Sold by Clarissa Wild

Marcello

I’m left standing alonein shock. The garden around me buzzes with insects, and a breeze rolls through. Under other circumstances, I might find comfort in these small, simple beauties. My money and power are supposed to get me the nicer things in life.

But right now, this place chills me to the bone.

How much longer can I keep doing this? I’ve aged decades in the past month, and no end is in sight. Everything in my world—or what’s left of it—is wearing me down bit by bit. The war, the shipment, but most of all… Harper.

I don’t regret buying her. Even now, I can’t find it in me to wish I hadn’t done that. The real mistake was letting her get close to me. Close to my heart. To where no one has been in a long time.

I swore an oath on that bloody, vicious night fifteen years ago I’d never be vulnerable again. And I’ve gone and done exactly fucking that. I showed Harper parts of me I vowed to keep in the darkness. I told her things that were meant to be buried deep for the rest of time.

Like about my mother. My thoughts flash to where she lies inside the mansion, hooked up to IVs and beeping machines. I still can’t believe I blurted that secret out loud. And to Harper, of all people—my pet, my fuck-doll. Isn’t that what she called herself? That’s how she thinks I see her?

I say the words out loud into the empty garden. “She’s nothing more than a fucking toy.”

The crickets chirp louder in response. It’s like they know I’m a fucking liar. She isn’t a toy, and she hasn’t been, not even in the beginning. She may have just been a waitress in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it wasn’t an accident she was there.

It was fate.

But is she my path to a happy future? Or will Harper be my undoing?

I don’t have the answers to these questions. There’s nothing I can do but turn them over in my head again and again. But if I’m going to torture myself with thoughts of Harper, I might as well be drinking. I go inside, leaving the rose garden behind me.

There’s work to be done.

The next night

I’m in the middle of contacting some of my relations about the shipment, when I suddenly get a phone call from Ricardo. “Yeah? I’m busy.”

“Sorry, Sir, I know you told us not to disturb you, but uh … there’s just something I think you should know.”

“Spill it,” I respond.

“I found a mole.”

I shove my chair away from the desk and immediately sit up straight. “What? Who is it? Tell me you have him detained or I swear to fucking G—”

“Yes, Sir. But … it’s Claudio.”

My eyes widen. I almost drop the phone from my hand but then clench it so tightly it almost breaks.

Claudio, my fucking right-hand man, a mole?

“Are you sure?”

The guy has been with us for years. I trusted him with my life.

“We have him in custody downstairs, Sir. You can ask him yourself.”

I don’t even reply before stopping the call, and I shove the phone in my pocket and march out the door. It takes me only a minute to run down into the basement and slam open the door. There, Claudio is bound to a chair, a dozen of our men watching over him, anger spilling from their eyes. Rage becomes me as I pull out my gun and point it straight at his head.

Claudio, my fucking consigliere. Not in a million years would I have suspected him to be a rat.

I have my gun pressed against his forehead, right between his eyes. There’s fear in them, but he is handling it well. I would have expected no less. Claudio was never a coward.

I have fought with him, killed with him. And that wasn’t enough? Now he’s gone and sold me out to my enemy?

Disappointment lies heavy on my shoulders as I stare down at the one person I trusted with my life.

Behind me, the rest of my capos sit in a semi-circle. No one says a word or moves a muscle. There’s only the stench of Claudio’s sweat. This room—the council room in my basement has seen its fair share of executions like this one—feels dark and claustrophobic.

“Now is your time to confess, Claudio,” I say in a grim rasp. The men around me are watching, waiting for this traitor’s explanation. “Tell the council what you did. Tell them how you betrayed us.”

My hand is shaking with fury. I trusted this man, and he used that trust to stab me in the back. Laws be damned—I ought to blow his brains out before he even gets the chance to speak.

“Claudio,” I bark, “You’ve been accused of betraying the mafia you swore to protect. This Family will never tolerate a traitor. I sentence you to death.”

“I swear I didn’t betray you, Marcello,” he says. Even in the face of death, his voice is clear and unwavering. It’s hard not to admire that. “The phone was planted. I’ve never seen it in my life.”

“Bullshit,” I bark. “You’re a fucking liar. Just say what you did, and I will put you down quickly.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t confess to what I didn’t do. All a man has in this world is his word and his honor. I’m offering you both, Don. You have to believe me.”

“We found the phone in your apartment,” I snarl. I readjust my grip on the gun and wipe a bead of sweat from my forehead. The men are silent and waiting. It is up to me to decide what happens next. “We all read the texts. Clear as day. You sold us out to the Russians. You told them fucking everything.”

