SWNOVELS Sold to the Italian Mafia Boss: Chapter 3
Cocky. Of course, he is. Look at him. Tall, beautiful. Wearing power and wealth and luxury like he was born in it. Like he owns it all. He was. He does. I’ve been in this world a long time, and never have I met someone so beautifully suited to it.
Luca is tall and elegant, with olive skin and rich, dark brown curls. His beard is thick but neat, his eyes so dark a brown they’re nearly black. He’s hard angles, some pretty, some rugged, a balanced composition that begs to be touched, traced, admired. In any other situation, I would. I’d admire him. With my hands. With my mouth.
But before I fall into the magnetism of his presence, I have to remind myself: this man kidnapped me. This man watched his driver beat and choked me. This man dragged me over country lines and locked me up like some princess in a medieval fairy tale. He is not a good guy.
He is the enemy.
Negotiate. He said it magnanimously, like he was doing me a favor. Who the fuck do you think you are, Luca Romano? I’m about to show him just who the hell I am.
“My father isn’t going to waste his time negotiating with you,” I say simply, shrugging a shoulder in as blasé a way as I can. I’m bluffing. I’m good at it, I know that I am, and I’ve had a lot of practice. But something gives me the impression that Luca knows a thing or two about bluffing himself. “You’re beneath him.”
Luca chuckles. “That’s not why you’re here for him now. That’s not why you’re throwing yourself at my feet.”
Heat rushes up the back of my neck. He says it without breaking eye contact. I can’t tell if it’s fear or desire that has my heart racing.
Both—either—make me angry.
“Your father was the man my father feared,” I say icily, knowing it will wound. I can tell by the way his smile sours, even just slightly, that it does. “Not you. You can call in old debts left and right. But you have to know how it looks, don’t you? You’re a smart man. Smart enough to keep yourself alive all these years after your father left his empire to you. So you must know. Calling in debts like this all at once makes you look weak. It makes you look poor. Mismanaged, even.”
His smile is small, sharp, and quick as a knife. “Calling in debts the way I do is anything but. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories. I elect to let them speak for me.”
I swallow. I have heard the stories. Of course, I have. Men strung up and beaten to death in their family homes, in their kitchens, and in their living rooms, and left swinging in their showers. Garage-made bombs strapped under cars and set off on highways and drop-off lines for schools.
My father wouldn’t be so easy to target. Even in his current state, and even with a few debts out, he is still a kingpin. Still the king of Ireland’s criminal underground.
“You’ve had trouble getting to Liam,” I say, calling my father by name. “You knew there was a risk in letting your man speak with me, and you did it anyway. You took a calculated risk, just like I did. And here we are.”
“Here we are, and you have yet to negotiate.”
“I have access to more accounts than you would think. More accounts than anyone else in the syndicate. More even than my father.”
Luca chuckles, catching me off-guard once again. Smoothly, he runs a hand over his beard. I find myself wishing I was doing the same, and I have to give myself a shake.
“I know you work in finance,” says Luca. “I know everything you’ve done since you graduated college in America, Kate. I know you’re smarter than you let on. I know you’ve spent your life in and out of this world. But I also know that your father doesn’t want you in it—and I know that if he knew you were here now, he would do anything to get you back. He would…pay any price.”
My mouth dries. It’s true. Another risk I took. “So sell me,” I say, with more confidence than I’ve got. “Sell me to him, sell me to some other high bidder. Go ahead.”
Luca cocks his head, and I heat under the directness of his gaze. His lashes are thick, off-set by his beard, by his thick, dark waves. I want to run my hands through every curl. And I can smell him from here, some subtle, expensive, custom Italian cologne; it smells like sea salt, like balsam. In another world, maybe we do. Maybe we fuck.
But in this one—in this world—he wants to kill me.
“There’s a reason you’re hearing me out right now,” I say, hoping against hope that I’m right. “And it’s not chivalry. You know I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have even risked being here, if I didn’t know I had a hand to play.”
“I’m listening, Kate.”
Kate. Is that the first time he’s called me by my name? It cuts right through me, a knife through warm butter. It makes my hands tighten on my knees.
“I can offer you more than the debt,” I say, bracing. This is what you came for, I remind myself. My heart is in my mouth. My father, I know, as much as he loves me—will never forgive me for this. “I can offer you fealty.”
Luca’s eyes narrow, and I can see by the light in them that this is not what he was expecting. “Fealty,” he says, with a hint of amusement. “What is this? The dark ages? Are you a knight, Kate? Am I a king?”
He’s playing with me, but I’m serious. Does he really think I didn’t think this out? “Our families,” I say, keeping my voice stony. “Our empires have been at war for ages. Decades. That war killed your father.”
He flinches almost imperceptibly, and I file away that nerve for later. It will come in handy.
“I have accounts to give you,” I press. “Accounts to open and share. I have contacts. Collateral. You have to have thought about it. Together, we’d run half of Europe. Drugs, arms, real estate, all the capital you could think of, all the capital you could want—and that’s not even taking into consideration what I have in the states.”
