Chapter 14 MICELI

The door to my office slams open and Róise storms in, a five-foot-four avenging fury in an oversized flannel, khaki cargo pants and…

"What the fuck are you wearing?"

She ignores me, her fury incandescent. "How dare you? You had no right to set these two rottweilers on me!"

Allessio texted to tell me she insisted on being brought to me, "Wherever the fuck he is."

The text was accompanied by another.

Allessio : This is the first time I've heard her swear .

That doesn't surprise me. Like his father before him, Brogan Shaughnessy has some old-fashioned views about women, especially those in his family.

An Irish mob princess doesn't talk like a made man and those men don't drop the f-bomb in a princess's hearing.

I've heard Róise say the word fuck though. In bed.

Fuck me, Ares. Fuck me now!

I fix my gimlet glare on Allessio. "You let her leave the house like that?"

I sweep my hand toward my soon-to-be fiancée whose entire midriff is bare. The drab greens in the plaid on the flannel shirt are fine, but they're accented with thin pink lines. Every fucking button is open and her fucking little pink bra is on full display.

"You didn't tell me to play fashion police," Allessio replies with a sardonic twist of his lips.

Zoey's eyes are wide and she looks concerned for me , not the little hellion still shouting about inconsiderate jerks who make an ox look savvy.

It's a convoluted insult, but I'm impressed all the same.

"Uh, it's a bralette, boss," Zoey informs me.

"And that is better how?" I demand.

"It's uh, cotton and it doesn't show her cleavage."

"Just all the skin above and below that tiny band of fabric."

"Are you still harping about my clothes? Seriously? Did we go to sleep and wake up in the Dark Ages? Oh, yeah, I guess we did because I've got Thing 1 and Thing 2 following me all over campus!"

Okay, security detail first and appropriate clothes to wear out of the house second.

"Close the door, Róise, and we can discuss the change in your security like adults." Her flaming temper turns me on, but she's going to have to learn to curb it.

At least when others are around.

"If you considered me an adult, you would have discussed them with me before they showed up at my house this morning."

"Your uncle knew they were coming. I assumed he would inform you." Which was an error on my part.

I'm not usually that obtuse. As in almost never. I'm the underboss of the most powerful crime family in New York. I can't afford to misread even minor situations like this one.

"You mean like he told me who I was marrying?" she asks with scathing accuracy.

I silently signal to Allessio to clear the room and close the door.

But Ollie, Róise's Irish bodyguard, refuses to budge. "I'm not leaving Miss Shaughnessy alone in a room with a Cosa Nostra underboss."

"You are mistaken, Ollie. That is exactly what you are going to do." Remaining seated, I stare the other man down.

He doesn't shift or drop his eyes.

I'm surprised. Few people can hold my gaze when their imminent pain is in my eyes. I would be more impressed if his charge hadn't gotten away from him and the other guards in Portland. For the whole damn night.

"Your vigilance is a little late, don't you think?" I taunt.

Róise jerks, her face paling and she glares at me. "Shut up!"

Did she just tell me to shut up? She did. Not sure which shocks me more. That she'd say it, or that it would fucking turn me on instead of pissing me off.

My sexy hellion turns to Ollie, her green gaze full of appeal. "I prefer not to have an audience for this discussion, Ollie. Not even you."

"But, lass—"

Róise lays a hand on his bicep. "It's alright. Nothing is going to happen to me. My uncle would not have let Miceli's people accompany me today if I wasn't safe with them."

She sounds like she's pushing her words through gravel. She hates saying that, almost as much as I hate the sight of her touching Ollie. It's not personal.

She's mine and my woman doesn't touch other men. That's it. "Take your hand off his arm unless you want him to lose it."

Róise drops her hand to spin around so she can scowl at me when she yells again. "That's not funny. Ollie is my friend."

"He's your bodyguard and not a great one."

"That's not true!" She worries her lip with her teeth, showing temper isn't the only emotion she's feeling.

She's afraid I'm going to reveal his dereliction of duty to him. The fact that he hasn't figured it out yet only shows how important it is for Allessio and Zoey to remain on Róise's security detail.

Allessio is the only man I trust as much as I do my brother and cousin. His family joined the Genovese four generations ago and have been loyal ever since.

He trained with me and Sev for most of our teen years and is not only an expert marksman, but is a Judo Godan as well, holding his fifth black belt. Zoey is one of his students and already holds her first black belt. She is also a soldier in training.

If Allessio and Zoey were not such a lethal combination, I would have assigned a larger detail to Róise instead of assigning her the equivalent of a second bodyguard and his trainee.

But having Allessio there is almost as good as me being there myself.

"Ollie, please, I need to talk to Miceli privately. You can wait in the outer office."

It takes more cajoling from my mob princess before she convinces Ollie to leave and every soft, imploring word said to another man is nails on a chalkboard in my ears.

I'm ready to shoot the damn bodyguard and be done with it by the time he finally follows my people out and shuts the door behind him.

"Do not beg another man ever again."

"Get over yourself. I agreed to marry you in a year…ish," she corrects herself. "From now. Not to obey your every command."

"There's a promise to obey in the wedding vows." That's what I've heard anyway.

Neither Giulia, nor Catalina, promised to obey in theirs, but pushing Róise's buttons is one of my new favorite things.

Eyes flashing, breasts heaving, she glares at me. "And I promise you, I won't be saying it. "

The temptation to touch is going to override my good sense. There's a reason I haven't moved around my desk, but I can't get the image of fucking her on top of it out of my head.

