Nah. I sent the thought flitting away from me, knowing immediately that it couldn't be that. Irish Brennan's one and only daughter was the brightest mind on our street and always had been, and she would have made a fucking fantastic negotiator for his family. But I'd known her basically since she was born—though I wasn't supposed to admit that to anyone else, seeing as how our families were enemies—and I knew how much her dad loved her.

  There was no way he'd get her messed up in anything for the family. He wanted the best for her, and that meant he'd fought to keep her out of the life. Made sure she wasn’t involved in any deals and was as protected as possible from his own actions. He never would have sent her out west for a negotiation, no matter how smart she was.

  I tipped my head, then, staring slowly from Sloane—who was still staring at me—to the girl lying next to her. Yeah, I knew that one, too. Those long, lanky lines and the face that belonged on the runway. Brooks Peterson. Not part of the mafia, directly, except that she'd always been Sloane's best friend. Family adjacent. She was dying her hair an alarming shade of red these days, I saw, but that didn't hide her identity.

  Not that she was trying. She was laying in the sun like she was daring every man on the beach to worship her, all stretched out and posed as if she was waiting for a fucking cameraman to come along and shoot some stills.

  Typical Brooks. The girl was tough as nails and would shoot you in the nuts if she thought you'd insulted her, but knew exactly how to use her looks to get what she wanted.

  She and Sloane in the same space at the same time were danger with a capital D. Always had been.

  So what were they doing in LA, laying on the beach like they belonged here?

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to remember when I'd last seen either of them... and came up with a blank for the last five years or so. We'd all grown up on the same block, on the same side of town—the side where the mafia ruled—and there was a time when I'd seen both of them on the daily.

  There was a time when Sloane and I had managed to see each other a whole lot more than that. Not that anyone from either of our families knew about it.

  But lately...

  No, I hadn't seen Sloane much for the last five years. And by the time I stopped seeing her around, I'd been so caught up with the business that I hadn't bothered to look for her. She and I had stopped talking when we graduated high school and realized that we had to deal with real life.

  Realized that the friendship we'd nurtured in back alleys and basements might actually get us in trouble now that I was being groomed as my father's right-hand man.

  That's right, I said it. We'd been friends. Close ever since we'd both nearly been hit by the same ice cream truck when we were six and seven years old and rushing to get to the truck before the driver got away. I'd seen the truck coming and knocked her out of the way, taking her tumbling to the ground and then shielding her with my body during the roll, knowing instinctively that she was smaller and more fragile than I was and that it was therefore my job to protect her.

  Afterwards, of course, I'd found out that she was actually part of the Brennan family, daughter to the head of the Irish mob, and therefore my enemy.

  But it had been far too late. By the time we found that out, we'd been attached at the hip and sneaking out of our collective houses at all hours to meet up and trade bubblegum cards and secrets.

  And from there...

  Well, when we'd managed to meet at midnight on the night we graduated from high school, tucked into a corner of our favorite coffee shop and huddled over a table laughing about how stupid it was that we now had to act like adults, I'd looked at her and realized that something had shifted. Something that had once been a friendship, a partnership in crime, had become...

  More.

  And a split second later, one of my father's goons had seen us and beat the shit out of me for associating with a known enemy. I'd been able to distract him long enough for Sloane to get away.

  And I hadn't seen her since.

  Hadn't heard a word about her, either. My father had made sure of that. Made sure I knew that she was off-limits and that if I was caught associating with an enemy again, I'd get worse than a beating.

  Someone kicked sand right into my face, then, and I was jerked back into the present, and back onto the beach in Santa Monica, where it was December and I was twenty-three and a trusted member of the Rossi family rather than eighteen and still walking a fine line between juvenile and adult.

  These days I was the heir apparent. The second-in-command.

  My eyes narrowed on Sloane again. She was still fucking staring at me, her mouth now drawn into a grim line and her chin firm. I couldn't see her eyes, but I knew what they'd look like if I could. A dark silvery gray so beautiful you'd swear it was fake. The smokier shadow to my much brighter eyes.

  And no doubt narrowed in distrust. Because she'd definitely seen me, and I could pretty much guarantee that she was asking herself the same questions I was asking: What the fuck was her family's enemy doing on her beach?

  Sloane. Fucking. Brennan.

  The last girl I'd expected to see on this trip.

  The only girl who had ever made me want to cross family lines and leave the business behind me.

  3

  SLOANE

  EMOTIONS THAT KILL YOU

  I watched, my eyes narrowed in distrust and extreme suspicion, as Joseph Rossi laid there on his towel and stared at me like I was his fucking property and he'd come to this beach specifically to have a good, long look.

  I snarled when I had the thought... and then I snarled again at the quirk in his lips when he saw me do it.

  Joseph Rossi.

