Chasing His Brother's Bride
Chasing His Brother’s Bride – Chapter 27

“Who is she?” Jolie looked over Malik’s shoulder as he guided her to a chair opposite Brix’s desk.

“Honey? We f****d. Then we didn’t.”

“You were so rude,” Jolie was still blinking in surprise.

“She doesn’t hear polite,” he shrugged and plunked his bottom on the edge of the desk right in front of the chair she was seated. “Five weeks ago, I threw her out of my London office. I had ended things with her when I caught her the night before blowing her manager. It seems it didn’t mean anything but they scratch each other’s itches from time to time. The notion she would blow both of us on the same day I however found repulsive. I no longer wanted to put my d**k near her.”

Malik leaned sideways as he took the other chair, “she only blows the manager but doesn’t let him f**k her because her reconstructive surgery was expensive and she is choosy about how many d***s get in.”

Jolie was stunned by how blunt these men were being. “But you were kind of an a*****e.” Jolie met Brix’s amused gaze.

“Not kind of. I was and am an a*****e.” His smirk was smug, “Jolie, I tossed her on her a*s in London. She showed up in Vegas two weeks ago at my father’s casino looking for me and Dad’s security team escorted her off the premises when she removed all of her clothing in the lobby saying she wasn’t leaving until I showed up but I,” he laughed, “was doing a job for him in Italy so wasn’t even on the continent. Today she is here. Are you suggesting I should be polite with the equivalent of a stalker?”

“She loves you,” Jolie considered the possibility.

“She loves my wallet,” Brix corrected her musings. “I spoiled her with diamonds and a new wardrobe. She is a model but she’s on her way out and she’s realizing her contracts are getting fewer. She wants a steady pay day. If she snags me, she might get it.” He made wide eyes at her. “She’s not going to by the way. Like I said, I don’t have any use for someone who would blow me and then someone else same day. Loyalty, babe. It’s important to me.” He paused and looked to Malik, “find out who told her I was looking to settle down. It was an odd statement.” He looked back to Jolie, “she’s unimportant.”

“Oh.” She frowned at his use of the word babe. He was being very flip.

“What brings you up from your floor, Jolie?” Brix dropped his hands from his chest down to hold the desk between his legs.

Her eyes pulled to follow his hands and noted the way he filled out his trousers so well. She cleared her throat and looked away with a shake of her head. “Oh, right, my landlord called me and told me he was cancelling my rental agreement.”

“Who cares,” Malik grunted. “The place is a dump. It’s not fit for a Cacciola anyway.”

She turned to face him angrily, “there is nothing wrong with it, you snob, but” she blinked exaggeratedly, “he said he was cancelling it because he found out I was a fugitive from the LVPD.”

“What?” Brix drummed his fingers against the desk between his legs.

She wondered if he was taunting her and tried to keep her eyes averted from the tapping fingers. Mentally she cursed herself from being distracted by the package he was all but pointing to. “He’s stupid apparently because the guy didn’t even have a warrant. Just showed up and said –”

“Who showed up?” Malik cut her off again.

She threw her hands up frustratedly realizing she was leaving parts out because she was focused on Brix’s hands resting right near his junk. She was so close she could almost see the outline of it down the upper part of his thigh. Did he not wear underwear?

“Ugh. My landlord called. A phony cop showed up and said he was looking for me because I was a fugitive. He let him into the house without a warrant. I think it was probably a journalist or paparazzi because you let the story be released.” She curled her fists angrily, “he let this guy go through my house. Didn’t even hesitate. Then he called me and told me off for being a criminal and said he was canceling my rental agreement and we had to move.” She looked to the two men, “I want my house packed up. I know it’s not important stuff for you but it is for me and I worked hard to get everything in the house. I furnished it all myself and I agree a lot of it, was second hand but some of it was not and its mine and –” she was getting flustered.

