Page 139 of Sins of Innocence

I call Mick from the SUV on my way back to the apartment.

He answers on the second ring. "Talk."

I give him the overview. "Do you want me to take Nyström out?"

"You've got enough on your plate right now, boyo. I'll take care of the Swedish assassin. I haven't been hunting in a while." The same anticipation I feel before a hunt thrums in Mick's voice.

"Kill or collect?" I ask with professional curiosity.

"Collect. To begin with. I want to question him." Mick pauses and then says, "Hex finalized Vanta V2 yesterday."

That gets my attention. "Yeah?"

"It can fire twenty-four rounds before cool down." I can practically hear Mick's satisfaction through the phone.

That's a big improvement over the seven-round limit between cool downs for Vanta V1.

Meaning the V1 can now be expanded commercially without losing the weapons edge for us and our closest allies. "You're widening distribution."

"Time to monetize broader demand," Mick agrees. "No one's managed to back engineer the Vanta in six years. The risk of broader expansion is minimal."

"Kenneth knows enough to be dangerous already," I say.

"He always has."

Yeah.

But now he's desperate enough to sell pieces of the kingdom to save himself.

Chapter twenty-eight

Parental Controls

ÁINE

The rest of our stay in Anaheim was more like a real family vacation/honeymoon than mob forced marriage safety induced exodus from New York. Sure, Kieran spent time working, but he got up early enough to handle a lot of it by the time we were ready to eat breakfast as a family.

He took to theme park duty for three girls who had never been to Disneyland and wanted to experience all the things as if he'd trained for it. Hoisting Joy onto his shoulders without being asked, fielding Sadie’s endless trivia about the park’s "hidden secrets" and—without complaint—standing in line for an hour to buy Neeve the churro she’d fixated on.

He was on his phone a lot, texting or talking, but still somehow managed to take Neeve on the rollercoaster she desperately wanted to go on, ride the teacups with Joy and take pictures of Sadie with all the Disney cast members we came across for her socials.

He insisted on us all going on the boat ride through It's a Small World so he could sit beside me. And he held my hand while his phone buzzed in his pocket with incoming texts.

He didn't check them until after the ride was over.

Is it any wonder that by the time we got back to New York, I was having a hard time remembering he's not my Prince Charming and we're not a real couple.

Okay, maybe my charming villain, but whatever I want to call him, he feels like he's mine. In more than a we-got-married-because-we-had-to way.

Somehow, his big body fits in my queen-sized bed though he shouldn't. The fact he takes up most of the mattress laying diagonally so his feet don't dangle and I sleep half on top of him is beside the point.

He fits. We fit.

And sex with him is out of this world. Not that we've had a lot of that in the almost two weeks since we got back from Anaheim.

Way less than either of us has wanted to.

Things have been super busy. The girls are all back in school. Sadie and Neeve are both seeing the same mob approved therapist. Kieran made it to the emergency meeting of the school board for Sadie's school, but most evenings he's away from the apartment.