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chapter 26
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Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 27
A cold shiver went to my toes.“Ashton.”He lowered his head, his eyes still on me, and his voice came out low and soft. “Do you have any idea what you just did? That I brought you somewhere no one knew about for your safety? That you didn’t think the person who tried to kill you might also be watching your ‘besties’ on the off chance you might contact one of them? That you might tell them where you were? If their phones were tapped, if you were on long enough for a location trace?”Right. Crap. I did all of that. I was aware that I had a problem. I hadn’t thought about that stuff. “I’m new to this Mafia stuff. I’m sorry, but next time give me some lessons.”His nostrils flared. “Lessons?”His tone was sending a whole new set of chills down my spine.I wrung my hands together. “I said what I said. I’m sor—”“Do not.” He leaned in, his head moving so he was a breath away, and he placed a hand behind me against the wall. “It’s not my life that’s going to be snuffed out if they find you.
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 28
ASHTONI ripped myself away from Molly, my whole body trembling because holy fuck, the need to tear down her leggings, throw her up against the wall, and sink my dick deep inside of her was tearing through me at a breakneck speed.She tore something down inside of me. Something I needed, the last bit of restraint with her.She didn’t just tear it down. She took a battering ram to it, and I was shaken, taking her in. Only her in. I was ignoring the emotions clawing through me.Only Molly. I could only feel Molly.I was also going to murder Remmi West because I knew who’d just stormed her way in.“What are you doing here?” I had to get ahold of myself, but I half growled at Trace’s sister.She was coming in, hoop earrings. Leather jacket. Her dark hair swept up, piled high, and she was wearing her usual black pants. Trace’s sister liked to dress the Mafia-princess stereotype, but today there was no faux fur jacket.Remmi ignored me, her neck craning so she could see Molly. “Who’s that?”
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement Chapter 29
The desperation to be inside of her was primal, rushing through me.My hand skimmed down her leg from her hip, catching the back of her thigh, and I lifted it, stepping fully into her.She gasped again, a soft breathy sound coming from her. “This”—she trailed her finger down my chest to my stomach and lingered there, toying with the top button of my pants—“is one thing I keep getting distracted by, and I’m just going to reiterate again that I don’t care about the other bullshit going on.”I lifted her leg higher and moved in.She gasped again, her head falling back against the door, her chin rising, and her tongue wet her bottom lip.God.My dick just shot up at that sight, and feeling me, her eyes opened fully, seeing me.Her hand splayed out over my chest, pushing back but using that momentum to lift both her legs up.I growled, moving with her. My hands slipped under her ass as she wound her legs behind me, her ankles crossing.Jesus.I rubbed against her, slowly.Looking down, I w
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 30
MOLLYI was such a moron.Throwing myself at him. Doing the whole hand-to-his-chest thing. Being seductive. And it failed! Crash and burn. He rejected me, but man oh man. I felt him. He wanted me. He was into it, but agh. I was so humiliated.Was it me?What was I thinking? Of course it was me.Me. Who else would it have been? Something was wrong with me. I wasn’t pretty enough, or tall enough, or I don’t know. It was just me. Who was I kidding? The universe did not like me, but dammit. No. I refused to go down this path. I’d done too much, endured too much, etched out a damn good life despite my parental seeds. Screw him.I mean, that’s what I’d been trying to do but aghhhh!His loss. Right. Totally his loss. He’d be regretting it, except, and this was hard for me to admit, I didn’t think he was regretting it at all. He was quiet when he got in the vehicle, and despite performing some first aid on his hand, he hadn’t done anything on the whole drive back to the city. Total silence. W
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 31
The driver was returning, so I ignored a very different feeling that came over the back of the car. I pointed at him. “He’s back.”He opened the door. Ashton got out first and stepped aside to let me lead the way.I did, ignoring the clerk and a couple other customers inside. The bathroom was empty, thank god, but the lock was pitiful. Holding my bladder, as if that worked, I hauled the giant garbage bin over to block the door. The thing was hella heavy, so it’d do. After that, heaven and relief and yes.That’s when my phone pinged in my pocket.I pulled it out, seeing that reception had come back at some point, and saw thirty text messages, sixteen voice messages, and a whole host of other alerts. Holy shit . . .Pialto: WHAT THE HAT, WOMAN?! WHERE ARE YOU?Pialto: Sorry. What the what. Auto-duck.Pialto: Your cousin won’t tell us anything!Sophie: Where are you? Are you alive? Did you have a one-night stand and it’s amazing and you’re taking a day? Please please please tell me that’
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement Chapter 32
MOLLYHe was cleaning my face.We were in a bathroom. I was on the counter, and Ashton stood between my legs. A first aid kit was next to us. He was dabbing a cotton ball at my forehead.I felt the sting and hissed.He pulled back. “Can you hear me?”His voice droned through an invisible barrier, but I nodded. I could.“Can you talk?”I closed my eyes and started to lower my head, but he touched under my chin. “I need to clean some scrapes you got. They can’t get infected.”Another nod. Fine. But I kept my eyes closed.It felt better this way, somehow. And I reached back for what I’d been holding on to, my fingers touching bare skin.I looked, seeing that I was holding on to Ashton’s side.I took all of him in.He was in his black pants that he’d worn earlier, but his shirt was unbuttoned. It hung open. The ends tucked over my hands as I was gripping onto him, as if I couldn’t let go, but it felt right to put my hand there again, so I did.Ashton moved even closer, his head angling ov
