To Save My Brother, I Agreed to Marry the Mafia Bo...

To Save My Brother, I Agreed to Marry the Mafia Boss.. Unaware I Was Carrying His Heir

The last coin dropped into the palm of my hand with the saddest sound in the world. It was a quarter stained with coffee, its edge worn down by all the tired souls that had passed it along before mine, and it was going to make all the difference between the electric bill getting paid or not that week. I was behind the counter at the neighborhood coffee shop at the end of the overnight shift, counting spare change like someone praying the rosary. The smell of reheated coffee mixed with the lemon detergent in the sink, and the ceiling light flickered every so often as if it too were at the end of its shift.

Outside, Chicago slept its gray November sleep, steam rising from the manholes and a wind slipping through the cracks in the door as if it also wanted to ask for coffee. Girl, if you squeeze that coin any harder, it is going to hand you back a therapist. Marlo Quinn tossed a rag onto the counter and leaned in beside me, her dark bangs escaping the clip, twenty-six years old, with a sharp tongue and the rare gift of cracking a joke before tragedy had time to land. She was the one thing about my shift I wouldn’t trade for money.

I hear the coin crying, I answered and laughed when it hurt, because that is how I worked. I think it wants to go back in the register, so do not give it back, since that right there is your scholarship to happiness. Marlo gathered the dirty mugs over to the sink, and the clink of the dishes filled the silence between us. By the way, the guy at table three left a five-dollar tip and called me sweetie, so I cannot decide whether to take the money or take the chance to bite him. Take the money, because biting is free.

I laughed softly, dropped the coins into the old cookie tin that served as a safe, took off my apron, and hung it on the hook beside the schedule board, where my name showed up on four shifts that week, underlined twice. Marlo watched while I put on the thin coat that could not handle one more winter, though she did not say anything about the coat because Marlo never did, which was her way of caring. You are going straight home, right? she asked, pretending it was just an offhand line. I am, and Lilly is probably on the couch again, so kiss the little one for me and the annoying brother too.

I will kiss him and he will hate me, and that is exactly why you should. The bus dropped me off two blocks from the apartment after I had left the coffee shop at six in the morning the day before, made three deliveries in the late afternoon, and come back for the overnight shift, leaving my body unsure what day it even was. I climbed the three flights without an elevator, counting the steps because counting was a way of not thinking, moving one, two, three, rest, four, five, six, rest. The door creaked like always, and the smell of the apartment was the same as always, filled with cheap detergent, cardboard from the cereal box, and the last of the night’s tea going cold in the mug in the sink.

Lilly was sleeping sideways on the couch, the earless bear clutched to her chest like someone holding a life preserver, eight years old and fitting there with an ease that hurt. I covered the girl with the plaid blanket, smoothed the thin hair stuck to her sweaty forehead, and stood watching her chest rise and fall for one second longer than was reasonable. Ryder, I called softly, heading down the hall toward his bedroom where the door was ajar, the bed made, his coat gone, and the note he usually left when he went out late nowhere to be found.

I rested my forehead against the wood and breathed slowly, taking in the smell of old wood and the cheap deodorant he used too much of, before my phone rang in my bag with an unknown number that made me answer right away. Renlow? A man’s voice asked, calm and in no hurry. Who is speaking? It does not matter, but your brother is in a warehouse in the East Port district at Pier 17, so if you want to come get him, come now, and come alone. The call dropped, leaving me standing there with the phone in my hand and feeling the blood drain from my fingertips as I looked at Lily on the couch, at the window where the wind stirred the yellowed curtain, and at the clock reading three-forty in the morning.

I called Mrs. Pereira from downstairs, lying that it was an emergency at the coffee shop, and she crossed the hall in her robe with a crumpled face to say she would stay with Lily until I got back. I kissed my sister’s forehead, grabbed the thin coat again, and went down the three flights without counting this time, catching the night bus to the East Port district which felt like a corridor of yellow lights and the smell of fuel. Looking out the window, I did not see the city, but instead saw my mother’s face in a picture frame, my father gripping the wheel the night he did not come back, and eight-year-old Ryder asking if orphan was a forever word, forcing me to swallow the old anger along with my spit.

