King of the Underworld by RJ Kane

390

Adrik

It took me a few days, but I finally managed to talk to my father without Sephie around. I had to enlist the help of all the guys to keep her busy while I had a conversation with him. I wanted to make sure she didn’t overhear what I was going to ask him.

“How did you propose to my mother?” I asked him after he walked into my office, closing the door behind him at my request. I’d even asked that Aleksei not be present. He was slightly worried.

He exhaled, the relief visible on his face. He got a sly smile across his face. “I was wondering when you were going to think of this. I was worried you would wait too long.”

“I’ve been thinking about it since right after I met her. I didn’t want to scare her by asking her too soon. I’ve had the ring made for months now. I was going to ask her before she and Ivan were taken. After, she was so hurt that it didn’t make sense to ask her then. Now, she’s dealing with finally being forced to feel her fear and she’s insecure for the first time in her life, I think. I want her to know without a doubt that I’m not going anywhere. Or that the guys aren’t either. She’s worried they’re all afraid of her now.”

He scoffed. “How could they be afraid of her?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what she’s worried about. She spends so much time taking care of everyone else, sometimes she forgets to take care of herself. She has six of us that she expertly takes care of, but we have one of her and I feel like we fail miserably most of the time. I want to do something special for her to try and help make up for that.”

mother was not the same. But it was similar enough.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “I see why you love her. I haven’t met a woman like her, including your mother. When you have a woman like that by your side, you become unstoppable. Everyone worries about men when it comes to business, when it comes to war, politics, all of it. Men are in charge. But it’s the women that hold

about my mother in those few hours than he had in 30 years. I knew it was all because of Sephie. She made me see him completely differently than I had when I was growing up. She helped me understand why he did the things he did. I had

finally stuck his head in the office. “It’s getting difficult to keep her from coming down

We mustn’t make her

the guys, but we were on our way to the house that

anywhere and that I was never going to send her away from me for any reason ever again. I

not go to the house until after dinner. Once there, they all pretended to be very tired and went straight

all in before she turned back to me,

for her to turn

turned toward me. Her hand went up to cover bet

It didn’t happen

up, grinning at my inability to keep my hands off of her. I pulled her to me. She, of

knows no depths or no bounds. I fall more in love with you each and every day and I want to keep falling in love with you every single day for the