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 33
ASHTONI stayed until long after Molly fell asleep, and even then, I couldn’t bring myself to leave her.This—I didn’t know what the fuck this was, but needing to take care of her, the terror that went through me when that gun touched her head. It was nothing to how it felt when she looked at me.I felt struck by lightning.She was scared. She knew she would die, and she looked at me for help. It was in an instant. One look. Not even a second and we both knew what we were going to do.I hated her while growing up and now this? This? What the hell was happening with me? I untangled myself from her. It’d been my fourth attempt. The first two she’d fought back, waking up. The third, I hadn’t had the heart in it myself, but this fourth time—I needed to separate. At least for a bit. I needed to think clearly again, to even remember how that felt.Pulling a shirt on, I headed out and toward Trace’s basement. He had a whole TV lounge area, and in the last month since he’d bought this place f
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 34
MOLLYI was watching from the bed as Ashton moved around the room, sweats on, a T-shirt not hiding how very toned he was. Shock and trauma aside from being shot at and everything else, man, the man had muscles. He was the definition of muscle definition. And those sweats were dipping so nicely low on his hips.I wasn’t trying to work myself up, but it was just happening.Ashton had given me and Jess and Trace the info on what he thought was happening because my dad was scurrying around out there. And also that he’d sent in an order for Marcus to reach out, but that he hadn’t yet. That was either good or bad. I checked my phone, but he’d not messaged or called me there either.“Do you think he’ll be alarmed when he goes to your apartment, Molly?” Jess had asked earlier.I snorted before remembering she didn’t really know the dynamic between my father and me. I shook my head. “Number one rule surviving being Shorty Easter’s daughter? Never let him know where you live. He only knows to g
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“He has a point. You got shot four times.”“Six times, actually.” I touched the spots on my body like a prayer. “Drive-by shooting. It was apparently meant for him, but I stepped out of the house at the wrong time, and boom. They decided to settle for his daughter instead.”“That’s not supposed to happen,” Mona said, frowning. “We’re not supposed to be fair game.”“It’s not a game to them though, to guys like that. Those assholes don’t care if we’re innocent or not. They’ll hurt us if it gets them what they want.”“I’m sorry that happened to you.”I waved it away and stared out over the yard. I didn’t remember much from the aftermath, but I remembered it happening vividly: the black truck that pulled up, the guns that appeared in the windows, the way I screamed, the pain as it flared, the weird, almost calm knowledge that I was going to die. Then black, then waking up in the hospital, in pain, very, very angry, and all the rehabilitation, the surgery, the bullshit. It took months to g
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 10
Amber After that very strange, but surprisingly good night out at the bar, I did my best to hide from him for the next couple days. When we were sitting at the bar, our legs touching slightly, I felt it: that tingle down my spine, that buzz on my lips. We ate, he asked about me, made me laugh, and toward the end of the night, our fingers touched as we reached for the check, and I stared into his eyes, and I knew in that moment that if he’d kissed me, right then and there at the bar, I would’ve kissed him back. We walked back together, said goodnight, and I’ve been hiding from him ever since. I should hate him. I don’t understand what the heck would attract me to a guy like that. He robbed a man in front of me for fun. I hated that sort of thing, hated men that bragged about crime and thought it was exciting, hated that sort of macho arrogant crap most of all, and yet somehow, he was different. He didn’t seem to take himself too seriously, and he made jokes all the time, and of cou
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 9
I walked along the bar toward a large man up near the door. He was on the way to the restrooms, so I had a good excuse to pass him. I exaggerated my sway, just a little bit, making myself look drunker than I was. The guy had a goatee, a double chin, and a tiny sprout of hair at the top of his head. I noticed the Rolex first, then the way he leaned toward a much younger, much prettier girl and grinned at her with a creepy hunger in his eyes, and I’d watched him down three drinks since I’d started my first. He was rich, he was trying to impress a girl, and he was drunk, which made him ideal.It wasn’t a complicated maneuver. Amber stared at me, wild and ready to get up and chase me down, so I hurried a little bit. I turned the corner toward the restrooms and bumped into the guy, grunting as I did it loudly. My hand slipped into the pocket of the jacket he had hung on his chair— found nothing.“Shit, sorry,” I grunted, and slipped my hand into his pants pocket. It was tricky, but they we
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 8