It was not the time to mourn dead parents, but rather the time to not lose what was left, so I got off the bus a block from Pier 17 where the lake wind came in cold with a taste of iron and motor oil. The warehouses lined up one beside the other in darkness, and the one I was looking for was the last, its metal door ajar and letting a thin thread of yellow light escape. I swallowed my fear, settled the coat against my body the way you would settle a ridiculous suit of armor, and pushed the door open, the sound of my sneakers on the concrete echoing too loud as the high walls threw back every step amplified.

The smell inside was cold dust, damp cardboard, and something that might have been gunpowder or just my imagination learning to be dangerous, and then I saw him sitting in an office chair in the middle of the warehouse as if it were his personal office. He wore a dark suit, a dark tie, broad shoulders, and had one knee crossed over the other, his hands resting on the arms of the chair with the calm of a man who never needed to clench his fists. Behind him stood two expressionless men with shoulders set like locked doors, while to the right, hunched in a wooden chair with a cut at the corner of his mouth and his coat torn, sat Ryder, alive, breathing, scared, but alive.

I held the air between my ribs carefully as if it might escape through the gaps in my fingers. You are the sister, the man in the chair said, his voice low, polished, and cold without being cruel, like stone. Talia Renlow, I am. I walked closer, taking five steps, then ten, the cracked concrete scraping under my soles, and stopped three meters from him while Ryder blinked in my direction as if warning me to go away. Who are you? I asked, my voice steadier than the rest of my body, and learned he was Kieran Moretti, a name that needed no introduction in underground Chicago.

My brother is seventeen, I said, biting the inside of my cheek. I know, and he did not know what he was carrying, so I know that too. Then let him go. Kieran tilted his head half a centimeter, his dark gray eyes appraising the price of every piece of clothing I wore and the worth of every word I spoke without blinking often, a silly detail that somehow frightened me the most. The bag your brother was carrying had money from an operation of mine, he said without anger, holding only accounting in his sentence. Letting him go without consequence is a luxury I cannot afford, and my enemies pay attention.

Your enemies do not have his name, I said. They have mine now. One of the men behind him made a small sound of surprise, a poorly disguised clearing of the throat, but Kieran remained still. Go on, he invited. I work two shifts, I can pay back the bag in installments, I can pay with hours, I can pay with anything that isn’t my dignity or my brother’s life, the words tumbling out together until I barely recognized my own voice. I didn’t come here to beg, I came to negotiate. Negotiate? Yes.

He looked at me for a stretch of time that seemed too long for my knees, not the look of a man deciding to undress a woman with his eyes, but the look of a man deciding whether a woman was useful, which was somehow worse. You are trembling, Ms. Renlow. I am cold. It is not cold. Then it is cold anyway. Something moved at the corner of his mouth, almost a smile, so small I doubted I had seen it, and his fingers tapped once on the arm of the chair, a dry sound almost like a clock before stopping.

Behind him in the dark back of the warehouse, a side door opened for two seconds to reveal an older man with gray hair and an expensive coat who ran his eyes over the room like someone checking whether dinner was ready, greeting Kieran with a minimal nod that was returned without looking. The door closed again with a muffled click, and I could see I could go to my brother, whom I approached slowly, kneeling in front of him to touch his chin with the care of someone touching a cracked window. His lip was cut and his eyes were red from crying, smelling of that sour fear a teenage body gives off when it realizes too late it played with the wrong thing.

What do you want? I asked, turning back to Kieran. I have a proposal. I am listening. He uncrossed his legs slowly, rested his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward for the first time, shortening the distance between us until the air in the warehouse grew denser. And you are not going to like it. Not liking things is a luxury I cannot afford either, I answered, planting my feet into the concrete. Say it. Kieran watched me for one more second before raising a finger toward the two men behind him, who stepped back without a sound, making the warehouse feel instantly bigger.

Marriage, he said, the word hanging in the air and refusing to fall. Excuse me? Six months, where you marry me, live in my house, and show up at events where I need a wife, and in exchange your brother’s debt disappears while he comes under family protection, your sister gets a room, school, and whatever else she needs, and you walk away at the end with a sum that secures the lives of all three of you forever. It is not a romantic proposal, it is a contract. I laughed, a dry, short sound of a person needing her body to do something while her head processed the impossible.