Brix squatted in front of her, his dark eyes staring into hers. “Hey, look at me. I’ll have an entire crew there in thirty minutes to bring everything to the garage at the house. We can go through it all together, okay?” He picked up the phone desk connecting his to Keely’s, “Keely, can you call Arturo and get him to get a bunch of guys over to the address Malik sends him? I want the house cleared down to the studs and everything delivered to garage of the new house by the end of the day. All of it.” He hung up. “Done.” He gave her a reassuring smile.

She nodded and then had a thought, wiping an angry tear off her cheek. “My money,” she whispered and looked to Malik. “What if the person took my money?”

“There was what? Ten grand there?”

“A little over nine,” she whispered hating it might be gone.

“It will be the first thing our guys look for.” Malik sent a text message, presumably to Arturo.

“The landlord has my postdated cheques too. I want them back.”

“We will get them.” Brix cupped her cheeks softly. “Did he tell you anything else?”

“He said the cop gave him a card to call him if I came back. The cop’s name was Acevedo.” She didn’t miss the exchange of glances between the two men. “What?”

“He’s not a journalist, Jolie.” Brix stood up and pointed at Malik who was already at the door. “Find him and I want his head.”

Malik stormed out and Brix pulled Jolie into his arms and hugged her tight. She was confused by the behavior of the two men.

“Was he a cop? FBI?”

“No. Acevedo is Juan’s right-hand man,” he rubbed her back, leaning to grab his cell phone off his desk and called his father. He didn’t even wait for him to speak when the call connected. “Dad, I have Jolie with me in my office. Acevedo was at her rental house. Left a card with her landlord for him to call the guy as soon as she comes back.”

“Give me three minutes and I’ll sort it out. He backs off or I’m sending in a squad to take out his entire family and he knows I’m not one to f**k around.” Elio’s voice was frigid.

Jolie noticed how the easygoing manner he spoke to her with over the last few days was not only missing, but his voice was also all business, thick with his accent and fury rolled over the phone line.

“You tell him if he is caught even looking at my girl, I don’t care if it’s by mistake at a distance through binoculars, I’ll cut his balls off and the balls of every single man in his organization and I’ll personally feed them to him.” Brix’s voice had the same cold tone and even when his father hung up, he kept holding Jolie in his arms while she blinked in confusion. These two men were furious and she had a feeling had she looked at Malik’s face before he stormed out, he was equally angry.

“Brix, I don’t understand.”

“If I had to guess, Jolie,” his voice, far warmer and gentler than the one he and his father had barked at each other with, “he is testing us. He wants to know how far we will go to protect you. He might have also been looking to verify the story you didn’t steal the money. Regardless of his reasons, he had been told to stand down and he didn’t. His actions violate instructions by the Cacciola family. He’s in shit.”

She sniffed and then looked to him, knowing her face was full of terror, “Brix, Pia’s photos are everywhere and her home report is right on the fridge with the name of her school. He could –”

He shook his head and gave a smile, “Pia is safe.”

“But she goes to after school program from the school and they walk and –”

“Jolie, remember this morning when you added me, Malik and Dad to her pick-up list?”

She nodded slowly frowning at his twisted grin.

“Dad picked her up for lunch and then kept her out. He took her to one of those DIY building centers so she could pick out the playground equipment she wants for the backyard. He also is getting her the lumber and plans for a treehouse.”

She scowled, appropriately distracted from her fear, “he took her out of school?”

“He picked her up for lunch. She complained Norman called her shorty again and she asked to stay with him for the rest of the day.”

“You can’t pull her from school!”

He chuckled at her, keeping his arms wrapped around her middle. She had her palms flat to his chest and she was leaned back away from him, her neck craned to look up at him. She noted his eyes were a dark brown with light brown flecks in them. His lashes thick and black, long and curled. He was staring down at her with humor in his expression and she blinked in confusion, realizing she had been staring deep into his eyes.

“Brix, what are we doing?”

“Well, right now, I’m hugging my fiancée since she’s stressed out because a cartel leader crossed a line and I’m quite enjoying myself.”

“I’m not your type,” she whispered suddenly.

“And I look frighteningly like the man who tortured you.”

Strangely the urge to reassure him was front and center in her brain. “No,” she interrupted him. “You’re so different.”

“Really?” He appeared surprised by her comment. “How so?”