“To our night out,” I said.She smiled, met my toast, and sipped her drink. “This place isn’t so bad.”“You got a lot of spots like this back home?”She shook her head. “I didn’t come to fancy places like this. I’m more of a dive bar girl myself.”“Funny, I’m the same way. South Philly is filled with little holes in the wall, bars that have been there for generations. Some real cheap, trashy places, but you can get good and drunk and see the boys from the neighborhood there, so it’s not so bad.”“Philly’s a weird place. It seems so small, you know?”“It’s old. Not built in an ideal spot. Didn’t sprawl out like the newer cities. Chicago’s kind of that way too.”“I guess that’s true. I like it though. It’s got character.”“That’s what I think. Philly’s got everything you could want, and it’s cheaper than most other cities, plus it’s a lot smaller, so you can get around way easier.”“If you’re trying to get me to move here permanently, I think I’m sold.”I laughed. “I’m not sure you’d wa
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 7
Ren At first, the job wasn’t so bad. I hung around that big house, watched TV when I felt like it, bothered Amber when I got bored, and kept out of Mona’s way as much as I could. Things were quiet for a while, but after a few days it started to get real old, real quick. Amber wasn’t happy. That got pretty obvious by the fiftieth time she told me to go fuck off. Not that I minded if she told me to go to hell, to be totally honest—I sort of liked that she pushed back against me. The girl had spirit, she was a goddamn handful, but I could tell something hung over her. I kept thinking about those fresh-looking scars on her body, so like the bullet wound scars I’d seen on countless other guys, and had a couple myself, but that made no sense. I couldn’t imagine what a girl like her would be doing with bullet scars. One night, Mona decided to head into the city. Amber watched her go like a sad puppy, and I knew she wanted to go with her, if only to escape the house for a little while. I l
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 6
I climbed out of the water, intensely away of his eyes on my body. He was a good-looking guy, muscular but trim, with light eyes and dark hair slicked back. His pouty lips would’ve made a younger version of myself swoon, but I was over all that, over and done with it. I felt self-conscious, though, and realized that some of my scars were visible— the two on my leg, and the one on my shoulder. I quickly walked to my towel and grabbed it, wrapping it around myself, but too late. I caught him looking with a thoughtful frown. “We should set up some ground rules, if we’re going to do this for real.” He looked at me and shrugged. “All right. You played along with me, so I’ll play along with you. Give and take, the bedrock of any healthy relationship.” I doubted he’d ever been in a healthy relationship, but I didn’t say that out loud. “When I’m swimming, you can’t sit there and watch me.” “Fair enough.” “And you can’t follow me around all the time.” “That’d make me a shitty bodyg
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 5
Amber Vincent hustled me out to his house in Mt. Airy the next day, accompanied by my hired goon babysitter. I ignored him. It wasn’t easy though. He was a big guy, broad shoulders, stubble on his face and chin, but he held himself with this strange grace that I couldn’t totally understand. He commanded a room, and I kept sneaking glances in his direction, and caught him looking back at me, seemingly unashamed at being caught. I didn’t know what his deal was, but it annoyed the hell out of me, and drove me wild at the same time. The Mt. Airy house was Vincent’s wife’s place, a nice, pretty girl named Mona. She met us out front in black pants and a white button-down shirt. She was a few years older than me, with dark hair cut short, and dark brown eyes. She smiled, hugged me, glanced at Ren, then held me by the shoulders. “You must be Amber. Vince told me all about you.” “Yeah?” I asked, smiling a little, trying to ignore the way Ren loomed behind me. “I hope it’s all good thin
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 4
“If you’re asking me to fight your war, I’m not interested.” He shook his head and held up his hands. “Something simpler, actually. There’s a girl that came to live with me, daughter of a capo in the Chicago family. She went through something recently, they’re having their own problems out there, and she was sent here to get away from the heat. Unfortunately, things are getting hot around here now, too.” I thought of the girl I’d seen with the long dark hair and the intense expression. She must’ve been twenty, maybe a little older. It must’ve been the same girl he was talking about. “Not sure what she would have to do with me.” “I need you to be her bodyguard.” I let that sink in for a second then burst out laughing. He stared at me, eyes hard and cold, and I knew this wasn’t a joke—but it had to be. I wasn’t a bodyguard. I was a thief, and the occasional thug. I had a reputation for myself, sure enough, but nobody entrusted a life in my hands—much less the life of a young, bea
Mafia's Cruel Arrangement chapter 3
When Vince came calling, I had to answer. The Leone family was the largest mafia in Philadelphia, and I was still an independent guy, working all my jobs alone. I was happiest that way, and didn’t want to get tangled up by the Leones, but their money was good and the job was simple: track down a couple goons and beat the ever-loving shit out of them. I brought Floyd along and offered to split the pay sixty-forty. He thought it was an even split, but shit, that’s on him for not asking. “Either way. I hope they got the message.” Vincent smiled and clapped me on the shoulder, the one with the knife wound, and I grimaced. He had the good manners to look a little embarrassed before turning to Floyd. “Thanks for the assistance. I’m sure Ren will have your money soon.” “When I get paid, he gets paid,” I said, nodding. “Very good.” Vincent squeezed my shoulder. “I actually have another job for you, if you’d be willing to talk?” I hesitated. I really didn’t want to get too involved. The Le