You are offering me a ring in exchange for a boy with a cut lip. I am offering protection in exchange for stability, as marriage is just a technical word to me. Lucky you. He did not answer, just waited with his chin slightly tilted, his fingers resting on the arm of the chair without moving or betraying anything. I looked at Ryder, who shook his head almost imperceptibly, and remembered the earless bear on the couch, the electric bill, my parents driving off the day they did not come back, and every morning I had sworn not to let anyone else go away because of money.

I accept, I said before fear had learned to spell. Good, Kieran rose from the chair with a single, fluid movement, standing taller than I expected. Let’s go. Now? Now. I need to get my sister, she is already being picked up, and the address was given to me when you walked into this warehouse, he added in the same neutral voice. With the neighbor, no break-in, because my people know how to ask. I swallowed dryly and followed as the two men helped Ryder up with professional care.

We left the warehouse through the side door, the lake wind hitting my face like a freezing, iron-smelling slap, and got into a black, armored car that swallowed the street’s noise. The seat leather was warm and freshly vacated, and Kieran opened the back door for me without ceremony, sitting on the other side to maintain the exact distance of a man who knew how to measure distances. Ryder got into the front seat beside the driver, and no one said anything for the first ten minutes as I watched Chicago flip from port district to wide avenue, then to gated suburb at a rehearsed speed.

Twenty-five minutes after the warehouse, the car stopped in front of an iron gate that opened on its own with the low creak of a well-maintained motor. We crossed a garden with a central fountain falling in three tiers lit from below, entering a marble entryway where an antique chandelier chimed when the door closed behind us. A woman in her early fifties with gray hair pinned low and an immaculate dark dress appeared, and Kieran introduced her as Mrs. Halbrook, telling her to prepare three rooms for Talia, her brother, and her arriving sister.

Before she could leave, a man appeared from the stairs, shorter than Kieran, thinner, wearing a gray suit and the face of someone who had seen everything and lost patience with most of it, telling us he would let the kitchen know the menu changed since the sir might need to eat something that wasn’t a document. Kieran’s mouth moved half a millimeter, and Thomas took Ryder to the east room to see to his lip, leaving me alone in the hall with the man I had just promised to marry. Study, Kieran said, and I followed him down a high-ceilinged hallway covered in dark frames of relatives with closed-off faces.

He opened a double door into a study with floor-to-ceiling shelves, books with worn leather spines, a solid wood desk with a green shaded lamp lit, and a leather armchair, pointing to a chair where I sat while he took a leather folder from his drawer and pushed three stapled pages across the top. Read. I read words that were technical and cold, detailing a civil marriage within three days, mandatory cohabitation for six months, full protection for Ryder and Lily, complete settlement of the debt, payment at the end of the contract, and a prohibition of sexual contact without explicit consent.

I stopped at that sentence and looked at him over the paper, but he was watching the dark window instead of me, surrounded by confidentiality clauses and property clauses. I reached the last page where a line awaited a signature. Pen, I said without lifting my eyes, and he handed one out from his inner pocket. Our fingers met on the body of the pen, his skin surprisingly warmer than anything in that room, lingering for a second or two that snagged on my skin before I signed with a firm, untrembling hand.

Sunday, Kieran said, putting the contract back in the folder, the ceremony is here with no party, no guests, though you can bring one person if you want. Marlo, I noted. Can I see my sister now? Mrs. Halbrook will let you know when the car arrives. He walked me to the study door, stopping half a step behind me to let me catch the woodsy, clean scent of his jacket before whispering that no one would hurt me inside his house. I turned to find his eyes closer than I calculated, holding the look until I had to look away.

Mrs. Halbrook took me to a guest room on the second floor with heavy wine-colored curtains, a wide bed, and a vase of fresh white flowers, and half an hour later Lily arrived, sleepy and confused, clutching her earless bear. I took my sister into my lap, sat on the edge of the bed, and rocked her while she fell back asleep, trying to tell myself six months were nothing, even though the skin of my right hand still remembered the extra second on the pen and the brief warmth of his fingers.

