Saved Mafia Bride by Mae Doyle

Gavin

Iknow what my brother is thinking before he even says it. Freddy isn’t great at keeping his emotions held close to his chest and when I called him I’m already expecting him to have something to say about Clara owing that much money to someone.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t know exactly how much she owes. All that matters is that I know she owes it, it’s enough to make her do stupid fucking shit, and she’s terrified of someone coming to get her.

“Your girl fucked up,” Freddy tells me. He came right over when I called. The two of us are sitting on the back deck watching a storm roll in from the west. It’s been fucking hot as hell today and a bit of a breeze stirs the air making it more bearable to be out here.

I drain my glass of whiskey and wait for my brother to continue.

“She thought that she could run away from an arranged marriage? Fuck. I can only imagine how I’d react if my future bride pulled shit like she is. And now you have her halfway across the country. How long do you think it’ll be before Nick Prince figures out that she’s here?”

“He won’t,” I say confidently. It took me a little while to figure out where the hell I’ve heard his name before, but as soon as I remembered, I felt a cold pit grow in my stomach. Our family is powerful enough to hold their own against anyone, but the Prince family has a reputation for being ruthless.

The fact that I have Nick’s runaway betrothed locked in my basement probably wouldn’t bode well for me if anyone were to find out.

“Seriously, Freddy, there’s no way in hell that he’ll ever find out. The only people who know are our family and the Accardis and they know better than to run their mouths about shit that could possibly get them killed. I’m not at all concerned about them telling anyone what’s going on.”

“Okay. Well, I did some poking around for you and I have both good news and bad news.”

Great. Rubbing my hands together, I lean forward to get a better look at my brother. He’s older than me, but not by much. We’re Irish twins and could be real twins if it weren’t for the fact that he’s a bit taller than me and I have a scar across my face.

Reaching up, I run my fingers down it. Clara didn’t say anything to me about it when she first saw it, but I’m sure that she noticed. She had to, and I just wonder what she thought.

“Let’s hear it.” Even though I want to know what Freddy is going to say, there’s also part of me that really wants to get back to Clara. I hate the idea of her locked in the basement on her own and I imagine that she’s probably just staring at the wall. Or sleeping.

Or crying.

I feel my cock harden in my jeans and I have to focus less on Clara and more on my brother.

“Okay. The really good news, if you want to look at it that way, is that the guys who she was paying to protect her were Mark and Colin Jacobs.”

My jaw drops open, I can’t believe what he just said. “Wait. No. We just killed them.”

“Yep. They’re gone, which means that her protection is gone. They’re probably how she got the job at the bakery.”

“She told us that she was hired by Scott, not by them. Acted like she didn’t know who the hell they were.” My mind races as I think back to the first time we met.

“Sure, but she’s smart. Think about it, brother, she’s made it this far without anyone finding out who she is. Do you really think that she would willingly out herself and her relationship to the two of them?”

“Fucking great. Let me guess, that’s both the good and the bad news?”

He nods. “Yeah, kinda. The good thing is that you’re not going to have her protectors coming after you to try to get her back. The bad news is that I spoke to Dane and he said that Nick Prince was in town the other day. It could just be a rumor, of course, but people are talking that he was there.”

“So you’re telling me that he knows she was in town. How the hell did he figure that one out?”

This time Freddy shrugs. “No clue, but I have a pretty good feeling that the little stunt you pulled at the strip club won’t go unnoticed.”

“Fucking hell.” My mind races as I think about what people are going to say when they start to put two and two together. It wasn’t like I was shy about people seeing me carry Clara out of there on my shoulder like she was a piece of meat. They were all looking at her like that, like they wanted to eat her up and didn’t give a fuck what happened to her after that, and I was the only person who actually cared about it.

I’m running through what happened in my mind, remembering how I’d stormed up to the stage where Clara was dancing and took her for myself. They had her dancing under the most ridiculous fucking name that I’ve ever heard but I knew right away that it was her. There wasn’t any way that it could have been someone else.

It was always her.

A thought strikes me and I have to shake my head to clear it. “She’s not really Clara, is she? What’s her real name? Did you get that figured out?”

Freddy nods, his face serious. “Audrey Nash. Heiress to a huge fortune, or she would be if her father would stop spending all of his money on hookers and drugs. Tale as old as time.”

I shake my head, a chill running through my body. “Everyone thought that she was dead,” I say, and Freddy agrees.

“Yeah, but she’s just done a really good job of hiding. Didn’t want to marry the man that daddy picked out for her, so she figured that she’d go ahead and make her own way in life. I have no idea how the hell you think that you’re going to be able to keep her under control, Gavin, but she’s a damn wildcat if I’ve ever seen one.”

“Fucking hell.” I suddenly wish more than anything that I’d spent the extra time having security cameras installed in the basement so that I could keep an eye on her. For her to manage to escape an arranged marriage, be on the run, and then find people who were willing to offer her protection, she’s obviously a lot more than meets the eye.

I love it. As much as I’d like to sit here with my brother and continue to shoot the shit, I know that I have to go see her. I need to feel her body up against mine, need to know what it’s like to kiss her. So far, I’ve managed to keep my hands off of her but I always knew that I wasn’t going to be able to for long.

Standing, I gesture at the door. “You know the way out,” I tell my brother, who rolls his eyes.

“What the hell are you doing now? We have some things to do to fix this shit. Do you really think that Nick Prince won’t come knocking on your door as soon as he figures out that you’re the one who took her? Only, he won’t really be knocking, will he? He’ll break your fucking door down and shoot you in your sleep like you’re a rabid dog.”

Scrubbing my hand across my face, I turn away from him. He can talk at me all he wants to, but I still need to go see Clara. Audrey. Whoever the fuck she is. She’s the first woman to ever make me feel like I’m going to come out of my skin and I can’t stand being so close to her without being able to actually touch or taste her.

“You’re making a mistake,” Freddy calls after me, but I don’t give a shit what he thinks. I’m past that, past caring what anyone says, past being able to think straight. All I know is that I need the woman locked down in my basement.

I need to feel her mouth on mine. I need to fork my fingers through her hair and turn her head to kiss me. I have to know what it’s like to taste her for my own and there’s not a fucking thing in this world that can stop me.

At the same time, anger flicks through the back of my mind when I think about her lying to me. She thought that she could keep her true identity hidden from me, but all that did was put me and my entire family in danger. I probably would have still brought her here even if I’d known who she really was, but I would have been more prepared.

I wouldn’t have taken her like that. I would have been smarter.

I have to fix this.

But first I have to taste her.