"As sexy as I find acrimony on you, I have things to do today." Like figuring out how much of a problem Henrico Caruso is going to be in my brother's eventual bid for godfather.

"Of course you do." She jerks her thumb toward my office door. "Fine. Pull your soldiers from my security and I'll leave."

"I should have contacted you directly rather than trusting your uncle to tell you about the change in your security." Acknowledging my error should calm her down. Unfortunately. "But that's not happening."

She storms across my office and stops right in front of my desk, vibrating with fury.

Then she slams her hand down with a loud thwack. "You should never have assigned me a Cosa Nostra security detail in the first place."

"That's going to hurt." My desk has clean, Danish lines and looks lighter than it is, but it's made of hard, solid maple.

I could fuck her until she screams and it wouldn't break.

"What hurts is trying to get through to your thick brain." But she presses her hand to her side, mouth drawn tight.

Damn it. I jump up and open the minifridge hidden behind a cabinet door. There's fresh ice in the fridge's tiny freezer compartment. Like there is every day.

I pull some out and wrap it in a bar towel. "Hold this. It will take the sting out."

She glares at the icepack, but then takes it with a muttered thank you.

"Getting bawled out by a woman is a new one for me." Playing with temptation, I lean back on my desk next to where she's standing, so much smooth skin on display. "Mamma is too refined. My sister, Giulia, lives in Las Vegas. And Catalina doesn't yell."

She gets her point across, but the only man my sister-in-law gets really hot under the collar with is Sev.

"I'm not like them," Róise says defiantly. "I yell when I get angry."

"And hit desks."

"I was making a point."

"Next time, do it without hurting yourself."

"Gladly." She sighs, seemingly calmer. "I don't need Allessio and Zoey following me around."

"I disagree. Your actions in Portland made it unquestionably necessary. If your bodyguards were adequate to the task, you would not have been in the club that night. The fact you stayed in my room until the wee hours only proves my point. "

She waves away my logical and legitimate concern with a flick of her wrist. "It's not like I'm going to do that again."

She'd better not, but I'm smart enough to keep those words in my head. Róise Shaughnessy has a fiery temper and is as likely to do the opposite of what I tell her just to prove that she can.

She sits down in the chair furthest from my desk, and furthest from me. "I don't want your bodyguards."

Irked at her obvious rejection, I say, "I don't want to deal with a child-bride prancing around in a pink bralette either, but here we are."

Hurt flickers in her eyes, but she tries to mask it with belligerence. "Leave my clothes out of it. Plenty of women older than me dress like this."

"Not in my world."

"Well, in your world, or out of it, I'm not a child. I'm twenty years old."

"Start acting like it." I shove down the guilt hurting her feelings causes. Neither of us can afford for her to act her age.

She's going to be the wife of an underboss.

"Just because I don't act like an emotionless toad doesn't mean I'm acting like a child. I have feelings and I'm not afraid to acknowledge them."

"That might work with your college friends, living in your protected student bubble, but if you wear your emotions on your sleeve around the mafia, you'll be eaten alive."

"I know when to hide my feelings," she claims.

"Really? Because so far I haven't seen you do it." And part of me hates that she has to change to fit in my world.

Brogan should have taught her this, damn it. He knew she would marry into syndicate leadership one day. He's the one that suggested a marriage based alliance with his niece as the bride.

He's probably been planning it since her father died.

Róise pulls the ice away from her hand and gingerly shakes it, wincing before she wraps her fingers around the icepack again. "You're such a jerk."

"Most people would call me an asshole." Though not to my face. "I'm not removing my guards from your detail."

"You have to." This time the soft, begging eyes are fixed on me. "Before today no one at my college knew there was anything different about me." She gives a disconsolate shrug. "Not even the administration is aware I'm connected to the Shaughnessy mob."

That's safer for her, I suppose. Especially with her security so lax. However, it's not sustainable. Her uncle must realize that.

"Allessio and Zoey aren't going to link you to your family's criminal enterprises. They're too discreet for that." Where is this need to reassure her coming from?

"Discreet? Are you kidding me?" Disbelief overrides the sadness in her tone. "A lot of students at my college come from wealthy families, but none of them have bodyguards trailing them to class."

I shrug. "Maybe they should. The world is a dangerous place."

"Says one of the men responsible for making it that way."

"Organized crime is a hell of a lot safer than chaos." We are ruthless with each other, but not the general public.

Making that same oblivious public safer than they would otherwise be. Not always. No system is perfect. And while the average citizen doesn't have to fear me, any that think to get in the way of my mafia do.

So-called law enforcement do as much to foment violence as we do. The CIA banked the start of the major drug trade in North America and instigated more cartel wars than any mafia family ever has.

"My dad always said that." She looks away from me. "But he understood that I didn't want to be part of the mob."

"I hate to break it to you, but you were born into one of the oldest mob families in New York."

"That's not the point."

"No, the point is your safety."

She shakes her head, reddish-brown curls bobbing softly around her pretty face. "Even if they don't know it's because I'm from a mob family, having Allessio and Zoey trailing after me like oversized lemmings is going to change how my friends and the other students see me. How they treat me."

"They'll be more cautious around you." That's a good thing. Especially when it comes to the male students.

"More cautious? They'll start avoiding me. How long do you think it will be before my professors begin asking the administration if it's safe to allow me to attend classes?"

"You're exaggerating." No wonder she's studying acting. Róise has a flare for the dramatic.

"You think?"

"I think your actions in Portland were reckless, ill-conceived and dangerous."