Conquered by the Mafia Boss

“Think really fucking hard, Beatrice. There has to be something you remember. Some small detail that might help me.”

She witnessed his murder and a part of me won’t ever forgive her for keeping that secret from me, no matter what her intentions were. My heart rends in half. She lied to me for weeks.

Beatrice sits on the floor, her chest heaving. Tears fall silently down her cheeks as she stares at the tiles and shakes her head. “I can’t remember anything significant, I’m sorry. They looked normal to me. I don’t think they had any tattoos on their sleeves.”

“No tattoos?”

She shakes her head and a lightning rod hits me, because how many patched members of an MC gang don’t have tattoos on their sleeves?

“What else?” I bend down to her level, my heart hammering against my ribs as I search her face. I don’t even care about the months of wasted time, I just want to know the truth.

“I just glimpsed them really quickly.”

“Think, Beatrice.”

“Wait-one of them might have had a small tattoo on his bicep.”

My stomach tenses. “What?”

“A horn, I think.”

Energy hits my chest. “A horn pointing down?”

“Yes, do you know what it means?”

Of course I know what it means. Every Italian knows that symbol. Jesus Christ. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the family was involved.

I feel my insides caving in as if my guts vanished. My own brothers-the family I dedicated my fucking life to-betrayed me. It wasn’t the MC. Johnny, that two-faced bastard who has been running me around all year on jobs without backup. But why?

She grasps my arm as I stand up, and my heart clenches painfully. Even she betrayed me.

“Jack, I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you so many times.”

“But you didn’t.”

Her touch on my skin is painful. Like a deep burn scorching away the muscle underneath. Her glittering eyelashes bat at me, and she looks down, stifling a hiccup of a sob.

She’s not as innocent as she looks.

For a while she was the only light in my life. A candle flame, flickering that burned hotter as I woke up with her every day in my house. Now that’s extinguished like everything else in my life.

Disgusted, I turn around. I head for the door, but then a thin arm wraps around my waist and a female body presses against my back. Every inch of her curves folds into my body. My chest tightens.

Fuck her.

I rip her hands from me and whirl her around, pinning her face against the wall. She cries out in discomfort as her cheek flattens, and I lean in, my voice trembling.

“When I come back, you’re not going to be able to sit on your ass for a week.”Property belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.

I release her suddenly, hating the way my dick responds when her body is next to mine. I want to grab her hair in a ponytail and bend her over the kitchen table where I can see that tattoo burning right above her ass. I want to slap her around for the lies she told me. Lying by omission.

“I’ll be back later.”

“Jack, I-”

“Enough. I’m leaving.”

She withers under my glare and shrinks away.

The pregnancy. My brother. All of it still implodes in my head. I see myself holding a newborn, and a deluge of panic suddenly swells inside me.

One fucking crisis at a time.

“Jack, get over here!”

I’m standing in the lobby of Le Zinc, slightly swaying on my feet with the aftermath of Beatrice’s nuclear-bomb confession. Fran? ois’s voice snaps me to the present, and I look to see him standing in front of me, touching my shoulder.

“You all right?”

A sick feeling claws through my stomach. Who knows, he might have been one of the three sent to hold a pillow over my brother’s face.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Johnny’s going over the exchange later today.”

Exchange. Drug deal. We use so many fucking code words to hide our true intentions. I wonder what phrase Johnny used when he ordered his men to take care of my paraplegic brother.

I follow him, weaving through the white-tablecloth covered tables to where that asshole sits, surrounded by his men. My throat is raw, as though I spent hours screaming. It would be so simple to just kill him right now. All I need to do is reach inside my jacket and aim. Fire.

Of course, I’d never make it out alive.

I examine them. Which one of them did it? I scan their bodies for the tattoo. Why does everyone have to wear suits all the goddamn time?

“Jack, sit down.”

I’ll fucking sit down after I rip your head off.

“What did your wife want?”

How did he do it? How does a man push aside every moral instinct to order a hit on a defenseless person, and not only that, but not have the fucking balls to take responsibility for it? He made them wear leather cuts. He wanted the police-everyone-to believe the MC was responsible. They weren’t.

“Jack.”

Then I forget what the hell he asked me.

Johnny’s lips crook into a grin.

“She’s pregnant.”