Claudio shakes his head again vigorously. “It wasn’t me,” he repeats. “That phone wasn’t mine.”

“Prove it,” I say finally. I ease the gun off his forehead a tiny bit.

“Check my real cell phone,” he says, and he points toward the pile of his things Ricardo took from him when he was brought into the council room for this execution.

I nod to Ricardo. He bends over and riffles through the stuff. Finding a cell phone, he hands it over to me. I hold it down to Claudio. “Open it,” I order. “Go slow. If you do anything suspicious, I’ll blow your fucking head off without thinking twice.”

“Yes, Don,” he murmurs. He unlocks the screen and swipes through to click on an icon I recognize as a home security app. He calls up the archived footage and starts to scroll through.

“I have cameras around my home,” he explains. “Men like us can never be too careful. Somewhere on here is the traitor who put this phone in my apartment.”

He knows this is it. Either he finds proof of his innocence, or he dies. There is no other choice.

It’s as if the whole room holds its collective breath while Claudio searches. Every second that passes brings him closer to the edge.

But as long as there is a sliver of doubt, I am willing to wait. I owe Claudio that much for all the years we’ve worked together.

“Here!” Claudio erupts. He holds up the phone triumphantly.

I peer close and see a night vision view of his apartment. It looks normal enough—couch, dining table, a peek of the kitchen in the upper right-hand corner. The edge of his front door is barely visible.

As I watch, the door handle jiggles, then swings open, and a man steps inside. He crosses over to stand in the middle of the living room and looks around like he’s searching. Then he pulls a cell phone from his hoodie pocket—the cell phone in my other hand right now—and places it in the drawer of the side table next to the armchair.

He turns to leave. But just before he vanishes, he looks around again. As he does, his gaze passes over the camera. It’s only a split second, but Claudio’s thumb mashes down on the pause button.

The face of the man in the recording is clear as day.

It’s one of Igor’s men, wearing that familiar Russian emblem that’s scorched into my fucking brain.

There’s no denying the footage. This guy planted the phone. He framed Claudio. Why? To make me lose trust in my own goddamn men?

Something buzzes in my pocket. It’s my own cell phone. I step back and answer, the phone almost crushed in my hands.

“Marcello,” Igor chuckles. “Bad time?”

“Igor,” I say through gritted teeth. “You’re a dead man walking.”

“It’s a shame how all this is playing out,” he replies. His sadness almost sounds genuine. “Trust me when I say I did not want it to be like this, Marcello, but it was the only way.”

“Fuck you and your pathetic lies,” I spit. “Face me, you fucking coward!”

“I cannot, Marcello, even if I do want to, believe me.” He clears his throat, ending in a laugh like it’s a fun and games to him .The next time he laughs I will personally put a bullet in his brains. “Anyway, your guy, what was his name…Giovanni. He proved quite useful to us. So please thank him for me.”

Giovanni? What the—

It suddenly hits me like a ton of bricks.

Fuck.

Giovanni was a rat who leaked information to the Russians.

“I will be honest with you, Giovanni didn’t do it willingly. We were going to kill his baby daughter if he didn’t do as we said.”

”Fuck you,” I spit the words out as rage burn through my chest.

The old Russian sighs on the other end of the line. He talks to someone in a muffled back and forth I can’t hear. Then to me, he says, “We want you to know that we can do anything. Get to anyone. Even you.”

“Who is we? Igor, who the fuck is ‘we’?” I squeeze the phone so tight in anger that I’m surprised it doesn’t snap to bits. “Igor, if you don’t fucking—”

The line goes dead.

The fucking bastard!

I let the phone fall from my fingertips. It clatters to the floor. I stand still for a moment, breathing heavily, staring at the wall like it has answers written out for me. The only thing going through my head right now is that I want for nothing more than to rip my gun from its holster and shoot down any motherfucker who dared to betray me.

I almost shot the only man I can trust.

Fuck Giovanni. He will pay for this by eating his own tongue.

Finally, I turn to Claudio and offer him my hand to help him to his feet. “I am sorry, friend,” I whisper.

“Up the security and be ready for war,” I order as I set the gun down in the chair where Claudio was seated, and I stalk out of the basement.

I was seconds away from executing an innocent man, all because I was blind to the oldest trick in the book. Igor has me rattled. I won’t let it happen again.

I badly want to find Harper. When I’m with her, she calms me.

But I don’t have time right now. Instead, I go upstairs and retreat to my own quarters so I can figure out how I’m going to take down the Bratva.