  What the fuck was he doing on my beach? What was he doing in Santa Monica at all, for that matter, and on the same fucking beach where I was laying, looking like he'd come here for some sort of Christmas vacation? He couldn't have. I knew through the grapevine—a grapevine called Penny Lane, my other best friend, who still lived in New York and liked to keep tabs on All Things Rossi—that Joseph was now Number Two in the Rossi clan, second only to his father.

  He was being groomed to take over the family and constantly at his father's side. He had big responsibilities, and I'd seen enough of the life to know that Fat Jimmy wouldn't have let Joseph out of his sight—or out of the city—on something as stupid as a vacation.

  He was here on business.

  What business, though?

  I glared at him one more time, putting plenty of suspicion and heat into said glare, and then flipped intentionally onto my stomach, essentially turning my back on him.

  Then I stared up at the parking lot and the California version of a cliff behind it... and grinned.

  Joseph hated when people turned their backs on him. He always had. Ever since we were kids, when he was barely even taller than me and twice as cocky, he'd thought it was a sign of disrespect. God, he'd gotten into so many fights because other kids—kids he'd thought owed him some sort of something—had turned their backs on him.

  The most insulting, as far as he was concerned, was when you did it when he was in the middle of saying something. That one really drove him mad, and the minute I'd learned that, I'd started using it just to piss him off.

  So if I knew Joseph Rossi, and I thought I still knew at least one or two things about him, even after all this time, he was back there on the beach fucking fuming right now about my lack of respect. Well, he could kiss my perky little ass—which I was sure he was still staring at.

  I wiggled it, just to get him even more riled up.

  He had to be at least twenty feet away from us, but I could swear I heard a growl of frustration, and that right there made me laugh out loud.

  Brooks, who'd been either napping or comatose through this entire exchange, turned to look at me. "Why are you laughing to yourself?" she asked. "And why are you facing the parking lot? Is something going on over there?"

  She immediately flipped onto her stomach and slipped her glasses up onto the top of her head, her gaze sharpening on the rows of cars in front of us as she searched for whatever I might be looking at.

  I snorted and shook my head. "If something was going on over there, don't you think I'd have had the courtesy to tell you when I realized it?"

  "No," she said, her voice sour. "You'd appreciate it by yourself for as long as you could, just so you could rub it in later."

  Okay, she might have a point, there. Brooks and I had met in kindergarten and become immediate best friends—thanks in large part to Brooks telling everyone within shouting distance that I now belonged to her—and we'd never cut that particular cord, which meant we'd grown up as close as sisters.

  With all the associated competition.

  We'd basically both been trying to outdo the other ever since. And we'd both been failing at that particular mission.

  Still. Some things were too important to hold back, and though there was nothing going on in the parking lot...

  "I turned over because we have a visitor on our little beach trip," I muttered. "Not one I expected to see on this side of the country, if you know what I mean."

  She took in a sharp breath... and immediately flipped onto her butt to stare at the people closer to the water.

  "Don't look!" I hissed, horrified.

  "What?" she hissed back. "If there's someone here from— Oh. My. God."

  Right, that hadn't taken long.

  I wondered if he was still looking at us... and if he was now watching Brooks discover him.

  And so what if he is? a voice in my head snarled. What did he expect? You not to tell her that he was here?

  Said voice was correct. Why would I care if he knew I'd told Brooks that he was here? There was no reason for me not to tell her... and every reason for me to say something the moment I saw him.

  He was, after all, the enemy. At least in theory.

  I flipped over as well and sat up, my eyes going right to where Joseph was still laying on his stomach staring at us.

  "What do you think he's doing here?" Brooks asked, all joking gone from her voice.

  Brooks wasn't part of any family. But she'd been around mine long enough to know how serious it was when a member of a rival clan showed up out of the blue, at a time and place when I was without any protection.

  "No clue," I replied in the same tone, my earlier ease and relaxation gone. "I haven't talked to him since the night we graduated. I doubt he's here for me."

  "Do you, though?" she asked quietly. "The second-in-command of the Rossi family... It would be a pretty penny in their cap for him to take out the daughter of the biggest Irish family in the city."

  "It's feather in your cap, not penny in your cap," I replied automatically. "Who the hell keeps pennies in their caps?"

  "I don't know, people who're saving for a rainy day? Don't change the subject."

  I snorted. Brooks was one of the smartest people I knew but was forever getting popular sayings wrong... and then pretending that she'd said them right and everyone else just didn't know the right way to use them.

  It was just part of her charm.

  "Either way, I vote we get the hell out of here before any shit goes down," she muttered.

  "What, you don't like sitting on the beach in what equates to fancy underwear while my declared enemy lays there and stares at us?" I asked.

  "Nope."

  She was right, of course. I didn't have any protection here, and that put my defenses up right away. I hadn't even brought my usual purse, which had the smallest handgun known to man sewed into the lining, just in case.

  I just hadn't expected to see anyone dangerous on the beach.

  Turned out I was wrong.

  The thing was... no matter how much I tried, I couldn't make myself believe that Joseph Rossi would ever actually hurt me.

