Page 4 of Rent a Mob Boss

He steps in and takes Lillie’s chin between his thumb and finger. “And you listen to Quinn today,” he reminds her before straightening the delicate chain around her neck and the pretty little locket she wears every day, without exception.

“I always listen to Quinn.”

“Really? We have very different definitions of that, apparently.” He kisses the top of her head, and something in my chest goes all warm and stupid. This enormous, unsmiling man, who can fill a doorway, goes soft as fresh bread for a kindergartner with a crooked ponytail the same shade as his hair.

Then he straightens up and looks at me. “You’re pale.”

“What?”

“Pale,” he says again. “Are you sick?”

“No. No, I’m—” Well, this is embarrassing. “Family stuff. My sister’s engaged, and there’s a party, and it’s a whole thing, but it’s fine.”

His eyes don’t move off my face. That’s the thing I have yet to get used to. He just looks at me, steadily, like he’s got all day, and there’s nothing else in the room. “When?”

“Um. Next Saturday.”

“Do you need the day off?”

“No. I mean, it’s at six, so I’d be done anyway. Honestly…” My laughter comes out weird and high. “Honestly, I’d prefer to come to work.”

Something flickers across his face. “Tell Ms. Beaumont if that changes,” he says, before turning to Lillie and reminding her to be good.

“Bye, Daddy,” she chirps.

He’s already moving through the entryway and out the door. Through the window, I watch a man in a black jacket open the back door of the SUV for him before it even fully stops. As always, another car pulls up behind it. Both of them roll down the driveway together, and the gate is already opening, because somebody at the guardhouse knew he was coming.

Must be a big meeting. Markets, or whatever.

“Quinn.” Lillie pats my cheek with a sticky hand. “You’re not listening.”

“Sorry, baby.” I pull myself out of my fascination and turn my attention to her, where it belongs. “What did you say?”

“I said, can we paint horses today?”

I look down at her. Those big, dark eyes are exactly like her dad’s. It’s not even fair. “Yeah,” I decide. “Let’s paint horses today.”

2

DORIAN

Tristan doesn’t talk unless he has something worth saying. When he speaks, I listen.

We’re twenty minutes out from the house, the city thinning behind us. There’s tension in the car, but I don’t push. Tristan isn’t a man you push. He’s been at my side since before either of us had anything worth guarding, and in all that time, I’ve never once heard him fill a silence just to fill it. Half the men who work for me talk to hear themselves. It makes me appreciate his silence all the more.

So when he finally speaks, I already know it matters.

“The Castellanos are putting it around that the docks were theirs first,” he says. I look his way. He’s staring out the window rather than at me, one hand flat on his knee. “There was a car outside the Ferraro job. Sat there two hours. No plates. Nobody we know.”

I know what he’s driving at. More eyes on us. Disgruntled men, rumors, accusations. Watchful eyes where there shouldn’t be any. It doesn’t take a psychic to see what’s coming up ahead.

“Up the security at the house,” I decide without much thought, because there’s a protocol here. There are things a man does to protect what’s his when the Big Bad Wolf starts lurking too close. He’s always out there somewhere, that wolf. It’s only a matter of how close he comes.

“Not only the gate,” I continue after he nods. “The tree line, the eastern approach. Two additional guards on duty at night. Nobody unfamiliar gets past the wall. Nobody.”

“What about the nanny?”

The hair on the back of my neck rises at the mention of her. It’s a good question, something I’d expect him to ask. He’s only doing his job. Even so, I don’t like hearing him insinuate she might be a problem.