Page 135 of Savage Hearts

She swallowed but didn’t say anything.

I held my hand and kept her close to me.

“Tell me what living at the club was like, little firecracker.”

She stilled against me. Then, “Why?”

“Call it a curiosity.”

“Are you thinking about joining a biker gang soon?”

I laughed over that. “Fuck, no. I’m doing pretty well for myself, don’t you think?”

She made a small noise in the back of her throat that I had a hard time interpreting.

“The Tiernan crime family, right?”

“You’ve heard of us?”

“You’re supposed to be in Las Vegas,” she said. “You should have stayed there.”

I didn’t know how to respond to the little snark she threw my way, before I laughed. “Unluckily for you, we came back to Chicago and took what rightfully belonged to us.”

“The narcotics drug trade along with this crime empire, you mean?”

I waited until she met my eyes, still smiling. “Yup. And ended up keeping you as a bonus.”

Although I still wasn’t convinced that having her here was lucky for us.

She could be our downfall.

It seemed as if God had carefully crafted Mila Hayes to be the Tiernan men’s downfall.

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I’m not a fucking bonus.”

I squeezed her to me, making her breath catch.

“When your bastard father attacked our family home, we had to go into hiding,” I said.

I didn’t even know why I was explaining this to her in the first place.

“Why Las Vegas?”

“Our uncle lives there. He’s head of the Tiernan Syndicate in that area. We worked for him for a while. Proved our worth. Proved he didn’t make bad a decision in taking in three orphaned little boys.”

She turned to meet my eyes, shock in them. “You had to convince your uncle to let you in? To protect you?”

I shrugged. “He and my dad didn’t get along. He threw a three-day celebration when he heard our old man kicked the bucket.”

“That’s… terrible.”

I chuckled. “Ah, don’t worry. We joined in.”

She gasped and I tightened my arms around her, never forgetting that she was basically naked underneath the T-shirt she wore to bed.

“He wasn’t a good father.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Oh.”

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