Sold: Dark Mafia Romance

This isn’t happening. Please tell me this isn’t happening.

“Andrei! Get off. Don’t damage the fucking goods.”

Before I know it, the guy is lifted off me, and I can finally breathe again. But it’s only for a few seconds because then I’m flipped over, and a nasty-looking guy with a beard is glaring right at me.

“This is a pretty one,” the guy says.

“I said the same thing,” Andrei replies.

The new man smacks Andrei hard in the face. I can’t say it doesn’t feel good to watch him get punished for what he wanted to do to me. “I told you not to take any spoils for yourself. How many times do I have to explain to you why we’re here?”

Andrei cocks his head. “I was only inspecting the merchandise.” He raises his hands as though he’s innocent, but I know what he was about to do. “Nothing more.”

Liar. He was about to do something despicable to me, and he knows it.

The other guy narrows his eyes at Andrei, and his nostrils flare. “Bring her to the van with the others.”

The van? Shit. I don’t like the sound of that. Like this fucking night hasn’t been bad enough, and now I’m going to be kidnapped?

I try to crawl away, toward one of the dead bodies lying all around me—because this one has a gun in his hands … and I’m about to use it to defend myself.

“Oh, no, fuck no!” Andrei growls, and he grabs me by the neck again and lifts me.

“Let go of me, you pig!” I yell.

He snorts and grabs something from his pocket, twisting me around in an awkward position. Then he yanks my arms behind my back and shackles me.

“What the fuck?!” I scream. “Get off me!” I try to shake him off, but he still puts his hands on my waist and throws me over his shoulder.

“How about you shut the fuck up and be a good girl?” he sneers, and then he marches out the front door with me hanging over his shoulder. I keep kicking with everything I have, but it doesn’t even faze him.

There’s a van waiting right in front, and my eyes widen as the doors slide open. Almost all of the strippers from the club are there—some of them badly bruised, some bleeding or unconscious.

And lying bound like pigs on the floor of the vehicle…

Are the two Irishmen.

Fuck.

I swallow hard. What are they gonna do with us?

Andrei throws me in with the rest of the girls. “Be quiet, and you won’t get hurt.” As he grabs the door, he grins and adds, “Not badly, anyway.”

I spit at him again, but it lands on the door instead because he slams it before my spit gets close.

Fuck that monster. Him and all his hideous friends.

Of course, there’d be Russians like the cherry on top of this shit sundae I’ve found myself in. No wonder that PI wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole and ran for the hills. I’ve never seen this kind of violence, and now that the doors are closed, and I’m left with the other whimpering women, it finally dawns on me.

I don’t think I’ll get out of this mess so easily.

Fuck, I’m in deep shit.

Marcello

Two days later

I’ve been buried in work in the two days since the massacre at Bottoms Up. Everything in my business—especially things regarding next week’s electronics shipment—needs to be checked, re-checked, and checked again. I refuse to be caught off guard a second time.

But the fact remains that I was caught off guard. All because of a woman. It damn near cost me everything.

I have my men scouring the city, looking for any information about what went down at the club. I need proof, someone willing to talk. Did the attack have anything to do with me, or did the Irish piss off someone else as well?

The men who could most likely provide the answers I’m looking for, the Duffy brothers, have vanished without a trace. No one has seen or heard from them in over forty-eight hours. They’re well-connected men — parasites, of course, leeching on the blood of the city’s powerful families, but well-connected nonetheless. Their contacts in Ireland provide excellent weapons at very reasonable prices. Without them, half the Mafias’ artilleries wouldn’t exist and that’s the only reason I was doing business with them.

But no matter where I look, scouring the darkest corners of my territory, I can’t find the fuckers. That means they’re either dead or in hiding. I hope for their sake that it is the former. It will save me from having to kill them myself because no one fucks with me and gets away with it.

Setting that worry aside, I have to focus on my shipment due to arrive in a couple of days. Even though my armory is well stocked, I still need more weapons. I could reach out to the Russians, but underground chatter says Igor Metdner and the Bratva had something to do with the attack on the club.