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Because the elegant solution to stop Bashkim Kodra from dividing our families and slaughtering us is to make sure the families aren't divisible.

And how do you do that?

Fucking bingo.

Separately, the Barones and the Drakoses are vulnerable. Together, we’re too big for Bashkim to touch. And that is why the decision has been made for me to fucking marry Murder Muppet.

The same Murder Muppet who has not only trashed my room, twice, now. But who also fucked with my sweet car.

I mean there are lines.

“Fine, what about Vegas if you don't want Ibiza?”

I swivel my head and glare at my younger brother.

“You think it’s the location I have a problem with?”

He shrugs and offers me the joint, which I decline. I have nothing against recreational drug use. I just don’t like feeling like I’m not in control, ever.

“I still can’t read minds, dickhead,” he chuckles. “Whatever you’re thinking, you’re going to have to tell me.”

“I’m thinking there’s not a fucking chance we’re throwing a bachelor party for a sham marriage,” I snap.

Cenzo takes a long drag of his joint and grins at me. “Yeah, well…” He exhales. “Hate to break it to you, pal, but it’s gonna be a real wedding.”

As if I needed to be reminded.

My brother giggles in the chair next to me, shaking his head.

“I’m glad you find this so amusing,” I say dryly.

“No, no, not that,” he snickers. “I’m just replaying the way she lost her shit the other night, and the fact that you’re marrying that…” He roars another belly laugh before he wipes the corners of his eyes and glances at me. “I mean, sorry. But it’s fucking funny.”

Yeah. Fucking hilarious.

Obviously, I was a white-hot ball of simmering fury when we went upstairs to Dimitra Drakos’s estate and got the full run-down of what was happening. The idea of spending any time at all with that feral little psycho is bad enough. Being legally bound to her and having her as my wife makes me want to cut things open and see the pretty red blood inside them.

That said, I have impulse control. I can hear something I don’t like and swallow my rage down while I work out how to process it.

Bella, it would seem, is not burdened with such things.

When Ares reiterated upstairs that the decision was final and that she and I were going to be getting married, and soon, Bella lost her fucking mind.

Threw a glass at the wall. Flipped a side table. I legit thought for a minute that she was going to lunge over the couch and gnaw my fucking throat out.

And watching all that would have probably been as amusing as Cenzo clearly found it, if it weren’t for the part where I have to fucking marry her.

The one saving grace in all of this is that the marriage itself is going to be kept relatively secret. Obviously, Bashkim will be shown proof of the happy union to steer him away from any sort of retribution for his piece of shit pedo son.

But both my family and the Drakoses have tons of ongoing business deals, treaties, and agreements that would be thrown into chaos if it was discovered that the two families had become linked by marriage. For instance, the Drakos family has a longstanding arrangement with the Jamaicans, helmed by Desmond Robinson.

Meanwhile, my family is allied with the Sicilian Marino family, whose daughter, Carmela, is in the middle of a bitter divorce from Desmond’s brother, Lamar. This means the Sicilians and the Jamaicans aren’t exactly friends. It also means they’d be rip-shit mad if they found out we were in bed—figuratively speaking only, thank you—with the Greeks.

I swear, the mafia world feels like fucking high school sometimes.

“Hey. Question.”

I glance at Cenzo again. “Answer.”