Borrowed Bride: A Fake Marriage, Secret Baby, Dark, Mafia Romance (Mafia Lords of Sin)

“No one.”

My father’s lie weaves an unruly path through my mind as I stand on the balcony, observing the sunrise over a smoldering city. He lied right to my face and told me no one had been at the door last night. He even seemed irritated at being questioned.

But I saw her on the security cameras.

Tara.

I haven’t seen her in years. She was gone by the time I came out of my coma, and when I queried the whereabouts of the people who ran with us at the estate, my father put it simply: dead and gone. Just like Gianna.

But Tara is clearly very much alive.

As horns blare far below and sirens rise up through the morning smog, I study the printed screenshot I took from the security footage. There’s no mistaking her slender build, but how did she find us? And why was she here?

Why would my father lie?

A quick search through the system revealed that Tara did appear to fall off the map shortly after the explosion at my safe house. Leonardo’s men raided my home not long after he sent his assassin after me so she must be working for Leonardo.

No one else hates me as much as he does.

And I him.

I’m convinced he also had something to do with the explosion at my safe house, but that mystery refuses to unravel itself. If I get my hands on him again, I’ll beat it out of him right before I kill him.

“Tara,” I murmur, staring at the picture. “How do you fit into all of this?”

Just as I’m considering asking my father one more time, my phone buzzes to life in my pocket, and the strained voice of one of my remaining lieutenants scrambles across the line.

“Boss! Boss, we have him! I see him right now?”

“Who?”

“Leonardo!”

Tara’s picture ends up crumpled in my pocket and the call becomes a shared video. Through the shaky hands of my lieutenant, sure enough Leonardo Simone is deep in conversation with someone outside one of his last remaining clubs. It seems my fires have finally brought the cockroach up for air.

“You watch him,” I order, racing through the apartment and grabbing my car keys. “You watch him and if you lose him, I will rip out your eyeballs and shove them so far down your throat you’ll end up with four fucking testicles, do you understand me? Watch him!”

“He’s still there, boss,” my lieutenant gasps in fright after I hit my knuckles sharply against the rolled-up window of his car. “He hasn’t left, I swear.”

“He better be,” I snap down at him. “Because if I go in there and he’s slipped out the back, losing your eyes will be the least of your worries.”

“He’s there, I swear. See, even his car is still there.” The man points across the street to the black sedan I saw earlier, so I nod and unholster my gun.

“Boss, don’t you want to wait for backup? Anton is five minutes out!”

“I’ve waited long enough.”

Leonardo has been in hiding for almost eighteen months and I won’t let that snake slip through my fingers again. This is it. This is where I will kill him.

And finally avenge Gianna.

Leaving my lieutenant to wrestle out of his seat belt in a vain attempt to come and help me, I race across the street and hop up onto the sidewalk. Then I gently test the handle on the door to the club.

It opens easily.

It seems the threat of arson leaves Leo light on the locks.

Inside, the lights are low despite it being early morning, and low music rumbles through the building. I walk red-lined floors, passing glittering curtains and sparkling decor that depict a starry night sky—something that would be pretty if I wasn’t so focused on murder.

“Leonardo!” I bellow as I charge out of the entryway and into the club’s main floor. Four spotlights above drift listlessly back and forth as Leonardo Simone, my target, jolts up abruptly from the table he was leaning over. He has four guards with him, all of whom reach for their guns the moment they see me.

I’m one step ahead and firing off bullets as soon as I spot Leo. The first man to his left takes one between the eyes and collapses like a sack of bricks onto the neon floor. The second man on his right takes three in the chest and he crashes back over the pink leather couch, vanishing through a dark curtain.

As Leo’s men open fire, I continue to sprint forward, blinded by Leo. I don’t feel the bullet that grazes my ribs and tears open my shirt or the spray of glass raining around me when one poorly aimed bullet ricochets and kills one of the spotlights above me.

“You son of a bitch!” Leonardo yells and dives to safety behind the DJ booth, firing widely. I shoot his third guard in the knee, bringing him down, and then when I’m close enough, I kick him hard across the face. Blood and teeth spray through the air, and then the man collapses down next to his dead colleague. The last guy tries to tackle me and as we grapple, Leo rises over the DJ booth and fires directly at me.

I use his bodyguard as a shield and three bullets impact the back of the man I’m fighting.

He coughs and sprays blood in my face, then crumples forward onto me and I’m forced back a few steps under his weight. With a grunt, I’m able to shove him aside and dive behind one of the leather sofas to avoid the next few bullets coming my way.

“Burning down my shit!” Leonardo yells. “You crazy motherfucker! You should be dead, why the fuck aren’t you dead?!”

