Evangeline’s gaze left his face and moved to Gorya’s. She flashed a smile at him and for a moment Alonzo stiffened, his fingers curling into a tight fist inside his thin leather gloves. He had the fists of a fighter and he’d never lost a fight yet. He hoped like hell Gorya remembered that fact. He hoped he was aware of just what the tattoos covering his body meant as well.

He realized she had given his cousin her low-watt smile. Polite. Sweet, but impersonal. She still reserved the real one for him. His gut, tied up in knots, relaxed a little.

“Good morning. Can I get something for you?” That was directed at Gorya.

Her voice stroked caresses over Alonzo’s skin. Men like Alonzo didn’t have a woman of their own. Not ever. It was far too dangerous. He didn’t live in Evangeline’s world. He stayed in the underbelly, where it was dark and ugly and everyone existing there was dark and ugly as well. He knew the business inside and out, smuggling, gunrunning, prostitutes, gambling, money laundering, the list went on and on. He knew them all. He’d been born into that ugly world—on the other side of the world in Russia, but still the same everywhere. He’d never left it. Never gotten out of it. Not even when he’d come to the States.

Gorya winked at Evangeline. “I had no idea the women were so beautiful in this city or I would have come sooner.”

“Gorya.” It was a warning. No one could mistake it for anything else. Alonzo wasn’t about to have his cousin flirt with his woman. Okay. She wasn’t his. Not yet. She never would be, because along with taking over the Arnotto territory when Antonio Arnotto had been murdered, Alonzo was a shifter with the worst leopard imaginable.

His leopard, an Amur leopard, was a killer. Vicious. Cunning. Fast as hell. Ready to fight at the drop of a hat. Prodding, raking and clawing Alonzo every moment of every day. The cat hated everyone equally. Women were in danger. Alonzo could fuck them but then he had to get them the hell out of his sight because his leopard was so savage after, he was never certain he could control the beast. There were no cozy dates and romantic interludes. He’d never had that. The only place his cat subsided and gave him a respite was here, in this bakery. Even at night, when he slept, his cat wanted to hunt and often challenged him. He’d had to put up metal bars on the windows and steel plating on the doors to ensure his cat remained indoors while he slept. What man could ask a woman to share that kind of life?