Page 43 of Mischief Mayhem
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe he’ll marry the Caputi wench instead.”
Bear narrowed his eyes. “You think I want a stepmother that’s only two years older than me?”
Damn, he knew how old Julia was? What other research did he do about her? He must have been thinking about this since it happened.
“It’s fine,” Bear said, shaking his head and stabbing out his cigarette in the ashtray next to us. “My life was never mine anyway.”
“Don’t be like that,” I said, hating that my brother and best friend was hurting so much. I didn’t want to say my next words, but when I patched myself into this club ten years ago, I’d sworn to do anything to protect it. If marrying Julia Caputi spared him this misery, I’d bend over backward to make it happen. “I’ll do it, okay? Just tell Leo you’re not available and?—”
“No,” Bear cut in. “No fucking way.”
“What?” That surprised me. “Why?”
He let out a breath through his nose and gave my shoulder a firm, reassuring squeeze. “It’s not your burden to bear, okay?”
I started to argue I would take on any burden if it meant he’d suffer less for it, but I never got the chance. Aris banged his rings on the table to open up the floor for session.
“All right, you motherfuckers. Listen up.” The veep ran through the list of charity drives that were coming in the next few weeks, including the huge one on St. Patty’s Day. “That also happens to be the time the Beacon will be completed, so keep an eye out for news there.”
Slip spoke next, running down the schedule for the next few runs. “KC, Hollywood, Picasso, Lore, and Coins—you’re with me down to Asheville in four days. The cartel is meeting us to drop off a big shipment. We need a lot of muscle to haul it back.”
“Six people on a run?” Doc said after letting out a whistle. “That’s like ringing the dinner bell, isn’t it?”
“We don’t have a choice,” Slip said, rubbing over his bald head. “The cartel isn’t like the Canadians. They’re not interested in small transactions. They deal in millions, and I’m not taking any chances.”
“It’ll be fine,” Aris added. “I guaranteed we’d bring backup as part of the deal when I made it.”
Doc crossed his arms and sat back in his seat but didn’t argue. He wasn’t someone who kept his opinion to himself, so he must have felt okay with Aris’s explanation. I swallowed against a dry throat, unsure if I found any comfort in it myself, but I was just a peon—what the fuck did I know?
“We have bigger things to discuss,” Crow said, bringing everyone back on topic. Bear shifted his weight next to me as he waited for his father to drop the hammer. “Leo Caputi has offered a deal in exchange for truce.”
The room fell silent, the rest of the brothers waiting to see what he wanted.
“I haven’t spoken to him myself,” the prez explained, “but if we agree, I’ll head there as soon as I can to formalize everything.”
“What’s he want?” Wheels asked, his dark eyes serious as he glanced at Crow.
“A marriage,” Bear said. “He wants to join our families.”
“Aren’t we already?” Castor said, nodding to KC. “Isn’t Alba a?—”
“Alba is a Montgomery,” KC snapped, yanking down the neck of his shirt to show the Sunshine tattoo on his collarbone. “She claims no heritage from that piece of shit family and never will.”
Two years ago, while KC and Alba were dating, she had learned her mother was Benito Caputi’s daughter, long thought dead. Turned out Alba was the love child of Aris and Alessandra Caputi. After she found out she was pregnant, Alessandra faked her death, hid on Rose territory, and changed her name to Penny Wright. Even though one side of her family came from the Caputis, Alba didn’t consider herself one of them. She was a Rose, end of story.
“If we want him to trust we’re serious about ending this, then we need to show it.” Bear cleared his throat and ran a hand back through his hair. “He wants me to marry his sister, Julia.”
Crow winced and pinched the bridge of his nose, the added gray in his hair indicating how rough this year had been for him, for us all. As the patriarch of this found family, the crown would always lay heavier on his head.
“How does Julia feel about this?” Lore asked from a few feet to my left, itching at his eye patch.
“About as great as you’d expect,” Saint explained. “But she hates her aunt more than that, so she’ll agree.”
“I haven’t agreed,” Crow snarled. “I don’t like being told what to do, especially not by that Caputi piece of shit.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Bear added, shaking his head with his hands on his hips. “But what’s our other choice? We could bomb one of their clubs to draw them out, maybe send them on a wild goose chase to God knows where.”
Thor shifted at that, probably remembering when he’d had to follow Selene up to Buffalo to keep her from becoming Caputi cannon fodder. She’d killed a rat in the process, so it wasn’t a complete loss, but she still had a limp from where she’d gotten shot in the leg, and probably always would.