The ultimatum was going to be clear—if the mother and daughter wanted my protection, and my money, and my mercy, they were to turn their back on Arthur—and I’d found the poetic justice almost perfect. After all, there was only one thing worse than losing a close, loved relative to an unexpected death—losing their love and affection while they were still alive.

“I can handle anything you throw at me, Arthur. Including, but not limited to, your spawn, who is, in fact, handled quite nicely behind closed doors.” I yawned, ignoring the look of surprise and hurt Francesca flashed me.

It was not in my nature to kiss and tell, but in that case, there really was nothing to tell. We did nothing but heavy petting. It wasn’t my intention to humiliate Nemesis, but it was necessary in order to humiliate her father. And choosing between her anguish and his pride, I’d run over my future wife to get a kick out of Arthur any day.

Rossi’s nostrils flared, his eyes zooming in on me like two barrels of a gun.

He shook it off quickly, turning his head to his daughter.

“Angelo Bandini and his family are here. Shame it didn’t work out with him and Emily after all,” Arthur tsked, studying Francesca’s expression through the rim of his glass, which was tilted up again—no surprises there. Nemesis was still staring at me, bewildered. It took everything for her to drag her eyes to her father and address him. If I were half-decent, I’d apologize. As it happened, I was not only a bastard but also keen on her forming this opinion of me prior to us having sex. It would help me set boundaries for what we were and weren’t.

“Oh?” She smiled politely as though they were complete strangers. Either my future wife was a very good actress, or she really was over her silly fixation with the Italian stud. “I’m sorry to hear.” She moved her gaze back to me, demanding an explanation.

Your father is a cunt. Good enough for you?

“Don’t say that to him, you fool. Say that to him.” Arthur shoved Francesca in the other direction toward Bandini. I was about to escort my betrothed to her fuck buddy when Arthur placed a firm hand on my shoulder. His smile was full of teeth and menace, and he reeked of alcohol. His eyes were red and small but laser-focused on me.

“Senator Keaton, I would love to introduce you to my friend, Charles Burton.”

As in the same congressman who had just resigned to avoid an ethics investigation after groping his employees. Might as well stick my cock in the nearest squirrel’s ass. It would make less of an embarrassing headline and wouldn’t put my morals in question.

“I’m sure you would, but I have something to attend to,” I gritted out, taking a side step, my shoulder brushing his.

“Nonsense.” He clasped my arm, pulling me back. The only reason I relented was because I didn’t want to cause a scene in front of Kristen and give her something else to write about tomorrow morning. “Didn’t you donate to his campaign?”

I did. Before he tried to put his dick in everything in his office, pencil sharpener included. Of course, Burton was already next to me, hugging and congratulating me, as my bride drifted like a magnet to Angelo, who was already racing toward her, his hurried, barely contained steps making my eyelid twitch. They met halfway, then stopped abruptly, their arms dangled beside their bodies. Their awkwardness told me that nothing had changed. They still didn’t know how to act un-in-love. My eyes followed them religiously as Burton began to talk my ear off, shooting excuses about why he had to step down. The notion that I cared nearly disturbed me. At this point, he could murder an entire strip club, and I would still be more interested in the way my bride-to-be—my fucking bride-to-be, thank you very much—flushed at something Angelo had told her, lowering her gaze to the floor and tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. They knew I was looking, so they kept a respectable distance, but everything in their body language screamed intimacy.

The place was full of people, and I had to remind myself that this was not Bishop’s son’s wedding. They couldn’t sneak into the bathroom and fuck. On the other hand, I did just throw her under the bus to get a rise out of her father, so my defiant fiancée had every motivation to poke me back with the one thing she knew drove me mad—her ex-whatever (I didn’t know or care what they labeled each other).

“…and then I told them that I will not, under any circumstances, take a lie detector test.” Burton continued blabbing, clasping my shoulder. “The audacity to even ask—”

“Hey, Charles?” I cut him off.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t give a single flying fuck why you stepped down or about the rest of your nonexistent career. Have a nice life. Or don’t. I regretfully do not care either way.”

With that, I shook his touch off, plucking a glass of champagne from a silver tray that floated around the busy room by one of the penguin-looking waiters as I dashed toward my bride-to-be. I was a few feet away from them when a shoulder sliced through the crowd, blocking my way. My eyes met the top of a gray head, hair sleeked back and carefully trimmed. Bishop.

