“Do you mind if we stay in the city this weekend too? I have a wedding I’m booked to sing at. It’s the last one for the year. I haven’t even had a chance to book anything else since meeting you, so this is kind of a one-time thing.”

Nate and I sat across from each other at the breakfast table eating muesli, yogurt and fresh fruit. I was also sucking down a very strong coffee. I hadn’t been sleeping particularly well lately.

“I’ve got some work this weekend.” He gave me a wary look, as if he expected me to explode. As far as I knew, he hadn’t been out on a job in weeks. As requested, he’d been keeping his illegal activities away from me, and I had refrained from asking.

I swallowed my food and cleared my throat. “I see.”

“I was kind of hoping you’d stay at the house with Jasmine and Alesha.”

“Just us three all weekend?” I actually laughed. “Considering your mother barely tolerates me, and Alesha has become her doppelgänger twin, I’d rather not.” It had been nearly four months since our weddings. In that time, my best friend had completely ceased to be the person she once was. It pained me when she sided with Jasmine over me. And worse than that, I felt lonely without having a girlfriend to talk to. I missed her ridiculously. It was like she’d move from being under her father’s thumb, to being under Sam’s. As if she didn’t know how to function without a firm boundary governing her behaviour. It saddened me and annoyed me at the same time. “I think I’ll just stay here on my own, thank you very much.”

He pulled his lip back a little, wincing. “That’s not gonna happen, duchess.”

I put my spoon back into my bowl. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not staying here by yourself.”

“Why not? Just leave me a car and I’ll get myself to the wedding and back. It’s not like I haven’t driven myself places before. I did just fine taking care of myself for the thirty-two years before you came along to chauffeur me everywhere. Unless….” His eyes met mine, his jaw set tight. Oh. “Unless I’m not allowed to be unsupervised for extended periods of time.”

He didn’t say anything, just dug his spoon into his bowl and shoved a mouthful of cereal past his lips.

“Oh my God. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t trust me not to run or go tell the cops everything I know. I’m still a fucking prisoner, aren’t I?” His eyes were dark and hooded as he stared back at me. “How was I too stupid not to see this before now?” I pushed my bowl to the side, suddenly not hungry.

Nate dropped his spoon into his bowl with a clatter and wiped his mouth. “It’s for your own safety. You’re not a prisoner, Holland. You have your own phone, and you go to work and out shopping all the time. However, I do need to know where you are and who you’re with at all times.”

“So, this is The Truman Show? I have the illusion of freedom, but I’m constantly being watched and monitored, is that it?”

“I give you everything you want and then some. But there are also limitations that come with a life like ours. We didn’t get where we are without being careful. This life is new to you, and whether you like it or not, I’m going to take precautions to keep you and everyone else safe.” I could tell he was choosing his words carefully.

“Because you think I’ll run, or because you think I’ll spill my guts to the police.”

“Because the world isn’t a very safe place. I should know, duchess. I’m one of the bad guys you were warned about as a little girl.”

“I thought you didn’t feel like a bad guy.”

He looked at me pointedly, and I dropped my gaze as tears burned at the back of my eyes. He was right; he was one of the bad guys. I couldn’t ignore that fact. It was easy to forget it—just like it was easy to look past the activities of the characters in Fast and the Furious and Ocean’s Eleven. They were all criminals, but they were charismatic and gorgeous, and the viewer sat there rooting for them to get away with their crimes. I was sitting in a live-action version of one of those movies, where I was the one married to Paul Walker or Brad Pitt.

My husband is a bad guy.

“I’m not spending my weekend with them,” I said in defiance when I’d gathered some of my composure.

“This isn’t a negotiation, Holland.”

I stood so fast my chair fell backwards. “Fuck you, Nate. Fuck. You.”

“Trouble in paradise?” Toby’s face greeted me at the end of work again.

“So when my husband doesn’t want to deal with me, he sends a glorified babysitter instead?”

He laughed. “I prefer to call it a security detail, but whatever floats your boat. I’m here to drive you out to Torquay.”