I woke up Sunday with the sense that the air inside that mansion weighed more than any other place I had ever slept, light coming through the raw linen curtain with an elegance that did not match my fate. Mrs. Halbrook knocked sharply and brought in a sand-colored, simple, long dress with no veil or shine, chosen by Kieran with calculated precision, and I thanked her before Marlo arrived at nine, crossing the marble hall to complain about being frisked by armed guards.

The mansion’s private chapel at the end of a hallway featured pale stone walls and an old stained glass window throwing red stains on the floor, where Thomas, Marlo, and Mrs. Halbrook waited. Ryder appeared in the hallway in a black suit that did not quite fit his shoulders, looking like he wanted to apologize for his whole life, and when he said I didn’t have to do this, I told him I already did and straightened his collar. Lily ran past in tights and dropped a petal, reminding me I was there for both of them, and the rest was paper.

I entered the chapel alone to find a paid judge with glasses on the tip of his nose and Kieran in a dark suit with a sand-colored tie matching my dress, a calculated coincidence. When the judge asked if I accepted, I searched for Ryder and Lily, then faced the man in front of me to find no triumph, only silence, and answered that I did with the same calm he used to sign a port contract. The rings were exchanged in silence, his simple and matte, mine thin with a single dark stone, and when he put it on, his fingers brushed my wrist for half a second longer than necessary.

There was no kiss, the one traditional script element he cut, and after Marlo, Thomas, and Mrs. Halbrook signed the certificate, Marlo pulled me out to the garden where the fountain murmured and the smell of freshly cut grass rose to ask if the mob paid hazard pay, making me laugh so hard I had to sit on the warm stone edge. Lunch was served in the large dining room at a table too long for seven people, and when Lily’s butter knife slipped trying to cut a piece of bread, Kieran reached out without a word, took her knife, cut the bread into four equal pieces, and handed it back, prompting a thank you that he answered with a tiny nod.

That night after Lily fell asleep, I went down for a glass of water through the golden-lit hallway and crossed paths with Kieran, who stopped a meter away to ask if I needed anything. Water, and there’s some in the kitchen. I know. Neither of us moved, the silence growing heavy like the air before rain, until he told me I could ask for anything for Lily, my brother, or myself, to which I replied I had already asked and he had already given it. He held my look with dark, calm eyes before wishing me a good night, and I went to the kitchen to drink my water standing up, feeling the freezing stone against my waist before locking my bedroom door against myself.

Two weeks passed with the strange precision of someone living inside her own dream, learning the rhythms of the kitchen, Mrs. Halbrook’s white lilies, Lily’s laughter in the garden, and Ryder opening his school books in the library with less curved shoulders. It all worked until Saturday afternoon when Kieran called me to the library, standing near the window without his jacket and rolling his sleeves up as he told me there was an event at the casino that night and he needed me to come with him.

You need it or I need it? I asked, leaning against the shelf. I need rivals to see you with me, and you need to decide whether you’ll go. Marlo showed up an hour later with a black dress in heavy fabric with a V-neckline and a discreet slit, sent by Kieran because he had told her that if Marlo was there, I would feel less like I had been sold. Marlo helped me dress, pinned my hair into a low bun, and applied dark lipstick, and when Thomas drove us downtown to the underground casino beneath an old hotel, he mentioned casually that the boss had changed his tie three times that day.

We descended into a low-ceilinged hall smelling of cigar smoke and floral perfume, where Kieran stood waiting and took my hand the instant he saw me, his fingers warm, dry, and firm. This is my wife, Talia, he told a man beside him, his voice low, and as he introduced me to his allies, his hand rested on the small of my back to make sure no one misunderstood the meaning. Victor Cain appeared with the look of a beloved uncle, flashing an easy smile and squeezing my fingers longer than I wanted while speaking of family, while Kieran’s hand settled a little lower on my back.

When a rival captain named Brennan came too close to offer a drink, Kieran rested his thumb against my rib in a warning pressure through three layers of fabric and skin, asking if I was thirsty before leading me away without goodbyes. Back at the mansion, Marlo slept in the seat, Kieran rode in front in silence, and when we arrived, I veered off toward the study where the door was ajar and Victor’s voice leaked out telling Kieran that the veils were still moving behind his back and that his father wouldn’t have spared them.

