Bought Mafia Bride by Mae Doyle
Dane
“We’re sure that Timothy doesn’t know about this meeting? He’s a smarmy bastard,” I say, looking over at my brother.
Lorenzo clears his throat and shakes his head. “Not a chance. You, Johnny, and I are the only three who know about it. So unless one of us suddenly turned against the family, we’re good to go. And if that happened then we have bigger problems than a little asshole like Helms.”
“Good.” I nod and the two of us turn when Johnny walks up to us. He has his hands pressed deep into his pockets like he’s cold and he only straightens his shoulders when he reaches where the two of us are standing.
It’s clear that he’s ready for business. Most people wouldn’t be able to identify the bumps on our hips as being our guns, but we’re all packing. Johnny gives us both a nod, then speaks.
“Are we doing a good-cop, bad-cop routine in there?”
“How about bad-cop, bad-cop,” I offer, turning to look at the mayor’s house. “This asshole knows more than he’s letting on, and if he’s protecting his shithead brother then we need to fix that sooner rather than later.”
Lorenzo nods. “It’s too fucking early to be nice to this prick. Let’s go.”
The three of us walk through the front gate and make our way up the path to the house. It towers over us, way too large for a single man to live in, but Steve has always liked people thinking that he’s a big deal. I’m not at all surprised that he’s scrounged up enough money for this house on a mayor’s salary, which begs the question: where the hell did he get it all?
“Do we have any idea if Steve here came from family money?” I ask as we stop in front of the door.
Johnny’s hand is up to knock and he turns to look at me, his eyes narrowing. “No, but I’ll get some people on that as soon as we’re finished here. You ready?”
I nod. “Hope he made coffee,” I remark.
The sun is just starting to come up and all I can think about is how it felt to leave Natalia in my bed. She’d originally wanted to sleep on her own, but there wasn’t any way that I was going to let her out of sight for a single moment last night. Even now I pull my phone from my pocket and check the cameras.
She’s still passed out in bed. Her hair is spread out on the pillow like a halo and her mouth is open slightly. I feel my cock twitch in my pants just looking at her and I wish that I were back in bed with her. Fuck the contract that I signed. The more I thought about it last night after she passed out, the more I realized that there’s no way that her father can stop me from fucking her.
I own Natalia.
The man who wrote the contract is the same asshole protecting the mayor. We’re going to take him down and then Natalia is mine to enjoy as I please and nobody is going to be able to stop me. Smiling to myself, I tuck my phone back in my pocket as the front door swing open.
“What the fuck, I told you not to come to my house. Especially not this early--can you imaging what would happen if someone saw you here?” Steve swings the door open, his jaw dropping open when he sees the three of us standing on his front porch.
“Who are you talking to, Steve?” I ask, pushing the door open and stepping past him into the house. “Sounds like you’re a little upset to get an early visit, but you sure look dressed for the day.”
He’s in a full suit, looking for all the world like he’s about to head into the office, only it’s too early for him to be worried about beating the morning rush hour. He has a mug of coffee in his hand and I take it form him, sniffing it before taking a deep sip.
“This is some real gourmet shit, Steve. I’m shocked. I honestly thought that bottom feeders like you would only drink swill.”
Lorenzo and Johnny follow me into the house and I hear the sound of the door closing as Johnny shuts it.
Closed, but not locked. Just how we need it.
Steve still looks pale but he tries to collect himself as he looks at the three of us.
“What are you three doing here?” His voice only trembles a little bit and I hand the coffee to my brother before grabbing Steve’s shoulder and turning him around.
“Show us around, Steve. Let’s find someplace comfortable where we can all sit and talk. How does that sound?” My fingers dig hard into his shoulder and even though he pauses for a moment before letting me push him down the hall, he starts walking with purpose once we reach the living room.
I glance in and shake my head. “You don’t have an office, Steve? Someplace with your important papers, maybe? Someplace where you like to keep all of your dirty little secrets?”
Lorenzo walks past us, peeking in doors as he goes. At the end he turns back to where Johnny and I are standing with Steve. “Found the office. Looks like it’s the perfect place for the four of us to sit and really get to know each other.”
“Perfect.” Pushing Steve in front of me, I push him down the hall. Lorenzo grabs him by the arm and shoves him into the office, then gently guides him to a chair before pushing him down to sit.