I slid into the car without hesitating that time. Over the months, Toby and I had come into an easy acquaintance. We weren’t friends by any stretch of the word, but we tolerated each other, and I didn’t feel like he wanted to kill me anymore.

With a sigh, I folded my arms across my chest. “I take it he’s left already?”

Toby nodded. “Took Sam, Abbot and Kris around lunchtime today. They’ll be back Sunday.”

“What are they doing, robbing a whole estate?”

Toby grinned. “Cleaning houses isn’t all we do. Plenty of stuff in this world to steal, princess.”

“It’s duchess.”

“Whatever.”

“Are you pissed you aren’t going with them?”

He shrugged, using one hand to turn the wheel. He looked very cool, calm and collected in his button-down shirt and charcoal slacks. His clothes fitted his muscular frame well, and his wayfarers topped off the look. If I had met him away from the family and outside the strain of our situation, I would’ve found him extremely beautiful—he did, after all, look very similar to Nate. Just…harder.

“You know I don’t mind staying behind. Jobs don’t…,” he paused, searching for the word or phrase. “Get me off like they do the others.” I thought back to how voracious Nate’s sex drive was after returning from the only job I knew he’d done. If I hadn’t known the reason behind it, I’d have sworn he was on drugs.

“I know you hate the work. But don’t you get excited by a good haul?” I asked, an undertone of mocking in my words, lingo I pulled from my limited knowledge of their world, mostly gleaned from TV and movies.

“Nah, it lost its lustre a long time ago for me. Although, I doubt it ever had it. I’m pushing forty, so it’s all just a means to an end now.”

“What’s your end?”

He looked over and met my eyes, holding them a little longer than he should’ve while driving. “Between you and me?”

“I didn’t tell last time.”

He nodded once. “It’s getting out.”

My heart kicked up a beat. He was speaking the words I’d wanted to hear from Nate but that my husband seemed unwilling to say. He’d made out like exiting the family profession couldn’t be done. “Is it possible to get out?”

He shrugged. “Anything is possible. You just have to want it enough. Plan it better than you plan a job.”

I sat up a little straighter in my seat, angling my body so I was facing him more directly. “Well, what would you do? I mean, if you weren’t working with your brothers anymore.”

“My dream is to run a fishing boat. There are some great game spots a little farther down the coast, and I could do whale-watching tours too. I’d need the capital to set it all up, but once it got going, I wouldn’t need much myself as long as costs were covered. Just food and a little shack somewhere, enough to live on.”

“You wouldn’t miss the fancy cars?” I gestured around the cabin of the BMW we were sitting in.

“It’s just a car.”

“OK. So you save up the cash and you’re ready to christen your boat, then what? How do you quit being your family without causing a whole bunch of shit?”

“That’s the part I’m working on. How do I walk away when no one else has walked away before?”

“I suppose you could tell them over dinner? That was always when I delivered my most disappointing news to Aunt Maya growing up.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t know. I think this might be a little more complicated than ‘Sorry, Aunty, I dented your car. ‘“

“It was actually the garage door, but I catch your drift.”

He nodded.

“Do any of your brothers know about this?”

He glanced at me quickly. “Just you. I’m trusting you not to tell any of them.”

Clasping my hands together in my lap, I wrung my fingers, then nodded. I wasn’t going to tell, but why in the world would Toby trust me? I didn’t even think he liked me that much. But every time we were alone, he shared a secret. Was this some kind of trap? Was he testing my loyalty? Loyalty to him? To the family? To Nate?

Something told me I needed to be very careful. Nate said he trusted Toby above all others. But my instincts told me that Toby was not the pussycat Alesha thought he was. He’d said that Nate had his own angle, but I was fairly sure he was also playing his own as well. Otherwise, why did he act one way when we were alone and another when we had an audience?

“I hope you realise your dreams one day, Toby,” I said finally, keeping my focus on the scenery as it shot past my window.

“Who knows. It’s nice to have dreams though, don’t you think? We shouldn’t always have to settle for the life thrust in front of us.”

“I suppose not,” I replied, taking in his words and analysing them in my mind. There was definitely an angle he was playing, I just didn’t know what it was yet.