I went to my room, stripped off the dress, and watched from the window as Victor left alone through the garden, stopping near the fountain to talk on his phone for two minutes while turning his body to hide from the house before glancing up at Kieran’s study window. Three days later, while carrying hot chocolate for Lily down the service hallway, I stopped at the gap in the cabinet door where Victor was whispering on the phone about staging a low-profile accident for the boy coming home from school to blame on the Veils and force Kieran into a war.

I backed away, ran upstairs to Lily’s room to set down the cup, and then went straight to Kieran’s study, bursting through the door to tell him that Victor had arranged an accident for Ryder. Kieran did not ask for proof, instead pressing a button on his desk phone to speak in Italian and English, ordering captains to the gate and basement with a calm that made the ground shift beneath my feet before coming over to touch the line of my jaw with warm fingertips. You heard what no one was supposed to hear, he said low, and from here on it is my calculation, not yours.

Thomas appeared, and though Kieran told me to stay, I waited thirty seconds before grabbing my coat and following them to the garage where three black cars waited, getting into the second one with Kieran while Thomas drove and Roan sat in front with a gun. We drove to a smaller hangar near the train line with a zinc roof, where Thomas parked two blocks away and Roan cleared the building before Kieran told me to stay in the car, a non-negotiable command that led to eleven of the longest minutes of my life filled with two warning shots and muffled voices.

Ryder came out first, whole and walking, and fell into my arms smelling of dust and fear, whispering that he didn’t know, while Kieran emerged leading Victor by the arm without apparent violence just as the capos arrived in three cars. Victor used a seventeen-year-old boy, Kieran said without looking at him, and that is what the Capos are going to remember as they listened to the recording Tomas carried from the old service microphone. Victor lowered his head, and on the way back in the car, Ryder fell asleep on my shoulder while Kieran reached across to place his hand over mine in a slow, silent gesture.

I woke up late that Wednesday to sunlight spilling onto the rug, went down in slippers to find Mrs. Halbrook’s warm bread and coffee waiting, and watched Lily draw with chalk in the garden while Ryder leaned against the fountain reading an old book and smiling at me. Marlo appeared in the late morning with a cheese roll and her usual attitude, and after lunch Kieran called me into the study where he stood by the desk and pushed the closed folder toward me to say the contract could end today, offering me a safe house in the north, money for Lily, and permanent protection for Ryder without any clauses or returns.

And you? I asked, taking a step toward him. What did you promise yourself? Not to trap you, he answered after a long pause, his hands in his pockets as he searched for the words. I walked out to the fountain to think about my parents, the bag, the pen, Lily’s braid, and his hand in the car, realizing that leaving would be easier, but for the first time someone was offering me the chance to choose what was harder for myself. I went back inside, found Kieran on the hall staircase, stopped two steps below him, and said I was staying because I wanted to find out the rest.

His hand left the railing and came to my face, his fingers spreading at the back of my neck with calm firmness as his thumb passed along my cheek, and when I climbed one more step, he leaned in for a restrained, grave kiss tasting of black coffee and held breath before we climbed the stairs together to close the bedroom door behind us. The next morning I woke to golden late morning light, finding Kieran on the balcony shirtless with coffee in hand, and when he came inside to sit on the edge of the bed and brush a strand of hair from my face, I asked if he slept, learning that he too had finally found peace.

I drank my coffee in bed while he returned to the balcony to look at the garden, and listening to Lily shout to Ryder and Mrs. Halbrook complain about chalk, I realized nothing was in the same place anymore, though right before dozing off I remembered a page I had turned too fast on the day I signed the contract. Lena here wrapping up book one, but book two was already finished and available on the platform, telling the story of how I married Kieran Moretti to save my brother until the nausea came, the positive test in the drawer, and the envelope containing the clause stating the bearer of the Moretti heir may not leave or dissolve the union.

Finding his voice recorded confirming he needed an heir to consolidate his power made me run out of that house with his baby growing inside me, leaving me torn in the dark of the car wondering if the man I betrayed was never a monster, and whether by running I had just handed our child into the hands of the real enemy, the one he loved like a father. To watch book two uncensored, readers could click the link in the comments for the complete, ad-free experience of this dark romance universe on mystoriesromance.com where new episodes are added daily.