Page 38 of His Forbidden Alliance

I huffed, determined not to let him intimidate me. “Since forever.”

“Not about something like this.”

“If you want to hear a secret, I can let you know what I did with my hookup last night.”

Dante grimaced.

“Like I haven’t had to see enough of you and Alex.”

“Alex and I are very discreet.”

I snorted. “You think that.”

“Well. Don’t follow us around.”

“I need to get to the casino. My hand hurts. My car’s blown up, and so is my bike. I’ve got a lot to take care of.”

Lorenzo shook his head. “Remington said he’d send a crew over to take care of the cleanup, and you know the family has plenty of cars.”

“Go home and leave me alone. Let me sort through this on my own.”

“That’s not how we do things,” Lorenzo said.

“It’s how I’m doing things now. You want me to grow up. You want me to stop needing you to look after me. I’m trying.”

He studied me for a second. “There’s something you’re not telling us, and you’re acting weird about this guy.”

I shrugged. “He’s hot. We had fun, and he didn’t try to kill me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Seriously. Isn’t that enough?”

Lorenzo shook his head. “You’re my baby brother.”

“I’m twenty-five.”

“You’re still the baby.”

Dante patted him on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s leave him alone. At least he’s alive.”

“For now,” Lorenzo said.

Dante held my gaze. I was thankful he hadn’t said anything about our conversation, but the way he was looking at me let me know he wasn’t going to promise much more restraint. “I don’t like it either, and I will intervene if I need to, but Rafe’s right. We keep telling him he needs to be responsible. We’ve got to let him prove it.”

“Exactly,” I said.

Lorenzo huffed. “You just want to get home to Alex. You probably got out of bed for this.”

“What I’d like to do is get enough sleep to be on time for my class.”

Lorenzo and I both rolled our eyes, but he let Dante hustle him out the door. I closed and locked it behind them, then rested my forehead against the cool wood.

My hand was throbbing, and my head was swirling. How much longer was I going to be able to keep all my secrets?

A few seconds later, I heard footsteps on the stairs.

I pushed away from the door and turned to face Zach. If I had any sense at all, I would send him away, then call my brothers back and tell them everything. If I did that, I’d end up accepting their help. Not this time. I was going to do this on my own. I didn’t need interfering family.