Chapter Sixteen

Jack

"Bend over and keep those legs open for me. I'm going to fuck you so damn good today. You've made me hard and angry. What would possess you to date some piece of shit like that? You should know better."

"He wasn't ugly," she teases, popping her hips back so her ass jiggles in front of me.

A growl rips through my chest like a beast. Giles had been a friend of mine until he betrayed me, and then knowing he planned on fucking my woman, I wish I'd been the one who killed him. He'd known where my brother was, he'd helped Espinosa and inserted himself in my woman's life, and only alerted me to my brother because he finally wanted to get my brother out of her life so he could get back into it.

I hated him. Unfortunately, the bastard wasn't here for me to take my frustration out on, so I'll get to give her what she asked for. "I promised you a spanking, and it's time I delivered." My hand comes down on her soft, creamy white ass.

****

I couldn't believe what my father said to her; actually I could, but I couldn't believe that she waited so long to tell me. When she finally confessed it to me I wanted to go over to his house and rip his head off, but she begged me to let it go. He was just trying to scare her back then or so she claims, but I call bullshit because I wouldn't put anything past that asshole.

Still he'd never get that far. I'll castrate that fucker if he even considered it. I wasn't in the right frame of mind to deal with the baker or any other wedding planner shit right now because I had to have a talk with my men.

I make a call to my brother, needing to appease my bride before the big day. It's a silly request, but for her I'd do anything and she deserves to have something special for her wedding after everything she's been through.

"Connor, I know you're busy, but can you do me a favor and go to the bakery for me?"

"What? I'm kind of busy. I've been dealing with the shit you've been letting slide over the past three weeks."

"I'm sorry, but something has come up and Nora will be upset if I ruin the baker appointment. Apparently, she's super famous, and she made this fabulous cake that caught Nora's eye while I left her trapped in the house."

"Is she still pissed about you going out of town?" he asks with a chuckle. The bastard took great pleasure out of my troubles with Nora. I think he's rooting for Nora to give me hell, but he's lost this battle.

"No, I made it up to her several times."

"Lucky fucker," he grumbles.

"Damn right, I am. I want to have a word or two with her family today." I need to know what deal they had in place with my father.

"You sure you don't want backup?" His sense of foreboding is well deserved because those assholes can't be trusted and they aren't worth my time, but this isn't for me.

"I'm taking Ian with me for this one."

"That's what I was going to suggest. There's no damn way I'm in the mood for it. I'm already tired."

"Too much partying?" He's been busy with helping me with John and running the empire, including the nightclub. He has no time for shit, not even to walk his dog who is probably chewing up his Italian loafers.

"No, I had a run-in with that dickhead governor," he grunts.

"And you didn't tell me?"

"You're in your own happy little world and have enough on your plate. Besides, I'm a big man. Dad hates that prick and keeps picking fights with him, so his people pulled a raid on the club last night and had it shut down for no reason. I was able to get it taken care of, but it cost us about ten grand. I'm going to sue them, but it will probably cost as much as we lost in just the legal fees alone."

"That prick knows what he's doing. We need to have a talk with Dad again and tell him to quit it with the asshole. The war has to end because it serves no purpose. Two old bastards going head-to-head, and the only ones paying for it are us."

"So damn true. Send me the address, and I'll take care of it."

"I owe you one, Connor."

"That you do, but I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it for my favorite sister-in-law. I owe her," he says, and that makes me wonder what they aren't telling me.

"Why do you owe her?" I asked, wanting the details.

"You're not an asshole anymore," he laughs.

"Fuck off."

"Maybe I don't owe her." I could kick him in the balls. Sometimes I miss beating my brother's ass. When we were younger, we would spar and wrestle while training and I'd always kick Connor's ass even if he tried to cheat. Fighting with Ian was a little rougher because he was always angry, and that temper drove him to go wild. He was the enforcer for a reason.

"Just do it for us," I snarl.

He chuckles and ends the call, so I pull up the information Nora sent me on the wedding cake designer and forward it to him.

