Page 7 of Plunge into Obsession

Not yet.

I shook away the thought and turned to Raphael, trying to remember what the fuck we had been talking about before she came here.

“You think the men in the cartel will turn against us?”

Raphael shook his head. “No, I don’t think we’re there yet. But we could be, and why risk the contentions of our men? Right now, we need to show them that we are stronger not under Luis’ rule.”

“Wearestronger.”

“I know that. But do you think our men know?”

I looked down at the table, thinking.

What he was saying was true, and it wasn’t anything I hadn’t thought about myself.

But this was my fucking empire.

I would be damned if I could so easily be swayed to run it a certain way, simply because a few ignorant men wanted to go back to the old way.

“What do you suggest?” I asked, swirling the liquid around the glass.

“You get married.”

I didn’t react, though I couldn’t have heard him right.

I looked up and met his dark eyes.

A slight twist of his lips told me he really had said what I’d thought he said.

He confirmed it with a nod and continued. “We need to give the men something to celebrate. What better way than to build connections through marriage? And what’s more, you need an heir. An empire without an heir can cause a lot of unease among the group.”

“Are those your father’s words or yours?”

Raphael looked away, his jaw clenching. Raphael and his father didn’t get along. I knew the feeling.

The old bastard ruled the Bardales Mafia in Spain and had for the last twenty years.

Raphael moved to the States with his mom when he was little. His mom died when he was fifteen, and an incident with his stepfather a month later had him running back to Spain to see his father.

By then, his father already had a new family of his own—and an heir to take over his empire.

The new family died tragically in a house fire about five years after that, and Antonio Bardales had been trying to get Raphael home.

But it was too fucking late.

There was a lot of resentment between them, and Raphael was with me now.

I let out a tired sigh when he didn’t say anything. “Why would you think marriage would solve our problems?”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t solve our problems, but it would at least put out some fires, brother. Think about it. And if you find a girl who’s part of the life, with some powerful connection, it would be better. You wouldn’t have only the backing of the East Coast Bratva or the Bianchi Famiglia in the West. Then there would be no unease from the men, and it puts our enemies in a difficult spot. They wouldn’t start shit if they knew you had backing.”

“I have backing now. And what’s more, I don’t need the backing. We can stand on our own and you know it.”

TheCártel de Michoacánwas one of the biggest cartels that ruled Mexico.

And it was mine.

But only those closest to me knew of that.

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