Vengeance: DARK MAFIA ROMANCE

Two

SAVIO

Heat and light pour from her skin as she walks across the lobby in her wrinkled clothes and sparse makeup. I drink in the way her hot ass pulls her jeans tight, the hiccup in her step as she almost trips, the wide-eyed expression on her face. She is a fire burning only for me. I have only seen her in surveillance photos, a slip of a girl shrinking away from the world like she thinks she can be invisible. I see you, Natalia. When my eyes touch her, she falters.

Standing before me, she's more fucking delicious than I could have hoped. Watching her light go out will gratify me more than any prey I have ever hunted before. The door to the club slams behind her, and I realize my man, Luca, and the other capos I'm sitting with have fallen silent, watching me curiously. They're twitchy and bored; I don't allow smoking or drugs in my club. Cleanliness aside, I enjoy watching them rush our meetings and make bad decisions just so they can get outside and light up.

I stand, my leather armchair creaking, and gesture to Luca. "Come in after the doors open. Free lap dances, whomever you want," I toss over my shoulder at the others. We haven't finished negotiating, but I'm done pretending to consider their offers. A long day of waiting followed by a burst of satisfaction will have them signing whatever terms I present. The older capos have my number, but these fresh ones don't know my techniques yet.

Luca hurries in front of me, opening doors as we head for the executive offices. Even though I ignore them, the girls on the stage freeze like deer as I cross the room. It's cute that they think I don't notice. Instead of entering the downstairs offices, Luca swipes his key card at a door, and we climb the stairs to the second floor.

Aside from the portion dedicated to the two-story lobby, the second floor of this building looks largely unchanged from the years I lived here. A kitchenette with peeling stick-on tile and an avocado-colored fridge flanks the shabby sofa and CRT television that I bought with my first investment windfall. I was eighteen and desperate to find a way to pay off the medical bills incurred by having my blown-apart chest patched back together. Now, at thirty-five, I could buy most of the hospitals in the city.

Of course, I don't live here now, but my men enjoy the free food and entertainment on long nights of work. This place represents the thin tightrope that I walk between my mob work and my hard-earned business success, a balancing act I never want myself or my men to forget.

I snap my fingers at Marco, who nearly falls off the couch. "Pressure the diner owner. See if he told her anything."

"Sir." He grabs his gun off the coffee table and vanishes. I doubt it was the diner owner who spilled the beans. Natalia's arrival reeks of a higher power, or the irony of a cruel universe. I'm never sure which I believe in these days.

My personal office takes up the master bedroom, looking out over the water. Today, Luca reads my mind and precedes me to the second bedroom, which disguises a state-of-the-art security system. Our tech employee, a gum-chewing man-child who keeps his mouth shut in exchange for a few hot nights a month on the club floor, ducks out of the room. I catch his shoulder and push him lightly against the wall, enjoying the way his eyes bug out of his head. He shrivels as I gently rub a tense spot at the base of his neck. I think of it as a monthly check-in, to make sure he remembers who he's working for.

"Go home early," I tell him. "But first, load up enough tapes to record all footage on all cameras for the rest of the day."

Luca respectfully backs off, leaving me alone in the dark room. I settle into the still-warm chair in front of the security monitors, my eyes racing across the black-and-white screens until...there. Every instinct in me surges. The little thing is fighting with the coffee machine in the office hallway, glancing nervously around every time the device malfunctions. I can sense the distress bubbling up in her eyes, even though the camera is too low-res to record such a thing. If I had known, I could have made so many preparations. I could have rigged the coffee pot to electrocute her. I could have poisoned the coffee grounds. I could have left a note on the table—Natalia, sweetheart, turn around—and waited behind her with a gun at her head.

My shuddering breath of pleasure is interrupted by the ringing of my cell phone. I answer the phone without checking the screen and stay perfectly silent, as I always do, waiting for the other party to make the first move. Joe knows me better than anyone, speaking before the phone has even reached my ear. "One of the new girls is asking us to hire her friend. I would have said no already but you wanted all casting routed through you. She's like a mouse, I don't think—"

Sparks flare behind my eyes. It can't be true. The ease of it all is almost disorienting—I have the next six, twelve, even twenty-four months of this game planned out, and the girl is literally baring her neck before I can even get started.

"Audition," I snap, re-arranging my thoughts on the fly. Turning down such an opportunity would make me the stupidest man alive. "Two days from now. Downstairs. Private."

Joe hesitates. "Savio? What's—"

"Don't make me regret giving you first name privileges." I hang up the phone. On the computer screen, Natalia turns toward Joe's office. I rake my eyes to the next screen over, watching her enter the office, standing next to the girl I hired last week. My hunger twists my stomach. I need to see her fearful, pleading expression, my reward for taking everything away from her. But the camera only shows her back.

When she leaves Joe's office, she and her friend jump up and down in the hall, hugging each other. Natalia stumbles in the heels she clearly isn't used to walking in and they laugh in unison, holding each other up. A smile pulls involuntarily at my lips. I feel hot, alive, fucking good. Beating her into the ground is profoundly satisfying but watching her delicate face light up with hope is a thousand times better.