He shook his head, his shit-eating grin wider than his face. Finally, and after weeks of my dangling his future over his head since I’d found out he and White were bribed by Arthur, he was in a position to shit over my plans.

“Nineteen, huh? She must be tight as our goddamn budget.” He chuckled, swirling his whiskey in his tumbler.

“How would you know anything about tightness? Everything about you is loose, your morals included.” I smirked back. I was, for all intents and purposes, a perfect gentleman and a polite conversationalist when in social circles. But Bishop and White were no longer people I needed to impress. I’d known that since before the masquerade, which was why I had allowed myself to piss off Francesca there in the first place.

“I don’t remember you leaving a lasting impression on the Rossi girl the first time you met. Suffice to say, I’m not the only one with questionable ethics in this room,” Preston replied, throwing smiles and waves to everyone around us.

“Whatever you’re implying, you can go ahead and say it,” I hissed.

“You’re already blackmailing Arthur for his daughter. That much is clear. The girl is not yours.” He tipped his chin toward Angelo and Francesca. He said something that made her cup her mouth and duck her head down. Smitten. “What I’m trying to figure out is—does that mean that White and I are in the clear?”

Thank fuck for arrogant idiots like Bishop who had their lives handed to them on a silver platter. He actually thought my end game was young pussy as opposed to taking down the biggest mobster in Chicago since Al Capone. That, of course, worked to my advantage. If Bishop and White were under the impression that I’d already got what I was looking for, they’d keep their guards down.

And so, even though separating Francesca and Angelo was of the essence, settling this matter took priority now.

“I have what I need.” I smiled easily.

Bishop nodded, smiling and tapping my shoulder. He leaned toward me and whispered, “How is she in the sack? A lamb or a lioness? She is spectacular, Keaton.”

I was glad it was not possible to strangle a person through an expression alone because if it were, Preston Bishop would be dead, and I would be escorted to the nearest police station. I neither knew nor cared why it bothered me so much that the governor spoke of my future wife as if she were a racehorse I’d purchased. I downed my champagne glass and tipped my chin up.

“How’s your wife in the sack?” I asked.

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Actually, I don’t think I will, Preston. Miss Rossi’s age does not give you the permission to talk about her like she’s a piece of meat.”

“But…”

“Enjoy the rest of the party.”

I sauntered past him, inwardly cursing Arthur for being an asshole, Angelo for existing, and myself for ever wanting to lay a hand on the beautiful siren dressed as Nemesis. The decision to marry her was supposed to chain Arthur further to my plan and clean up my reputation. Instead, it made everything a thousand times more difficult and complex. When I slanted my gaze sideways to look for Nem in the throng of partygoers, I found Kristen instead, cradling her drink and raising it in my direction with a cunning smile.

It was an invitation I declined by ignoring the gesture, roaming the room with my eyes for long minutes only to find that Francesca and Angelo were not in the room anymore. I climbed up to the second floor, checking her room, and every single other bedroom in the house, then the bathrooms, before I remembered that my fiancée was fond of gardens. I figured if Angelo and Francesca were going to fuck, they’d go somewhere private. But I forgot one little thing. Nemesis claimed to have loved Angelo. A few stolen kisses and rushed promises under the pink sunset were just as rewarding to them as a rendezvous between the sheets.

I descended the garden’s stairs to find them sitting on a stone fountain, their knees angled toward one another. He caressed her cheek, and she let him.

He tucked a curl behind her ear, and she let him.

He plastered his forehead against hers, and she let him do that, too. Their breaths were heavy, their chests falling and rising in harmony.

And I stood there, watching, simmering, fire coursing through me, I regretted humiliating her in front of her father. For I learned, for the first time, that my actions toward her had consequences.

I compromised her honor, so she was compromising mine.

The only difference was, I did it to spite someone else. She truly loved another.

Bandini leaned toward her face, brushing his thumb along her lips. Her eyes drifted to her thighs again, drunk on a moment they both knew they couldn’t prolong. There was pain and sadness in his touch, confusion in her expression, and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I stepped into something bigger than I’d anticipated. This wasn’t puppy love. This was the real thing.

She looked up and said something, taking his hands in hers and bringing them to her chest. She was begging for something.