“You can’t kill me!” I yell back, seething with such fury that saliva sprays between my teeth. “I’m alive just to kill you, you fucking asshole!”

We take pot shots at each other, trying to find an opening to get closer or, in Leonardo’s case, escape out the back door.

“Do you have any idea how many people died in that blaze last night? You fucking psychopath!”

“They would have survived if you hadn’t been hiding like the little weasel you are!” I peek up my head and then immediately duck, narrowly avoiding two bullets. Lifting my hand, I fire a few toward the booth and pray to hear a noise of pain, but none of the bullets hit their target.

I don’t know how many I have left.

I need to get closer.

Panting, I slide across the floor to the edge of the booth and peer around. Leonardo is doing the same thing, and we momentarily lock eyes. Then all hell breaks loose as we each fire widely while diving back behind cover.

“Give it up!” I yell. “Your time is over, Leo. I’m here now and I’m not letting you out of my sight, you hear me? I’m going to kill you so fucking slowly, you have no idea and I’m going to enjoy every fucking second of it. Because you have made me suffer ever since you killed Gianna. So I’m going to peel the flesh from your face, I’m going to make you watch as I pump you full of drugs and keep you awake so you can see as I cut up your flesh inch by inch!”

“Me?!” Leonardo yells back. “Nah, I’ll be doing that to you, you twisted fucker because we both know you’re the one who killed Gianna!”

What? Is he so caught up in his rat ways that he can’t even remember killing her? Was she that unimportant to him? Just another notch on his belt?

“Oh, you don’t even remember, huh? Killed so many defenseless women that one more doesn’t even make it into your mind, is that it?” I spit on the ground as my blood boils hot with rage, and every fiber of my being screams out to get my hands around that bastard’s scrawny neck. “Her name was Gianna and you killed her! I’ll etch her name into your fucking bones you cunt, so you’ll never forget!”

“Killed her?” Leonardo sounds like he’s choking on himself. “I tried to save her! From you! You and your fucking curse. She died in that explosion, the explosion that should have killed you, but by some fucking joke, you’re still here to terrorize all of us!”

“Bullshit!” I lurch upward and fire at the DJ booth. “You and your fucking assassin killed her!”

“My assassin?!” Leo leans around the booth and fires back, forcing me back into cover. “You can’t pull that shit with me, I see your assassin following me like a fucking shadow, like a threat. And I knew as soon as I poked my head up, they would tell you and lo and behold, here you fucking are!”

“Do you even hear yourself?! I’m here to kill you with my own bare hands, I don’t need a fucking assassin and I sure as hell don’t have one! Your assassin came for me, or did you think the coma would wipe my memory?! And after blowing me up, she blew up the convoy Gianna was in. I don’t know how you two even met but I know she works for you!”

There’s a sudden moment of silence when Leo doesn’t reply, and when I peek around the sofa, I see that he’s standing upright with a strange look on his face.

I take aim immediately and fire, but Leo doesn’t finch and my gun stalls.

I’m out of bullets.

“The assassin, clad in black?” Leonardo says, his voice calmer. “Tall? Lanky? Killer curves?”noveldrama

“Like you need to describe that piece of shit to me,” I snarl. I don’t even want to know how Fawn and Leonardo ended up working together, but my thoughts about her have warped over the years. In that safe house with Gianna, I was willing to track her down and make amends with her. It was a promise I made. Then I woke up and Gianna was gone.

No one has been safe from me since then.

“She doesn’t work for me,” Leo snaps, waving his gun. “I thought she worked for you!”

“Bullshit,” I snarl, throwing my empty gun aside. “You’re trying to stall until she gets here so you have back up, aren’t you? Can’t fight me like a fucking man because you’re not a man, you’re a fucking coward!”

My muscles are coiled so tight that walking toward Leonardo is painful. All my joints protest the overflowing tension in my body, but I can’t focus on anything else.

“She doesn’t work for you?” Leo says and he takes a step back, raising one hand. “I’m telling you man, she doesn’t work for me either.”

Something about his tone finally reaches me through the fog of fury blinding me, and I hesitate.

Isn’t Fawn working with Leonardo? All this time I had viewed them as a package deal since killing me is a goal they share, but learning that she’s been flitting around Leonardo like a reaper changes things.

I lower my fists, and Leo lowers his gun.

“Then,” I say tightly. “Who the fuck does she work for?”

A sudden blast of heat rushes across my back, followed by a deafening explosion, the force of which sends me forward and over the DJ booth. I crash into Leonardo who yells in shock. The heat becomes unbearable in an instant, and then darkness follows as an explosion rips right through the heart of the club.