Now I can finish what I planned, and Nora can meet with the instructors that will see John on a regular basis at the house. As much as she can do, it would be better if she had help. I refuse to leave him in her care alone. That's why she was drowning before. I've vetted them before I allowed them to come to my home and there is extra security, but each of the women come from a professional background with no ties to our worlds.

Finally, I'm off to deal with these fuckheads. With several of my men, I enter my special warehouse on the Northside with the two Fieri men. "Mr. Fieri, thank you for seeing me. I heard you spoke with my fiancée two nights ago."

"Yes, and she wasn't very agreeable." The audacity of the old fuck pisses me off. I could snap his neck right now. He has no idea what I'd do for my sweet Nora. Every enemy she has is now mine. If I could have destroyed Giles, I would have. It still pisses me off that I missed it. At least I got to him in the end. It destroyed him to know I was fucking her.

"Well, what would you expect since you treated her as a commodity and not the precious child she is?" I reminded the bastard that was my special guest.

"She's a daughter, and that's what she's good for," he scoffs, tugging on his ropes. There's no way he's going to get out of them. Shamus is an expert at tying them.

I fist his hair and hold a blade to his skinny, pencil-neck throat. "Watch your tongue before I cut it out of your mouth." I hated this man and every word he uttered was a waste of my time that took me away from Nora. She fled her life because of him and had to start all over in a whole new state just to avoid his wrath.

"Why am I here? I didn't do anything against my sister?" Massimo Fieri says.

I smile at him which immediately unnerves the elder Fieri. "No, you didn't, but I want to broker a deal. I'll let this fucker live, if you deal with Espinosa. I want him out of our lives for good." Espinosa is a problem, and I don't have time to devote to hunting him down personally without leaving my family behind, but I also can't risk him living and running around ready to strike again.

"It's not that easy. He's a piece of shit, but he's got the cops on his side and I don't know who else is helping. He's slimy and slips through everything I've tried to get him on," Massimo says.

I know. Fucking hell, don't I understand that. "I know. I should have put a bullet in him when I had a chance."

"You should have because he's going to come after you and my sister. Now I'm going to have to hunt him down." Enrico Fieri is staring at us with greedy ears, listening too much, but that didn't matter because he wasn't leaving this building with a pulse.

"He already sent that fucking boyfriend after her. The one you knew about."

"I didn't know she had a boyfriend. I was just trying to deter you," Massimo says. "The last time I spoke to my sister, she'd just started her first year of teaching and I let her be."

"Well, Daddy here said he found her because you gave him the details."

He shakes his head and lets out a harsh scoff. "I wouldn't give him a thing on her."

That's when Enrico gets bold. "Come on. It's not that hard to dig into your personal things when you were busy with your whore." Now the old man fucked up and I laugh.

"Don't you dare talk about her like that." He jumps out of his chair, not really tied down. He grips the rope and wraps it around his father's throat, choking him. Leaning down, he snarls, "What did you do to my sister? What did you threaten to do to my woman? Did you think she wouldn't alert me?"

I thought my father was a piece of shit, but it seems the Fieri patriarch took the cake. He betrayed both his children. My father is just a neglectful asshole who got my mother pregnant when she was way too old to be having babies.

Enrico's head slumps forward and Massimo stands, straightening his suit. "Sorry, I lost control."

"No, I'm sure you've had years of pent-up rage waiting for that shit. It was happening one way or another. He crossed the line with Nora, so if you didn't, I was ending that fucker," I say.

Fieri's men and mine work together to deal with his father's lifeless corpse, and then Massimo Fieri asks, "Was that a true invite to the wedding?"

Smiling, I say, "Yes. Nora wants you there."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world." The look of joy on his face reminds me that they're siblings and I'm glad that I didn't have to kill him. Nora will be so happy that he'll be in her life. We shake hands and then we part ways. I head back, anxious to see my woman.

I'm almost home when I get a call from Connor. "It was a motherfucking setup." Son of a bitch. I turn the SUV around and plug in the address for the bakery. Someone's a dead motherfucker.

"I'm on my way."