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To achieve that goal, I need to analyze Briar and answer key questions: Are her tactics universal? Can she work her magic on my family, too? Or is she, and everyone else in her family, just plain insane?
“It’s decided, then,” Briar continues although nothing has been decided. “Lace and Chip will come here to stay with me, and Aster will manage The Giungla.”
“I think you’re misunderst—”
“What are we going to do when we have children?” she muses.
I choke on my words as my mind turns to static.
Merciless, Briar continues, “We have a surplus of leadership with the both of us and our underbosses already. Merging our families doesn’t just mean choosing between them. At one point, their job will go to our child.” She claps a hand to her mouth and fixes her eyes on me. “Or our children. Rowan—” Tears glisten in her eyes. “—what if our babies hate each other because one wants all the power to be theirs?”
Containing myself, I shove my fingers back through my hair. “Briar. We are not going to have children.”
“I want at least one.”
Sheer incredulity takes hold of my brain, and I stare at this woman’s sincere expression. She…wants to have a child? In this economy? In this world?
In the mafia?
The longer this conversation continues, the more regrets I have. I should have known better. She’s not something brilliant with effective tactics that I can learn from and implement. Taking care of Granger was a fluke. She’s just impertinent and mildly insane, playing house in the worst setting imaginable.
When did I wind up in a romantic comedy?
Even as a headache crawls up my neck, I feel compelled to repeat, “We are not going to have children together, Briar.”
Her arms fold. “Sometimes children happen, Rowan. We don’t have to try for one if you’re adamantly against it, but I’m not going on birth control, so either you do, or you start accepting your fate as a father.”
My fate, huh?
I do highly doubt red strings of fate are real, but if they were, they absolutely don’t tie our pinkies together.
It’s too late to back out now. Briar will do whatever she wants, regardless, and if moving into The Casa was somewhere in her chaotic plans, nothing I say now will stop the inevitable.
I had not woken up this morning prepared to contemplate fatherhood.
Yet, here we are.
“Make arrangements for your things,” I mutter. “You’ll be taking the room next to mine.”
“Your room.”
I grimace. “The room next to mine.”
“Yours.”
Our eyes hit one another, violent.
“Princess…” I hiss.
“We’ve already shared a room before. People know we have. It would be weird to not continue. Raise questions. We need to be a believable couple, Rowan.”
She completely planned this. From day one. I am livid. And exhausted. And irritated. And a sliver impressed. Taking a deep breath, I settle the buzz of my nerves. Everything is fine. This is fine. I can work with plans. I like plans. “It makes sense for you, as the fiancee of a crime boss, to have your own, adequate space.”
“The room next door will be perfect for Cupcake. Chip and Lace can babysit her. Snakes have very particular living requirements.”
I stand. “So do I. They involve sleeping in my own bed and not finding unmentionables in my drawers.”
“Your bed is big, baby.”