He looks at me strangely then, like I’ve stepped through a mirror, and he’s seeing me before him, real, tangible, for the first time. Like he’s decoding me or trying to. He’s quiet for a long time. So long I begin to wonder if I’ve lost him.
Then, finally, he sits back. “You have to know that even if we were to strike a deal like this, you couldn’t simply walk out of here.”
I nod. “I know.”
“I’d need you vetted, not to mention every account. Every contact. I’d need your vouching. I’d need you in meetings, in arrangements. This isn’t just a paper you can sign, and then you’re out on bail.”
A chill inches down my spine. “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
“You would need to remain here.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve calculated this.”
“Like I said—I’m good with numbers.”
Luca regards me with something near admiration. His gaze is so cold and direct and blunt, though, that I can’t be sure. I can’t read him, not yet. But the plus side to that is that he can’t read me, either.
At least—I hope that he can’t.
“I’ll think about it,” he finally says, and I detect more than a concession in his tone—there’s also a little bitterness. I’m not exactly what he expected; I don’t think. Maybe he’s registering that I won’t be easy to push around or off-load. Good. Let him squirm. “In the meantime, you’ll be allowed to make yourself comfortable.”
“No dungeons and chains?”
“Not if you pan out the way you seem to think you will.” He stands, and I feel a soft surge of heat, looking at him in the cold, stark daylight. He’s so tall. His shoulders and chest are so broad. His suit clings to his biceps when he shifts and turns, with a silken, expensive kind of confidence. Damn. He’s not making this easy. “Come.”
“Wait,” I say as he brushes past me. I quickly stand. “That’s it? You don’t want to look over any of my offerings? You don’t want to run any numbers? Make any calls, or—”
“Frankly, Kate,” he says, turning sharply. So sharply that even as I step back, we nearly walk into one another. I expect him to draw back, but instead, he presses forward, like he did last night by the car in Dublin. He presses his front to mine with a savage kind of cockiness, and I step back, my ass bumping up against the desk. “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”
“I—”
“Don’t. Don’t speak. You’ve spoken plenty.”
That silences me faster and more efficiently than I’d like it to. My heart jumps up into my mouth. I register all at once that his whole body is against mine, that he’s undoubtedly armed, and I’m not. That with the snap of his fingers, he could have me dead, beaten, sold, locked away. Usually, I would talk back. The ice in his eyes tells me not to.
“I don’t like cockiness in my enemies,” Luca says, his expression hard and unyielding. He’s so much taller than me that I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. And it’s penetrating. Cutting deep. “It tends to signify stupidity. But you’re new to the people-facing side of organized crime, that much I can tell. So I’ll forgive the attitude.”
Attitude? Who the fuck does this guy think he’s dealing with?
“I won’t kill you,” he says. “I won’t sell you off like a brood mare. I won’t make a hostage auction of you. I know enough to appraise my goods before I take them to market.”
My hackles rise. I can’t silence the bitter, hissed “Fuck you” that rises to my lips.
His eyes narrow slightly. It’s amusement in them, though, not anger. “But your fealty, until proven, means less than nothing to me, Kate. I’m telling you to be good and obedient if you want to keep your life. I’ll give you one opportunity to accept my generous offer.”
My obedience for my life. I bite my cheek. My heart is going hard, a fist against the inside of my ribs. I don’t have much choice. But I can be patient. For the right cause, for the right man—for my father—I can be patient. “OK,” I mutter.
He leans in, tilting his ear toward me. “OK? OK, what, McNamara?”
“I’ll…be obedient.”
“Good and obedient.”
Heat surges into my face. “I’ll be good and obedient.”
“Yes, I think you will.” He turns, his eyes boring into mine. They’re rich and deep and dark and terrible, sliding from mine to my mouth. Easy as velvet. There’s purpose in that gesture. Intention. And as much as I want to shove a pistol against this man’s ribs, I’d be lying if I said the way he looks at me doesn’t turn me the fuck on, too. “Now, that wasn’t so difficult. Was it?”
He turns away without another word, going to the door and giving it a quick little rap. When he does, Dome pushes in, looking more pissed off now than ever. His eyes lock onto me, and fear lances up my spine.
“Kate is tired,” says Luca, in such a condescending tone that I immediately wonder how good it’d feel about breaking his fingers. Easy, Kate. That’s neither good nor obedient. “I think she’d like to be taken to bed.” His eyes dance. “Isn’t that right, Kate?”
Fuck you. “Yes. That’s right.”
“Good girl.”
Now I’m imagining breaking much, much more precious things than Luca’s fingers. But I don’t say a word. I’m in as deep as I can manage. And despite his willingness to play ball with me, I sense there’s a much more lethal, red-eyed side of this man. After all, he had Dome nearly kill me last night. And all he did was watch from the dark.
When Dome grabs me roughly by the shoulder and leads me back out into the hall, I don’t fight. But I don’t break eye contact with Luca, either. Two can play this game.
And something tells me that Luca Romano has no idea who the hell he just got into bed with.