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Trace grit her teeth. “Leave it.”
    And just like that, Nixon did. I never imagined I’d see the day where bad ass Nixon Abandonato would be shut up by a woman. But miraculously, he put his gun away, thank God, and walked over to Trace, softly pulling her into his arms.
    Jealousy surged through me from every angle.
    I looked down, immediately ashamed.
    “Let’s go.” Trace’s clear voice rang out. “The family’s waiting.”
    Numbly, I followed them down the hall and into the small room where the justice of the peace was waiting.
    Mo was standing as stiff as a board in front of the room.
    I wanted to weep. And I wasn’t a guy who let emotion take a hold of me that often; I was more of a believer in emotion being a weakness.
    But she was so pretty.
    Not beautiful, pretty.
    Like something my ma would have told me not to touch when I was little, something so precious that I couldn’t play with it. Instead, it would be set far away from my grubby little hands. I wasn’t allowed to touch, but I could stare all I want. I could memorize the lines of the object, I could visualize what it would be like to be with it, I could even want it, love it, obsess over it.
    But I could never, ever possess it.
    I took purposeful steps towards Mo and gently grabbed her hand, clenching it in mine.
    Yes, her choices might be the reason we ended up in this position. But I’d started the chaos. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know when to get off the train. Because the thing about going over a hundred miles an hour all day every day? Eventually you forget you actually had a destination in the first place.
    You forget to get off.
    And that was all on me.
    I’d put us there because of my job.
    And I’d kept her there out of selfishness.
    Never realizing I was damning us both to a marriage of something worse than convenience. Unrequited love—because I’d love her until my dying breath, but Mo? It was entirely possible by marrying her, I was keeping her from loving someone else, from being what she should have been, what she was good enough to be.
    I was keeping her in the family.
    The one place she swore to me she wanted to escape.
    Welcome to the Mafia, blood in, well isn’t that just shitty part, there is no freaking out.
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    Words bring both life and death.
     
    Mo
    S HAKING, I PUSHED the wedding band that I hadn’t even chosen onto Tex’s finger and repeated the vows. My voice was hollow as I promised to spend the rest of my life with him, in sickness and in health. I wanted to collapse under the pressure, the weight, the fear.
    When it was Tex’s turn, I looked up.
    I shouldn’t have, because his eyes, those green eyes framed by perfect long, dark lashes gazed into mine and I was lost in a sea of desire. It hit me so hard it was difficult to breathe. Gasping was all I seemed to be doing, taking in huge gulps of air only to remind myself I had to actually exhale too.
    He’d loved me once.
    Would he ever love me again?
    Forgive me?
    Even though he was looking at me like he wanted me, I knew the truth, I’d driven a wall between us. I wasn’t sure if Tex wanted to scale it—I wasn’t sure I deserved to have him try.
    Protect him. At all costs, protect those you love.
    That was my mantra, the one my ma had taught me when I was little. And God, I was trying, trying so hard.
    “…in sickness and in health, for as long as we both shall live.” Tex finished, his voice cracking in the end as my fingers trembled in his hand.
    “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Vito Niscio Campisi Jr.”
    Tex visibly winced at the sound of his name—his real name, the one his father had given him, his very dead father. The one he’d shot not three weeks ago.
    I gave him a reassuring smile.
    It did nothing but turn his eyes to ice.
    “You may now kiss your bride!”
    Everyone clapped awkwardly while Tex stepped closer to me, tugging my body against his. Slowly, he leaned down and kissed me briefly on