  Though that didn't mean I was going to lay around and take the chance. When you'd lived with the mob as long as I had, you knew that nine times out of ten, those sorts of emotions—the kind where you thought some guy had feelings for you and wouldn't hurt you—usually turned out to be wrong.

  4

  JOSEPH

  NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM

  I watched as Brooks said something, her eyes on me, and Sloane answered, her mouth caught up in a grim expression that could have been either suspicion or disappointment. I saw her hand go to the bag next to her and feel for something... then withdraw.

  Good girl, I thought, though I suspected she hadn't found what she was searching for. Still, the fact that she felt for something in her bag meant that she usually carried something she'd be grabbing for if she saw someone she didn't expect on the beach.

  I hoped it was extremely small, for those tiny hands of hers, and that it was at least strong enough to stop a man in his path if he was running at her.

  And then I gave myself a mental slap for thinking any of that at all. Sloane wasn't my fucking problem. She wasn't my sister, she wasn't my charge, and I didn't think I could even call her a friend anymore. What the fuck did I care if she generally carried a gun in her purse, just in case?

  I didn't care, and that was that. It had just been a momentary slip-up. A lifetime of training on how to protect yourself, and appreciation for the fact that she'd obviously received the same training.

  I glared at her, hating that I'd even wondered whether she could protect herself, and realized how stupid it had been to ever doubt it. Sloane had learned how to shoot a gun before I had, and I'd seen her go toe-to-toe with kids twice her size on the street if she thought they'd insulted her family.

  The girl was tiny, but man did she pack a punch. Anyone who crossed her temper was in big trouble.

  Not that I cared.

  She wasn't my fucking problem. Not that she ever had been.

  But for a girl who'd never been my problem... Lord in fucking Heaven, did she look good in a bikini. Back in New York, we'd worked hard never to go anywhere that anyone in our families might see us, and that meant that though we had swimming pools available to us, we hadn't exactly gone to them together.

  I'd never seen her in so little.

  And my body was definitely taking notice of those curves, which her tiny red bikini did more to enhance than hide.

  I groaned and allowed myself a stretch, groaning anew as the semi between my legs rubbed against the sand underneath me.

  Then I caught myself and jerked my attention from my cock to the girl in front of me. It wasn't the first time the tiny, red-haired spitfire had affected me that way, but that had been a very long time ago. A different life, really.

  Two different people.

  These days, I was the rising star in my family, and she was...

  Leaving. She was leaving.

  I narrowed my eyes as she and Brooks started hastily putting their things into their bags, their eyes still on me like they thought I was going to jump up and run over there to do who knew what before they got the hell out of there.

  As if I didn't have anything better to do than go harass them when they weren't the reason I was in LA.

  The two of them stood up, gave me long looks, and then deliberately turned their backs on me and walked away, their asses swaying with the action and their backs stiff.

  The cocky bitches.

  I growled again, and this time it didn't have anything to do with how turned on I was at the sight of my one-time friend in almost nothing.

  This time it was frustration.

  What the hell was Sloane doing in LA, and why was she walking around without any security? Where were the guys who should have been watching her back? Why didn't she have at least one guard?

  Why was she on her own, but for her best friend?

  It was the height of stupidity.

  "She's not your problem," I told myself firmly, willing myself to turn on my back and stare out at the ocean instead of her rapidly retreating ass.

  Willing myself to sit here and wait for the contact I was supposed to be meeting. I wasn't here on accident, and I didn't have the freedom to just get up and walk away. I needed to meet a rep from the Patrelli family, and he was due to be here in—I chanced a glance down at my phone—ten minutes.

  When I looked up again, Brooks and Sloane were no longer walking alone. Or rather... They were walking alone.

  And someone else was walking about ten feet behind them, his eyes on the girls and his hands in his pockets.

  Every nerve in my body suddenly went on the alert at the sight. The guy didn't look like much—small and relatively thin—but he had a swagger to him that told me he knew exactly what he was doing with his body. The cut of his clothes was sharper than it should have been, and no one walked with both hands in their pockets like that unless they had something in there they needed to be able to access quickly.

  That guy was trouble. I would have bet my entire fucking life on it.

  And he was walking after Sloane like he meant to be trouble for her.

  I was on my feet and gathering my things before I even took the time to process what I was doing, shoving the towel into the bag I'd brought with me and grabbing at the t-shirt I'd taken off when I got here. I yanked it over my head, wanting my hands free of anything that might make moving harder, and then grabbed my phone and shot a text to the guy I'd been here to meet.

  Sure, I had business to attend to.

  But Sloane Brennan was out on the beach without any guards and there was a guy following her who was throwing up every fucking red flag I'd ever planted around her, his hands in his pockets and his walk determined enough that I could almost read his thoughts.

  There was no fucking way I was letting him get any closer to her than he already was.

  Period.

  5

  JOSEPH

  COLD, CALM, AND DEADLY

  I went screeching into a parking place in the parking lot I’d seen her turn into, my breath coming a whole lot shorter than I liked.