“Care to tell me why the hell you three are here?” Steve puffs out his chest like that’s going to be enough to make us back off. I can’t help the smirk that crosses my face and when he glances at me, I laugh.
“You’ve got to be kidding, Steve-o,” I say, grabbing a chair from next to his desk and pulling it up in front of where he’s sitting. We’re so close that our knees are touching and it’s obvious that he wants to move away from me, but with my brother and cousin at his sides, there isn’t anywhere that he can go.
“You obviously were expecting someone else to be at your door this morning. Would that be your piece of shit brother or your piece of shit lawyer?” While I speak, I watch his face, looking for any sign of discomfort.
Most people have tells that will give away everything that they’re thinking, even if they don’t know that they’re doing it. Someone like Steve, though, is more used to lying and is a bit better at keeping things under wraps than the average person.
“I thought you were my brother,” he finally says, swallowing hard. “Sometimes he comes here early in the morning to talk.”
“You sounded thrilled about it.” Lorenzo leans down so that his mouth is right by Steve’s ear. “Tell us, buddy, why weren’t you excited about the prospect of a visit from your brother?”
Steve wipes his hands on his pants and scoots just a little bit away from Lorenzo. His eyes are still locked on me and I can easily see how much he hates me.
“He and I don’t always get along,” he admits, swallowing hard. As he speaks, he glances past me to his desk.
There it is.
Whatever it is that he wants to hide from us and possibly even his brother is behind me on the desk. I don’t want to turn to look at it just yet, though. Not if he’s going to talk to me and tell us what we want to know.
“Brothers can be a pain in the ass,” I say, and Johnny chuckles. “I used to want to kill Lorenzo when we were younger, didn’t I?”
“It’s true,” my brother agrees, straightening up now and coming to stand next to me. “Can’t say that I would have blamed you. I could be a bit of an ass when we were kids.”
Johnny grabs Steve’s shoulders and pulls him back against the chair, yanking him hard so that the entire thing tips back and they’re face-to-face. “Why do you want to kill your brother sometimes, Steve? You can tell us. We all get it.”
Steve’s Adam’s apple bobs as he looks at our cousin. His eyes are wide and he looks like he’s about to break and come clean, but when he doesn’t, I sigh and walk over to his desk, plucking the folder off the top.
“Now wait a minute,” Steve says, trying to get up from the chair. He rocks forward but Johnny pulls back harder on the chair, preventing him from being able to stand up. “You have no right to pick that up.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do, Steve, sic your scumbag lawyer on me? I’m scared.” I pin him in place with my stare then flip open the front cover of the folder.
At first, I’m not sure what I’m seeing. There’s a hell of a lot of information in here, all of it seemingly more important than what was on the last page. It’s a fucking goldmine of information, and not something that anyone should have just laying around.
Then again, Steve isn’t exactly Mensa material. I’d wondered before how he became mayor, but it’s all becoming clear the more I flip through the folder.
“Don’t look at that,” Steve says, but this time his voice is low and quiet like he realizes that he’s well and truly fucked and just doesn’t have the energy to fight it any longer. “That’s all private.”
“It is for now,” I agree, snapping the folder shut and finally looking at him. “But I can’t imagine that we can sit on this information for very long. Can you imagine, Steve, what would happen if this were to get out?”
“No,” he says, reaching up and running his hand across his forehead. “You’ll ruin me.”
“Sounds good to me.” Lorenzo had been looking over my shoulder at the notebook too and now he grins at Johnny, who finally lets Steve sit up. The mayor pushes himself to his feet, looking dazed. “How about this, Steve? You stay in town while we figure out what to do with all of this information. The last thing that we want is to have to hunt you down somewhere. Deal?”
The three of us don’t give him a chance to answer. By now, some of our crew will have come and bugged his car. There will be a tracker on it to make sure that he can’t move from the driveway without us knowing about it.
Thanks to Johnny leaving the door unlocked, the whole place is bugged. Well, everything but this office, and Lorenzo and I lead Steve out to let Johnny finish the job.
“We’ll be in touch,” I tell the mayor, patting him on the chest with the folder. “Don’t worry about a thing, I promise you, the Accardi family will take care of everything.”
