Chapter 32 MICELI

Róise's eyes glow with eagerness.

Zoey is right. She says that the cousins all want access to social media, but it's strictly forbidden.

To be fair, no one high ranking in the Genovese Family, or related closely to them, is allowed to use social media either.

The PR team keeps accounts for the businesses and the fronts and even dummy accounts for our family. But nothing gets posted without their security approval. And it never gets posted by one of us.

Caution keeps us safe.

"Before the…" Róise breaks off. Shakes her head and then continues. "When she was a freshman in high school, Kara created a secret account and we all used it."

"I bet that didn't last long." It wouldn't have with our people.

"No, it didn't. Grandfather shouted the house down and accused our dads of spoiling us. We were all grounded from our phones, tablets and were supervised doing homework on our laptops for three months."

"Harsh." But no harsher than anything my own father would have done.

Or what Sev or I would do to convince our own children to stay safe.

"My cousins and I have a group text stream going throughout the day, but it's not the same." She touches the screen of the phone almost reverently. "You can't separate discussion threads in a text stream, and it takes forever to scroll back to something you want to see sometimes. "

"My father had the family app developed when Giulia threatened to get a disposable phone so she could have a Facebook account. She was twelve."

I don't remember her being grounded. So maybe our father's reaction would have been different if he'd caught her using social media. He was always more lenient with Giulia than he could be with me or Sev.

"I can't believe you made this my profile picture."

The photo she's talking about is one Allessio took for his regular morning check-ins with me. Wearing shorts that show too much leg and an oversized lightweight sweater that slides off her shoulder, Róise is leaning forward revealing cleavage no one but me should see and she's blowing a kiss.

It was yet another attempt by her to poke the bear. Allessio paid the price for seeing what he should not have though and being on the other side of the camera lens when she blew that kiss.

The picture is cropped to her face and the hand blowing the kiss for her profile picture.

"Change it if you don't like it." But every time I see it, my cock throbs, as if our Aphrodite has those cotton candy lips pursed just for us.

"Why does Allessio bother taking the pictures? He never tries to talk me into changing my clothes."

"I know."

Róise laughs. "You sound so disgruntled. Maybe I'll let him keep taking them after all."

"I'm surprised you have so far," I admit.

" Moma says pick your battles. That wasn't one worth putting the energy into."

"Your grandmother is a wise woman." And both my dick and I are grateful.

"I don't think I want a picture of me blowing a kiss showing up on your family's phone screens when I interact with the app."

"Right now the privacy settings on your account only allow me to see you."

"But I can see them?" My mob princess sounds so shocked.

"Our marriage has no hope of succeeding if we don't trust each other." And I've figured out this woman has enough stubbornness to stop her from ever taking the first step toward that.

The family app seemed a good place to start with her. Sev knows she's on it and so do the rest of the family. They're not posting anything sensitive she can see until they trust her.

"Doesn't your mom have the app?"

I grimace. Of course, Róise zeroes in on the chink in the trust building armor. "She has her privacy setting so you can't see what she posts."

"Oh."

"It's going to take her time to trust you."

"If she gets there, maybe I'll be able to return the favor someday," Róise says with more honesty than she probably means to.

She looks down to her phone again and I settle her more securely on my lap, but her ass is not flush up against my rapidly hardening cock.

We don't have time for another round.

My dick does not care.

Róise gasps. "What…how…where did you get all these?"

She's found the album for her family.

Her Shaughnessy family. I don't think she'll miss not having any pictures of the Lions on there. Not after the way her grandfather acted at her birthday party.

"Your uncle gave Allessio and Zoey access to all the family photo albums, both physical and digital." There are pictures of her parents when they were children and later, after they married.

I created a separate album for their wedding and for all the pictures that have Róise with them. She's scrolling through those now, touching the screen off and on as if she can touch them through it.

"I didn't know if you'd want those to pop up every time you opened the album."

"You did this for me?" There's a catch in her voice and she swipes at the corner of one eye.

"Yes. Are they enough to make changing phones worth the hassle?" It sounds like I'm teasing, but that was the whole point of putting all that on the phone for her.

To make keeping it irresistible.

"You took all the hassle away." She stiffens and her eyes narrow. "This is a lot. Why is it so important to you I keep this phone?"

"For a starter, you can't block my number on it." Which is more important than it should be.

"Uh huh. I could have guessed that one. What else?"

"It tracks your location and dead zones are virtually nonexistent. A jammer can still affect it, but it's equipped to send out a distress signal via a secondary radio frequency if you trigger it."

"You're really worried about your family getting kidnapped, huh?" She goes back to scrolling on the phone, but she's thinking about it. "There are posts from your brother on here."

"You can't see anything he doesn't want you to." Why tell her that?

She lets out a breath and looks relieved. "That feels real. All this I trust you even though our families were enemies like a minute ago doesn't. "

"I didn't say I trust you." I don't address the enemies comment.

I've already told her that the Shaughnessy and Genovese were never enemies. But neither were we friends. Rivals? Yes, that. But not enemies.

"No, you said you'd take steps to build trust and this is one of them."

"You keeping it is another."

She nods. "I get that."

"Open the home screen."

"Getting used to your bossiness is going to be as hard as trusting you."

"You like when I order you around."

"During sex. Yeah." Her lips twist with disgruntlement. "Not so much the rest of the time."

"It's a start." The way she trusts me during sex?

Is also a fucking turn on.

I point to an icon on the home screen. "That turns your phone into a listening device."

"Are you trying to pretend you won't have people listening in all of the time?" she asks with surprising insouciance.

I tell her the truth. "That takes way too much manpower." I put my hand up when she opens her mouth to speak. "Yes, I can toggle it on from my own devices, but you have my word I won't do it unless you are in danger."

"Imminent danger," she clarifies. "Mob families are always in danger."

She might be young, but she's not ignorant. "Imminent danger," I agree.

"And my cousins can use the app too?"

"A modified version, yes. If you want, we can install it on your grandmother's phone and even your uncle's. The app's privacy settings allow each of us to exclude them from all, or part of our activity as we choose."

She nods, like once again, that lack of complete trust is believable and makes sense to her. "I don't want Uncle Brogan on it. Or Mick."

"That won't bother Kara?" No way in hell would I allow Róise to be on an app like this without me on it too.

"Why should it? He's not part of our group texting now. And my uncle would only use it to compile information on your family."

Is she even aware of how she's protecting me…us, already? Róise won't betray her uncle to us, but she won't betray us to her uncle either.

There's a streak of loyalty running through her that's bone deep.