Page 8 of Desperate Measures

Cold.

A shell of the girl she’d been. Her painted mouth was unsmiling, and I wondered how women could stand wearing shit like that on their lips.

I mean, I understood. Beauty had a price and all that. But I couldn’t even stand Chapstick during the winter.

The fake taste.

The waxy feel.

It grossed me the fuck out.

I never kissed a woman wearing lipstick. Always insisted she took it off first. It was one of my quirks.

Lucky for me, I was good looking enough most women agreed with hardly any rebuttal.

“My name is Margaret,” she snapped. “And I’m your fucking boss, that’swhy the fuckyou will do exactly as I tell you, little brother. Now sign the fucking thing.”

Technically, she was my boss.

But only because circumstances had placedMaggieat the head of our family when I was too young to take over.

But everything was changing now. The O’Doyle clan was going legit, and she needed me more than I needed her bullshit.

“Get to it, boyo, before I get wicked pissed,” she snapped.

Always with the fucking drama, this one.

I looked down at the marriage license and scoffed, tossing it back on the table.

Was she fucking kidding me with this shit?

“Michaela fucking Volkov? Are you serious?”

The license was already filled out and signed by everyone—except me. I just had to add my name to the bottom.

But I wasn’t a man who jumped when someone snapped. I needed a reason first, and I had yet to find one for all of this.

“Her father has connections, and she owes me,” Maggie said, straightening her narrow shoulders.

My sister was a world class manipulator. But I knew the Volkovs. If Maggie somehow tricked or coerced this woman into this, there would be no digging us out from the vicious fucking shit storm that family would rain down on us.

“Did you fucking drug her, Maggie?” I asked, horrified at the thought.

Maggie narrowed her dramatically tweezed eyebrows at me.

Nope. Still wasn’t calling her Margaret.

Long before she was the boss of the O’Doyle family, she was my snotty older sister who liked to prank me and forced me to watch romcoms on holidays.

Sure, she’d come a long way. Worked her ass off to make the family business bigger and better than ever before.

Our alliance with the Vipers didn’t fucking hurt, either.

They were mostly legit these days. I worked for Viper Enterprises first, then Volkov Industries, for years, gaining experience and knowledge where I could. But family loyalty called me back home, and not a minute too soon.

Maggie was ballsy and smart when it came to certain aspects of our family business. But the legit part, well, that was on me.

I was the brains of the family. The one looking towards the future. Maggie was a fucking throwback. Happy as a pig in shit to peddle guns and play with the other bad boys and girls.