“Your eyes are different.”

“They are almost identical.”

“No. Same as Elio. When Val looked at me, there was nothing there. It was vacant. It was like,” she grasped for the words, “there was no soul there. When he was high, which was most of the time, the vacancy was replaced by this haze and they flitted all over the place but they still lacked any kind of emotion. You and Elio, your eyes make me think of Pia, not Val. Warm and comforting. I am not afraid of your eyes Brix. Or the nose. You’re bigger than Val was too. He was slenderer if it’s a word. I mean he was big across the shoulders but not quite as wide as you are and you easily have three inches on his height. At first all I saw were the similarities but now all I see are the differences.” She took a breath, “with Val I felt scared from the instant I was shoved to my knees in front of him. I feel safe with you. I can tell you this,” she waved at the tiny space between them, “is the nearest to any man I’ve been in years.”

“How so?”

“Other than Mordecai who doesn’t ever touch me, no other man gets this close. I,” she took a breath, “once had to call Opal to come get me at a grocery store when I had a panic attack because a guy wanted my number. Another time one of the dads at Pia’s school flirted with me while I was waiting for her. He’s a strange fellow,” she frowned, “and he did this magic trick thing where he pretended to pull a quarter from behind my ear. I panicked and jumped back and he grabbed my arms and pretended to pull flowers from my sleeve. I freaked out and I kicked him in the balls for touching me.”

His laugh was a shout which made her jump. “You didn’t.”

“I did. I felt bad but I was terrified of him and I grabbed Pia and ran.” She was irritated at how much he laughed at the story. “That’s not even the worst one.”

“Oh, there’s one worse?” he was positively gleeful as he curled his fingers as if begging for it.

“Opal and I got a sitter for the kids and we went to the movies. I got up halfway through the movie to go to the washroom and this guy left the theatre a few moments after me. He swore after he wasn’t following me and said it was an accident when he walked into the girl’s bathroom. I broke his nose and I screamed so loud at least twenty people came running.”

Brix was laughing so hard tears were welling in his eyes, one arm wrapped around her middle holding her captive and the other holding his side as if he had a stitch. “You broke his nose?” he gasped.

She nodded sheepishly. “Opal was mortified. Guy made a mistake walking into my bathroom stall I had unlocked and I broke his face and my knuckle.” She held up her right hand and pointed to her first knuckle. “His face was pretty hard.” Her lips were twisting as he laughed. “Brix it’s not funny. It’s why I don’t want Pia responding to her temper with anger. She doesn’t know about the nose guy and she didn’t see me knee the guy in the balls. It was wrong. I shouldn’t have hit anyone. It makes me no better than –”

His laugh stopped and he held a finger up to her, “don’t you say it. Don’t you compare yourself to the piece of s**t. In all three of those situations, a man encroached in your personal space. I’m thinking the guy in the movie theatre knew exactly what he was doing and underestimated his quarry.”

“Really?” she frowned at him.

“Jolie, the first thing any man sees in a movie theatre bathroom is a row of urinals, not a wall of bathroom stalls. You can’t miss them. He would have seen there were no urinals and known he was in the wrong place. Any cop worth his salt should have called out his lie the minute they were on site.”

“Maybe it’s why they let me go with a warning.” She was very confused by his words. “Urinals right at the doors?”

“Men don’t care. We’ll piss anywhere.”

“Huh,” she frowned. “Who knew?”

He kissed her forehead gently, “are you feeling better?”

“It’s really been a shitty day.”

“Then let’s go find Dad and Pia and go home. You go downstairs and get your coat and purse and I’ll be down to collect you. I want to make a couple of calls and talk to Dad quickly and I’ll be right down.”

“Okay.” She started to pull away but he held her fast. “What?”

“Experiment?”

“What do you mean?” she was confused by his one-word question.

“I want to k**s you. Not for a show. Not because someone is watching or taking a photo. Not to solidify our story. I want to k**s you because I want to. May I k**s you?”

She shivered at the heat and the question in his eyes. Taking a deep breath, she nodded. “Yes. You can k**s me.”