Semua Bab Taken by the Mafia King: Bab 301 - Bab 310

PaigeI pulled on my sweatshirt for bed with a small smile on my face. Tom disappeared out the door after dinner, muttering something about a warehouse, but I wasn’t that worried about him. He might be a mobster who worried too much, but he proved he knew his shit when we were talking through my plan. He’d actually been doing it, even before he found me. He had men in place, contacts, everything I needed to actually make a difference. The thought warmed something in my chest as I tucked under the covers, and for the first time in a long time, sleep took me without much of a fight.The dream started off like it always did. Me, chained to a bed, fighting not to cry as a faceless bastard tortured me. My tears burned like fire. Bright moonlight streamed in through the window like a searchlight, but it never touched my skin, keeping me in the shadows where the assholes wanted me.Then, in my dream, the door exploded inward. Tom stepped into a shaft of moonlight, and his eyes flashed like e

PaigeDressed in a garishly pink snowsuit that seemed to appear out of nowhere in my closet, I followed Tom through the foyer back toward the door that led to the garage. If he expected me to play basketball in this, I was going to kick his ass. He opened the door and led me along the line of cars, instead of directly to the second door that led to the court. I should’ve known. Though his was a bit sleeker and black, Tom wore an equally full-coverage snowsuit. I couldn’t imagine what the hell he had in mind.Finally, he stopped in front of a trio of…well, I didn’t know. They looked kind of like jet skis, but they had actual ski-feet at the bottom. I stared at him blankly, already starting to overheat.“They’re snowmobiles!” He grinned, the piece of spinach from breakfast gone.I frowned at the machines. I never should’ve agreed to this. After last night, I should’ve stayed as far from Tom as possible to keep my stupid subconscious from ever doing something like that again. But my mout

PaigeI stroked the top of Francis’s head in Lauren’s office. For the first time, noonday sun poured in her big windows. Tom rearranged my appointments permanently to line up with when most people at Henley and Stephenson would be taking their lunch so I missed as little as possible. Part of me thought that was sweet. The rest of me had no idea what to think about Tommaso anymore.“So, our longest break yet.” Lauren smiled. “How was your weekend?”In my mind’s eye, Tom cupped my face gently, somehow both in my dream-bedroom and on the back of the snowmobile. I’d been avoiding him since then.“I did the homework we talked about,” I blurted.“Great!” Lauren scribbled a couple notes in a new color of pen. “Tell me a little about it?”I ran her through the steps, through our loose plans for achieving them. Every time she looked like she was about to ask another question, I invented another detail to tell her to avoid it until I finally ran out.“Wow,” she said. “It’s awesome that you were

PaigeI picked at the plate of lasagna in front of me and looked around Tom’s formal dining room. He’d said he tried to keep decoration out of the place so people could focus on the food, but that was only half-working because of the company. Killian and Sera showed up as promised, but they brought along Patrick and Olivia, who were also a couple. The four of them walked in arm-in-arm, already chattering, and I’d instantly felt like an ant. I’d never done well in big group events. Or medium ones. I basically hadn’t been to a party since that last birthday of Sera’s, and I never figured out how everybody else seemed to know when other people were done talking. Even inviting over Killian and Sera had been stupid, but on a whim while trying not to fall asleep last night, I’d bought this white dress covered in pink and green geometric patterns, and I wanted to show Sera Bianchi I still knew how to pick out my own clothes.But now here she sat, completely resplendent in a deep blue designe

PaigeI sat back on Lauren’s bright blue couch on Wednesday at lunchtime. Francis sat on the far end, seeming to sense I didn’t want him near me. I didn’t want anyone near me. I’d snapped at Miranda this morning when she accidentally gave me coffee with milk and sugar instead of just sugar, and I’d almost sent a kind of catty email to a client. I just couldn’t stop thinking about that dream, about the fucking kiss, about how close I kept coming to exploding my whole life right when it was maybe starting to become something I could live.Lauren smiled. “So if you want to, there are a lot of ways to try on clothes before you buy them. And if makeup’s a struggle—”“So, are we just never going to talk about what happened to me?” I asked.She swallowed and nodded. I resisted the automatic impulse to wince. I didn’t feel bad. She was supposed to be helping me, and I was just as shitty as I used to be.“Do you want to talk about what happened to you?” Lauren asked.I threw my hands up in the