’s family. It’s unlikely, but I’ll try. He’ll also have a few people with him, so make sure we have enough place settings. Cook can coordinate the meal and cook on-site. She won’t mind the extra pay for the additional meal prep that day.”

  I take a moment to meet both their eyes. “Most importantly, Val doesn’t know a thing about any of this. Do you understand? I’ll tell her I’m going to a business meeting, and she will be content with that. I don’t want her worrying while I’m gone, especially if nothing comes of it.”

  They both nod in agreement, and I stare at the currently blank screen on the wall. Just my fuzzy reflection stares back. “Maybe bring in a couple of girls we know. They can flirt and loosen things up.”

  I haven’t thought of a single other woman since I met Val, and I don’t plan to start, but that doesn’t mean some of the single men will pass up the opportunity. “Make sure they are paid well and know they can leave at any time. But anyone who sticks it out will get more.”

  “Anything else, boss?” Kai asks.

  I glare at him and look at Vincent. “Make sure everything is perfect. Kai can run back up to you if you need any additional help. Andrea too. She’s good at these sorts of things.”