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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Give me sex or give me death.

  Nixon

  After lunch, where I'd made an even bigger ass out of myself in front of everyone, Trace included, I went to my final class for the day.

  "Yo." Tex bumped my fist when I reached the door. "Question. Would your father, sick bastard that he is, kill me if I asked to date your sister?" He coughed. "Officially?"

  Talking about my father was right up there with getting kidnapped by Al Qaeda and starving in the desert.

  "Officially?"

  He shrugged. "You know, like, do things the right way." His eyes flickered between the doorway and mine. Shit, he was dead serious.

  Groaning, I crossed my arms. "Tex, he's not even the head of the family anymore. I am. Asking him is like asking the dead. Just ask me."

  "But…" Tex's eyes turned worried. "…he may not be dead yet, but he's still her father, and I want… I want to do it right, Nixon. The old way, where the guy asks the girl's father for permission, not the brother, even though the brother is a bad ass."

  "The brother may say no." I snorted.

  "The brother can go to hell. I want the father's permission. Can I ask?"

  "Shit." I wiped my face with my hands. "At least let me talk to Mo first… see if she's even that far gone over your ugly mug that she'd risk going to our own father to ask permission to date a Campisi."

  Tex's face twisted with rage as he backed me up against the wall, his nostrils flaring. "You know I hate that name."

  "We all hate that name." I pushed his hand away "But it doesn't matter. In the end, it's what you are. You know it. I know it. Your biggest hurdle isn't going to be gaining my dad's approval to date her. It's going to be gaining his approval to mix bloodlines with the Cappo."

  Tex looked down, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I'm not him, Nixon."

  "No." My heart twisted a bit in my chest. I'd known Tex my whole life, known his past, known his baggage, and it killed me that he'd never truly fit in. It wrecked me that he'd never felt good enough, even with his own family. "But you're his son."

  I pushed past him and went to my desk then sent Mo a text to meet me in her dorm after class.

  The professor droned on and on about business ethics. I blocked it out, because I officially had no ethics, business or otherwise. Having ethics was like having morals: they didn't really do shit for me in the business I was in.

  Damn Tex. I didn't want him talking to my father. Hell, I didn't even want to talk to my father. That meant I had to be in the same room with him, breathing the same air, and, well, I knew something that Mo and the Elect didn't even know.

  This week was the week that I was going to end him.

  I'd planned it.

  Anthony knew.

  The men knew.

  Hell, my own father probably knew. But if that's what Tex needed in order to gain permission to be with Mo? I'd give it to him, not because I was a good guy, but because I knew that the future Tex had wasn't one where he ended up with my sister and a houseful of kids.

  No, his future was about as set as mine.

  Filled with blood.

  And death.